The First International Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels was held this past November in Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of Cervantes situated some 20 miles east of Madrid, from November 9th to 12th. The conference was sponsored by the Franklin Institute ( www.institutofranklin.net ) of the University of Alcalá de Henares, and authors, illustrators, and researchers came to Spain from a number of European countries and from the United States to take part in the event. One of the researchers at the conference was Shane Walshe, a linguist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, who presented a paper entitled "Voices From the Oul Sod - Representations of Irish Speech in the DC Universe." The "DC Universe" he is referring to here is, of course, that of DC Comics, established in the United States in the mid-1930s, and whose action heroes include Batman, among many others.
