Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Wama, el hijo de la luna. (Wama, the son of the moon) Mexican Tarzan

Wama, el hijo de la luna.

Web Translated from Spanish 

Origanal post here

Title: Wama, the son of the moon.

Publication data: Mexico, D.F. :C.E.M.,1954- .

Issues in existence of the HNM: Year 1, no. 1 (June 8, 1954)-.

Screenwriter: Joaquín Cervantes Bassoco.

Graphic: Joaquín Cervantes Bassoco.

Genre: Adventure.

Technique: Line...

Description: "Wama" is one of the undoubted classics in the history of Mexican comics. Wama appears from 1944 to 1953 in "Chamaco". From 1954 to 1958, "Wama" was published in a 32-page magazine format under the C.E.M. In 1959 Bassoco entered WWTP and changed the name of his jungle hero to "Tawa, the gazelle man", with whom he settled for twelve years in a row. For this version, the line drawing printed in black ink is transformed to halftone and printed in sepia. For a few years, the series was replaced by "Batú" (by the same author) but at the beginning of the eighties, the publisher relaunched Tawa, which remained in the positions until 1992. ''Fantastic story, developed in a mysterious jungle where There are things and animals that human eyes have never seen. Land where there is no time. An extraordinarily strong white man, semi-savage, is the one who reigns in the mysterious jungle: Wama, the son of the moon,'' explains the text with which the series begins. And without a doubt, one of its attractions is the fauna that inhabits the Wama jungle. The author explores various human-animal mixes: gorilla-headed men, boa men, lion men, dragonfly women, crocodile men, toad men. Sometimes the lower part of the hybrid is human, sometimes the upper part. Some werezebras are quadrupeds with a human-like thorax and head, but there are also those with a human body and a zebra head. In the "mysterious jungle" there are also winged apes, pygmies with their mouths on their foreheads and eyes in their jaws, and many other monsters. The author explains: ''I made my pots the way I did, due to lack of documentation. Since I didn't know how to draw a gorilla, I thought I would make a gorilla-man, so it didn't matter if the drawing didn't have the features of the ape. Since I didn't know how to make a horse well, I was reminded of mythology, that there are pegasi: horses with wings like the ones in Fine Arts.'' In addition to being a prolific creator of phenomena, Bassoco is a great storyteller. His stories maintain an impeccable structure. The action takes place in several planes and never loses the rhythm or the main course that is multiplied by multiple paths and shortcuts. The Wama Jungle is a vast and intricate narrative world, full of eccentric regions, such as the ''kingdom of the dwarves'' or the ''civilization of the werelions''. Unlike other adventure protagonists, Wama is a married man with numerous offspring: some of his children are the product of his marriage to Lupita, but he also has them as a result of his various extramarital affairs. The females of the jungle besiege the son of the moon. All of Wama's sons are identical to their father and his daughters to their mothers. Among Wama's women there are devourers, like the lion queen or the despot of the overdeveloped kingdom of the dwarves, but there are also long-suffering lovers like the faithful Anilatac, who after saving Wama dies tragically annihilated by the beasts of the jungle. One of Bassoco's procedures is to get strange names by reversing common names: Anilatac for Catalina, Av-les for Selva.


















Saturday, February 4, 2023

tawa el hombre gacela #2

 

























Tawa el hombre gacela #1

Web translated from Spanish:


In 1959, Guillermo de la Parra, co-founder of Editorial Argumentos in 1955, asked Joaquín Cervantes Bassoco to continue his successful Wama, el hijo de la Luna for them.  He proposed, however, a new series, Tawa, the gazelle man, whose name is a tribute to Tarzan  and the aforementioned Wama.


600 numbers appeared between September 28, 1959 and March 22, 1971 with weekly frequency