While the publication of Para leer al Pato Donald by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart in 1971 established comics as a serious field of study almost half a century ago, the majority of the research on graphic novels or comic strips dates from the last 15 years and is limited to specific issues that do not present a panoramic view of the genre in Latin America. In a continent in which comic strips have constituted one of the most popular forms of entertainment and in which several outreach initiatives (both from public and non-governmental sectors) have chosen the historieta as a way to reach the masses, this collection edited by Jorge Catalá Carrasco, Paulo Drinot and James Scorer is a much welcome contribution.

The eight chapters in the anthology explore the ways in which comics are intertwined with different aspects of collective memory. The contexts analysed are as diverse as the Cuban Revolution and the (diasporic) Chilean Concertación of the post-Pinochet era. The introduction to these chapters masterfully guides the reader through three key issues: a) it offers a brief history of Latin American comics, b) it succinctly presents the most relevant issues in the field of memory studies, and c) it explains why the formal characteristics of comics are especially apt for the creation of cultural memories. This book inserts itself in an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of history, cultural studies, memory studies and visual studies. As a result, it presents new perspectives about specific cultural objects, but different chapters might leave readers wishing for a deeper emphasis on one or another aspect of the analysis. While some readers might favour the parts of chapters that provide a more detailed study of the techniques and visual strategies used by different artists, others will welcome the historical contextualisation of the production of these comics and of their ideological ramifications.

The chapters are informed by debates well established in the field of memory studies and draw on the theories of Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Jan Assmann, Marianne Hirsch, Alison Landsberg and Michael Rothberg, among others. However, terms such as collective, cultural, or prosthetic memory often mean different things in the ways in which they are applied in the chapters. The chapters by Catalá Carrasco, Edoardo Balletta and Christiane Berth explore the ways comics created in revolutionary Cuba and Nicaragua (Carrasco and Berth) and by Héctor Germán Oesterheld, a militant montonero, in Argentina (Balletta) often rewrite national history in outreach campaigns that attempted to denounce imperialism and revive or create revolutionary heroes. The main contribution of these chapters is the rich historical contextualisation of the moment in which these comics were produced. Each of these chapters not only gives the reader an analysis of Emboscada, Latinoamérica y el imperialismo, or Matagalpa: Insurrección de agosto, but they explain the historical juncture that led to using comics as a medium to educate the masses. It is interesting to compare how comic strip artists in these different countries were all influenced by the same anti-imperialistic discourse and by dependency theory and how they believed that the genre was the most appropriate to raise consciousness in their readers.

Cynthia Milton's chapter on Rupay also examines the attempt to make a difficult story accessible to a larger public. But, in the case of Rupay, Milton is dealing with a comic created neither by a revolutionary government nor by a militant of a revolutionary movement. In this case, the comic arises during a transitional period, and Milton carefully presents the way the genre allowed the creators of this work mostly to align themselves with the message of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but also, in using the layering of perspectives frequent in comics, to offer speculative versions of the events that were not afforded to the Commission.

The chapters by Isabella Cosse on Mafalda and by Paulo Drinot on El Cuy focus on the reception of these comic strips decades after their original publication. To a certain extent, we could say that these chapters contribute to a field in which reception theory meets memory studies. Cosse and Drinot study how reading these comics decades later triggers memories in the readers and promotes a re-examination of the 1960s and 1970s in Argentina, in the case of Mafalda, and of the 1980s in Peru, in the case of El Cuy. Drinot's article is particularly original in its approach as it studies the comments section in El Cuy’s electronic iteration as a blog by the creator of the strip, Juan Acevedo.

The chapters by James Scorer and Edward King deal with more recent works and they both draw on Alison Landsberg's concept of ‘prosthetic memory’. I find the applications of the term sometimes problematic. Scorer writes about Gonzalo Martínez and Alberto Fuguet's Road Story and how the road trip genre ‘provides him with the means to deploy an alternative set of memories and imagine an alternative future in which he is able to overcome the trauma of repetition […]’ (p. 218). Prosthetic memories are supposed to help us recover the memories we have lost, not create alternative ones. However, Scorer's reading illuminates the plight of the Chilean writer's break with the past in a neoliberal context. Edward King's reading of Morro da Favela by André Diniz provides a fascinating analysis of the traits of the comic that create plurivectoral narrative routes and ‘chronotopic multiplicity’ in presenting a view of the favela in contemporary Brazil.

Considering that comics are primarily a visual art, the edition of the book could have included larger and better images. Regrettably, the market for academic books does not always allow publishers to offer the necessary number, size and quality of illustrations. Many of the chapters would have benefitted from more images printed in a larger format, especially when dealing with comics in which the strip included a lot of graphic detail or large text boxes with small print. In spite of this, this collection has a lot to offer, and readers will find a fascinating perspective on how different manifestations of this genre reverberate in the collective memory of Latin American societies at specific historical junctures.