How cute are the honeys of popular culture when they give away bizarre reading material and ungovernable fictions. Those works that, in the revoleo, invite you to devour yourself in nostalgia, in sagacious reflection, in the cyberpunk tradition. And, by the way, how beautiful are editorial news when they are accompanied by brains. Here, a chaotic selection brought together by the cosmic coincidence of their recent releases, but much more because they promote some of the coolest corners of entertainment: the comic book stores with history, the whimsical cinema, the Menem sci-fi, the visceral fear and the past – dandruff, colorinche, sometimes stale, sometimes advanced – that has not gone away.
At this point in the soirée, To say that Camelot Comics Store was the comic shop that started with “everything” is a no-brainer. Chaos, excess, one peso one dollar, comics, sleeves, books, model kits, soundtracks, t-shirts, posters, VHS, everything, ad-infinitum. However, there are plenty of reasons to return to that story, to make a close-up to the myths and truths that helped shape the Argentine nerdencia.
“For many generations, Camelot meant a special place to get rare merchandise. It was valued for its wide availability of hours and for its gallery full of dioramas, which formed a kind of permanent exhibition”, explains Gustavo Gabbrielli, author of this book that The first edition has already sold out, revealing hundreds of anecdotes from the mythical Gerardo Busto premises located on Av. Corrientes.
The feeling of infinity, of that store where a father bought his son a Gremlin, of the constant promotion of geek publications and events, of the promise to “come in on Thursday” and of its indestructible slogan “If we don’t have it, it doesn’t exist” They made Camelot a place like no other. “I don’t think there are continuators of that particular spirit,” confirms Gabbrielli. “It generated a sense of belonging, a satisfaction of being part of a very important group at a time when being a nerd was not as common as it is today.”
► Compendiumfrom 24 Frames Magazine (Zeta Editions)
Happy birthday to you, 24 Frames. The fifteen-year-old film magazine celebrates its birthday by rescuing a line of texts from its early years: there are zombies, mumblecore, an essay on True Detective and even a corrosive reading of Dark Knight Rises by Christopher Nolan (Batman is a fascist and Bane is a leftist?). “It is an opportunity to do a curatorship that synthesizes our identity and imprint,” says Fabio A. Vallarelli, editor and one of the flagship firms of the historic digital publication.
At the same time, this Compendium stands as a cover letter and a tool to reach more readers. “La 24 is a magazine of the margins. It always was and it is something that, in some way, is comfortable for us. We are not obliged to address one issue or another, nor to define an editorial profile”Vallarelli continues. Thought then as a longseller, as a cultural artifact that does not seek metrics or ephemeral gossip, this Compendium intends to stir ideas with an honesty rarely seen in film publications, as an idea related to the first The loverperhaps.
“Our main contribution is knowing where we come from, why we do what we do and showing that it is possible to sustain a project like this for so long”adds the editor of this magazine from the suburbs of Buenos Aires. And, precisely, its existence enthrones the notion of because if: It was a project of friends, it got out of hand and today it stands out powerfully in the cosmos of the stick media.
“My novel aims to bring back the terror and psychedelia of being born in a country that threw people alive from planes,” says the multifaceted Rafael Bini, author of Killing’s Revengethe first Creole cyberpunk novel, published in 1992 thanks to the Antorchas Foundation. Now recovered by Ariel Pukacz and Walden’s imprint, the new 2022 edition speaks to readers who were possibly just being born when it was written. “My novel converses better with this generation”clarifies.
For many years, Killing’s Revenge it had cult status and the category of unobtainable. Now, its millennial sci-fi nerves, dusted with William Gibson and in tune with surreal techniques, is available again. And the strange painting of that alternative Argentina, intact. “I was attempting a rereading of horror that didn’t fall into the tit-for-tat cliches, to explore the endless sadism of a bloody dictatorship that wiped a generation off the map because it didn’t like how it thought”continues the journalist and musician.
“Personally, I felt very affected by being left out of all the circuits with my Chinese Food project, no place to play, no band and no job“, he remembers about that time. With a prologue by Martín Kohan -who speaks of tense areas of Argentine history and mentions Philip K. Dick-, Killing’s Revenge composes a cynical look at the “eternal years” (1989-1992): from hyperinflation to pizza with champagne in a heartbeat. With psychopaths, video games, prophets of black magic and shopping malls as enclaves of Evil itself.
These short stories wander through deeply human notions such as loneliness, depression, death and oblivion. A terror, let’s say, mental. Internal fears projected in the light of literature, with a certain smell of Silent Hillan inspiration -logically, of course- in Stephen King and a deep relief: “These are the entrails of my emotions”, journalist Lucas Robledo seems to say on each page of his first book.
“I sought to exorcise a lot of inner demons that were eating me up inside. Some years ago I experienced different situations that were quite ugly emotionally, which all fell together and left me in a dark place. This book was the way I found to be able to close them. Literally, it’s all those feelings that I had stored, mixed with dreams and nightmares“, explains the author from Turdera.
Likewise, the fear fueled by books like macabre ceremonies the TED Klein o the demon templethe Frank De Felitta (“I could never finish them,” he admits) pushed him to give shape to those disturbing images that lived in his mind. Everything anachronistic is withered it is a vomit that comes out of the intestines: “Perhaps I should have gone to a psychologist at that time, but someone told me that writing had worked for him and I started doing the same,” he concludes.
On these days, retronostalgia is one of the most powerful wildcards in contemporary culture: not only for the aesthetic and conceptual return, but for the constant evocation of those times. I also played the Game Boy is a quick review of the sexiest milestones of the ’90s: action movies, big studio cartoons, testicular masterpieces, cutting-edge anime, Duke Nukem 3D, ClerksBlink 182, X-Filesthe emoticon and much, much more.
With his pop and bouncy writing, Spaniard Borja Figuerola reviews data and events from one of the most creative and feverish times in history. With television as a university and the Playstation 1 logo as a religious totem, millennials will be able to pay tribute and homage to this research that stimulates, moves and shares.
From the importance of Antichrist Superstar from Marilyn Manson, through the wet fantasy awakened by the Playmobil Pirate Ship, to the painful end of the series dinosaurs: everything lives in this cocktail shaker pop culture, neon, bubble gum and profound lack of solemnity (what a downer the solemnity!). The book was originally published in 2019 but, thanks to Ediciones Continente, it is now available in Argentina along with European gems such as the tarantino effect, rap story, The universe of super heroesamong other.
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