The OverDrone

Altuna pulls a Tin-Tin in America

So here is a post I meant to put up while I was learning how to do this WordPress thing. It is from Altuna’s Hot L.A.. Published by Norma Press and in the original Spanish. I took the liberty of translating it for the English speaking world.

Horacio Altuna is an Argentinian artist now living in Spain. His distance from the events he depicts is clear. Note the corbenesque way he draws the rioters. This is a relatively tame section of the book.

Apparently Altuna researched this book heavily, taking pictures of gang activity and visiting noted trouble spots in L.A. but I guess the only Spanish translator available that day got hung up in traffic because Altuna and his pet writer whose name I forget have managed to literally create a world in which there is only black and white, tragedy and melodrama, ebony and ivory, salt and peppa … y’follow?

It’s more than a bit racist is what I am trying to say and worse it is that Euro-racism that is so bizarre because you’d expect the EuroGee in the Flava-Flav sweat suit to maybe not be scared of large numbers of black people but I guess that is more than we can expect even from our own wiggers, much less the Friggers, DeutscheViggers, Itiggers and whatever other nationality you want to append the suffix -igger to so as to indicate the appreciation and enjoyment of African American culture, particularly the bits with the bitchez and ho’z and ninez and zo on …

I don’t know if Altuna has ever worn a big ass chain or memorized the words to In Da Club but he does insert a note of pathos as wooden as Fiddy’s delivery. Here is the next sequence.

But ... Pops!

Aww, as touching as the Raisin in the Sun marathon on Turner Classics Social Justice Channel, isn’t it? See, Spaniards, the blacks aren’t angry, they are just frugal; Frugal to the point of violence when faced with great value.
But The OverDrone, you might say if you were here listening to these words as I dictate them to my crack secretarial squad (even down to the xhtml and css;  many is the time I have had them read an entire style sheet back to me just so that I can get the color right on the font.), but The Overdrone, you would repeat over my digression but now slightly irritated with my inattention and finally I would throw my hands up and sigh and turn and face you and then you might say

Why don’t I make a comic where the entire Spanish populace participates, if only by non-action, in the execution of political rivals and various ne’er do-wells like artists and writers? There would be many panels of families sitting quietly, curtains drawn, as secret police remove neighbors and the climax would be when the political prisoners who dug Franco’s underground intended tomb and Basilica finally get to see the grand space before they are removed to a camp in the Extremadura. Ooh, I should be writing this down … anyone got a pen?

Anyway, Altuna is from Argentina originally so he should know better.I could make some sour comment on his native land but what could I say that would top the insult that Loyd-Webber and Madonna have already visited upon it.

I expect the opposite hemisphere to get the whole Americas (North, South and Central) thing wrong. Just like Americans (North, South and Central) tend to imagine the French in striped shirts, dropping their baguettes when they raise their arms in surrender (stale joke, I know, sorry, the French) or the swedes engaging in random sex acts while bicycling through the countryside and then preparing a meal in an unconventional manner; So, the Chinese picture us as a nation of reality tv contestants, each consuming our own weight in dairy products every day and the Iranians think that we engage in political assassination and social networking in order to control petroleum reserves.

I know, Crazy, right? What will these foreigners think up next?

Still, the art is excellent if you can get past the predictable characters and situations. It’s ok to cringe if you need to …

Here are some of Altuna’s less offensive works; Warning, nsfw