722 YOUTH CULTURE IN COMICS
the main themes of the stories are a product of a personal process of introspection and
sharing that makes each unique, but extremely enriching for any reader, adolescent or
adult.
Th e view brought by the autobiographical works is complemented by other comics
that succeed at describing not just the experiences but also the cultural and social mo-
ment. Archie and titles like it were for a long time the only example of a realistic, although
idealized, voice about what it meant to be a teenager in America. Th e works published
during the 1960s and 1970s opened the door for a less juvenile and more introspective
take on youth culture and experiences. An excellent example is Locas , a sub-narrative of
Love & Rockets (1982), a Hernandez Brothers’ creation. Th is comic follows the lives of
Maggie Chascarrillo and Hopey Glass, two young adult Latinas in Los Angeles during
the 1980s. Part of the novelty in this title was the realistic description of the punk culture
in the city at that moment, as Jaime Hernandez managed to successfully portray the
expectations, dreams, and the reality of an entire generation. Another peculiarity of this
title is that the characters have aged over time and nowadays readers can follow the life
of Maggie as an adult.
In a completely diff erent style and tone, Daniel Clowes follows the life of another
pair of girls, Enid and Beck, as part of the grunge generation. Ghost World (1997)
is populated by typical teenage sentiments like angst, boredom, irony and cynicism;
everything works perfectly to construct this search for one’s place in society. Th e same
way that Hernandez used Los Angeles as the setting for Maggie and Hopey, Clowes
creates an unnamed city populated by fast-food restaurants and shopping malls that
resembles any North American city. Both settings work extremely well to represent the
society and culture that surrounds the main characters and how they navigate it or react
against it. Also linked to the Generation X is the character of Buddy Bradley. A creation
of Peter Bagge , Buddy is the personifi cation of the grunge young adult in the 1990s
who dreams of abandoning the family home to live in the grunge Mecca: Seattle. Bagge’s
characteristic drawing style is perfect to describe Buddy’s chaotic and improvised life
where peculiar roommates, angry girlfriends, and meaningless jobs are common ingre-
dients. Compared with the introspective and rather serious tone of some of the works
aforementioned works, this comic book presents a humorous, sharp and ironic view of
the youth culture and the society of the time.
Ross Campbell and Charles Burns use horror to examine diff erent aspects of a
teenage life. Th rough the metaphor of a “teen plague” that physically aff ects to teen-
agers that have had sex, Burns’s Black Hole (1995) explores issues of sex, emotional
relationships, and what it means to be “normal” in a rather aseptic society. On the
other hand, Campbell’s Th e Abandoned (2006) and the series We t M o o n (2004) are
populated by characters that are already far from being the typical teenager. Th ey
are outcasts, mainly Goths and Punks, who are basically trying to navigate life in
the South of United States. In Th e Abandoned , Campbell makes everybody over 23
a zombie that feeds on these 23 and under, who remain human. Both comic books
take on typical teenage issues, such as relationships with friends and family, love and
