Pumby #132
Pumby #132 is a representative issue from the creative peak of what became the dominant children's comic magazine in postwar Spain — a biweekly anthology that, by the early 1960s, had surpassed all rivals to claim the top spot in the Spanish children's market. Its 1960 publication date places it right at the dawn of the Super Pumby era: the superhero spin-off magazine had only just launched in December 1959, and the presence of Super Pumby in this issue's character roster shows the two titles running in close creative dialogue during that inaugural phase. The ensemble of recurring strip characters indexed here — drawn by a rotating stable of artists including Palop, Karpa, Nin, Edgar, Rojas de la Cámara, and Sifré alongside creator José Sanchis — illustrates the anthology model that gave Spanish children comics their distinctive mid-century flavour: short, gag-forward stories starring anthropomorphic animals in a warm, largely conflict-free world that one historian described as a portal to 'the other side of the mirror.'
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Pumby the cat was created by Valencian artist-writer José Sanchis Grau, debuting in issue #260 of the publisher's existing magazine Jaimito in October 1954; the character's immediate popularity prompted Editorial Valenciana to launch a dedicated magazine — Pumby — on 23 April 1955. The publisher, founded in Valencia in 1932 by Juan Bautista Puerto and shaped artistically during the 1940s–50s under the direction of José Soriano Izquierdo, had by then become the most important comic publisher in eastern Spain and a national rival to Barcelona's Editorial Bruguera. Issue #132 was produced in the Valencia offices under the same stable of contracted artists who also contributed to Jaimito, with Sanchis writing and drawing the flagship strip while colleagues handled the supporting ensemble; the magazine at this period appeared on a biweekly schedule and was printed with colour covers and mixed colour-and-two-tone interiors.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Pumby magazine launched 23 April 1955 and ran for 1,204 numbered issues until November 1984 — issue #132 (1960) sits roughly five years into that 29-year run, well within its acknowledged golden era.
- The flagship character Pumby ('el gatito feliz') was created entirely by José Sanchis Grau (19 June 1932 – 2 August 2011), who wrote and drew virtually all of the title strip throughout the run.
- Super Pumby — the superheroic alter-ego version of the character, powered by orange juice and a fragment of lunar selenium — debuted in the separate spin-off magazine Super Pumby in December 1959, meaning issue #132 is among the earliest main-series Pumby issues to index that character alongside the regular cast.
- The supporting strips indexed in this issue were drawn by multiple house artists: Becerrín and Monucho by Palop; Cangurito and Pulgarín by Karpa; Trompy by Nin; Caperucita Encarnada by Edgar; Centaurito by Rojas de la Cámara; and Peluca by Sifré — confirming the anthology's multi-creator structure.
- At its circulation peak the Pumby magazine reached print runs of around 56,000 copies per issue, making it one of the highest-circulating children's periodicals in Spain.
- The Pumby magazine won Spain's Premio Nacional (National Prize) as the best children's publication three times: in 1963, 1966, and 1975.
- José Sanchis Grau received the Gran Premio del Salón del Cómic de Barcelona in 1997 in recognition of his full body of work, with Pumby as its centrepiece.
- The Pumby back catalogue has been reprinted in multiple formats: the Libros Ilustrados series (1967–1974, 57 volumes), a 1998 bilingual exhibition catalogue published by the Diputación de Valencia, and a new reprint series begun by Dolmen Editorial in 2018.
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