Pumby #11
Pumby #11 (8 October 1955) belongs to the founding run of what would become the dominant children's comic magazine in Spain — a publication that ran for 1,204 issues across three decades and won Spain's National Children's Magazine Award three times. As part of the inaugural year of the series, it showcases the full ensemble of the magazine's defining rotating cast of animal-protagonist strips from day one: José Sanchis's adventurous cat Pumby, Palop's comedy duo Becerrín and Monucho, and the Edgar-drawn Caperucita Encarnada strip whose very title carried a quiet political charge, substituting 'Encarnada' for 'Roja' in direct compliance with Franco-era censorship that discouraged the word 'red.' Together these early issues established the anthology format and anthropomorphic-animal aesthetic that would shape a generation of Spanish children's reading.
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The Pumby magazine was launched by Editorial Valenciana in April 1955 to capitalize on the popularity of José Sanchis Grau's cat character, which had debuted in issue #260 of the company's existing title Jaimito in 1954. Editorial Valenciana, under its long-serving artistic director José Soriano Izquierdo, was by then the leading Valencia-based comics house and a major national force alongside Barcelona's Editorial Bruguera. The magazine was initially biweekly, measuring 24×17 cm, priced at 2 pesetas, and designed — according to comic historian Juan Antonio Ramírez — for a middle-class child audience, with half its 19 pages in color. The contributing artists on these first issues were largely the same stable that worked on Jaimito: Palop, Karpa, Edgar, Nin, Frejo, and Liceras, who also handled most of the early covers.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated 8 October 1955 — the eleventh biweekly issue of the inaugural year of Pumby magazine, published by Editorial Valenciana, Valencia, Spain.
- Pumby, the black cat protagonist ('el Gatito Feliz'), was created by José Sanchis Grau (1932–2011) and had debuted in Jaimito #260 in 1954 before receiving his own magazine in April 1955.
- Issue #11 contains the second and concluding chapter of the two-part Pumby adventure 'En el Centro de la Tierra,' in which an unnamed professor (the character later formalized as Profesor Chivete) builds a drill-rocket and travels with Pumby to the center of the Earth.
- Becerrín and Monucho — a young calf and a monkey bullfighter whose friendship originates from Monucho being hired to bullfight Becerrín — were created by artist Palop for Pumby in 1955; their origin story appears in the magazine's earliest issues, placing it within the founding weeks of the run.
- Caperucita Encarnada, El Lobo, and Tortuguita formed an ongoing strip created by artist Edgar for Pumby; the name 'Encarnada' (crimson) replaced the traditional 'Roja' (red) in deliberate compliance with Francoist censorship norms that associated 'rojo/a' with communism and the defeated Republican side of the Civil War.
- The early issues (nos. 1–34) appeared in a compact 24×17 cm stapled format; the magazine would later grow in size and shift from biweekly to weekly frequency.
- The Pumby magazine eventually became what critics and historians identified as the leading tebeo in the Spanish children's market, surpassing rivals Hipo, Monito y Fifí, and Yumbo from Ediciones Clíper.
- The series won Spain's Premio Nacional de Revistas para Niños (National Children's Magazine Award) in 1963, 1965, and 1975, and ran to 1,204 numbered issues plus 44 special extra editions before closing in November 1984.