Exhibit / September 26, 2018

Object Name: Duda
Maker and Year: Editorial Posada, 1971-1979
Object Type: Weekly publication
Image Source: Revistas Duda, Revisteria Ponchito
Description: (Richard McKenna)

Devoted to investigating the paranormal and the supernatural, the debut issue of Mexican weekly magazine Duda—“doubt” or “question”—was released in March 1971. It would prove to be a popular and influential publication, and a surprisingly long-lived success for its Mexico City publisher Editorial Posada.

Interest in UFOs, cults, parapsychology, and supernatural mysteries had increasingly penetrated popular culture, thanks largely to the pull of the counterculture. In 1970, the first issue of “The most unusual magazine ever published”—British weekly partwork Man, Myth & Magic—had made its appearance in the UK. Unlike that publication’s rather scholarly approach to its subject matter, each issue of Duda—subtitled “The Incredible Is the Truth”—contained a small number of articles and a long investigation or retelling in comic book form of one of the various phenomena. Drawn by one of the magazine’s stable of regular artists, Duda‘s comics tackled issues ranging from protohistory to cryptozoology, as well, of course, as the burgeoning UFO mania of the day, all in an engaging visual idiom that was appealing to adults and children.

Duda proved to be such a success that it spawned several spin-offs, including the magazine Contactos Extraterrestres, devoted exclusively to UFOs, or OVNIs, as they are known in French-, Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries. Contactos Extraterrestres was also a success: 145 issues were published from 1976 on, and it played an important role in consolidating the field of Mexican ufology, its editors taking part in Mexican UFO conferences with luminaries in the field, including J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée.

In total, 1,133 issues of Duda magazine were published, the final one appearing in news kiosks in December 1993.