El Resentido is a narrative cycle published in 1997 by La ctpula publishin!; house (,'Brut comix" collection). Its author, the extremely ,o*g arid promising Juaco Vizuete, achieved through this, his first Laitl*, ,nurrive recognition in the freld of Spanish alternative comics' The comic strip in question consists of four parts: La novia del Resentido' La noyia del Resentidol (a conclusi6n), El amor and Diario del Resentido.It is worth mentioning that vizuete's work was republished in 2009, undpr the label of a .,grap-hic novel". Besides the four parts which are the object of this study, t=he last version of the book also includes a preparatory *urnr" stoiy, published in E/ Vlbora magazine -in 1993.'. and an :.Epilogr",,, "rp."iutty created by the author in view of having his comics edited later into one single volume. The current study "aims at identiffing and commenting upon the postmodern features of El Resentido. liplicitly, such an aim makes mandatory the prior, nevertheless brief, clarification of two aspects' First' ,i!o,r impties'opting for one of the two-.significances',sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory, that liteiary postmodernism has been assigned, mostly during the decades of ttre i8tis and '90s of the twentieth century. Second, one must "ort"rnfiit"-ir'" ;n"tif"1tie's of postmodern manifestations in comics, attempting at an adiptalion Lf the concepts usually to be found in novel theory to this-peculi:: "lll,i,lllit With regards to the meaning of "postmodemism"' d:t!l:-t t interferences, two well-outlined theoretical constructions stand 9tl'',ln * essay published in 1999, Umberto Eco r"fets';;:;;;;;tm9d.1m1s-ms" (Eco 2004, 27 4-27 6).He names them "artistiJ' ;u ::riilttrn'":,i:X'nn; ".iteria he uses to differentiate between them. are their PersPect''.Lrrra regards to the cultural past and their attirud" lot"ulo:^^':'": a"is+hat na?atives", as Lyotard uses the syntagm' The Italian theoltst c^::,|i"*ir, in its artistic manifestations (architecture and literahfe) posm"::-. ;d returns to the past and the original slories' It does so both ironicallY f"* F"" Trm ..ONTOLOGICAL IUPBTBNUINACY,, IN COMICS: Et RzssNrno BY Juaco VtzuErE Mmat Iecoe Mihai Iacob 251 passionately. The postmodemism defined by philosophers (to Eco's list of ,,Lyotard, Derrida, and Vattimo, could be added at least the names of Ihab ,,Hassan and Fredric Jameson) has nihilist roots and, therefore, tries to annul and destroy both previous ideological-aesthetical paradigms and the broad legitimating narrative projects (Eco 2004,276). i;..: Shading into nuances and developing Eco's perspective, one could say lhat the "philosopher's postmodernism" would be closer either to the iladical approaches ofthe historical vanguard and the neo-vanguard ofthe ',60s (Hassan 1986, 180-187), or to an apocalyptical mass culture $stituting the authentic perception of history with the comfortable and itical historical simulacra that annuls the referent, the subject, and the ffect (Jameson 1991, 30-35, 4546). Precisely due to the conceptual ighboring, perhaps too close to, vanguard or to popular culture, the terpretation of postmodemism used in this paper is closer to what Eco :nominates "artistic postmodernism", featuring an ironic inclusivism ich questions previous tendencies, without destroying them, and analyzes representation and selGrepresentation, while also assuming them be inevitable (Eco 1983, 103; Hutcheot 1997, ll). The previously mentioned analysis of representation eventually s upon and destabilizes the fictitious universe projected by the modem artistic discourse, tuming it into a universe mainly featuring , in Brian Mchale's terms, would be an "ontological indeterminacy" cHale 2004,25). In other words, while questioning the validity of the ld's representation, and implicitly of the discourse which is the vehicle such representation, the nature of both the discourse and the fictitious built inside the discourse eventually prove to be hybrid and exhibiting on the one hand their status as mere simulacra, while the other paradoxically claiming to be a consistent three-dimensional istic illusion. Whereas postmodern manifestations are featured in comics, theorists' inions differ quite significantly. Daniele Barbieri, for example, without itly mentioning postmodernism, notices in the comic strips of the the return to the narrative ard the reconciliation with the public, to the vanguard of the '60s and '70s, which had featured a for originalify and autonomy, self-reference, and destruction of the (Barbieri 1998, 216). A rather clear perspective on the matter gs to Rub6n Varillas, who considers that postmodem features are the aesthetic counterpart to the traditional consumer's comics. According this author's view-unfortunately not supported by clear and solid ntation-"el c6mic de los setenta, ochenta y [oventa comparte iorv chas de las inquietudes y planteamientos posmodernos, sin haber