Pumby #14
Published 19 November 1955, Pumby #14 belongs to the founding run of what would become the dominant children's comic magazine in Spain — a title that ran to 1,204 issues and won the National Children's Magazine Award three times. As one of the earliest biweekly installments, it showcases the full supporting cast assembled by Editorial Valenciana in that debut year, with José Sanchis's cat hero sharing pages alongside Palop's newly minted Becerrín and Monucho and Edgar's Caperucita Encarnada strip — the ensemble that would define the magazine's identity for three decades. The issue also carries a small but pointed cultural footnote: the deliberate use of 'Encarnada' rather than 'Roja' in the Little Red Riding Hood strip reflects the Francoist censorship climate of the mid-1950s, which barred the word rojo from public print. Together, these early issues established the anthropomorphic, humor-forward visual grammar that made Pumby the closest Spanish rival to Disney's own children's comics.
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Editorial Valenciana launched the Pumby magazine in April 1955, capitalizing on the popularity Sanchis's cat character had already built in Jaimito #260 (1954). The Valencia-based publisher assembled a team of house artists — Sanchis, Palop, Karpa, Edgar, and others who had all cut their teeth on Jaimito — to fill a biweekly anthology format aimed at younger readers than Jaimito's audience. Issue #14 appeared in the magazine's first full calendar year, before it shifted to weekly publication (which began around issue 125) and before the format grew from the early 24 × 17 cm dimensions used through issue 34. Creator José Sanchis Grau (Valencia, 1932–2011) wrote and drew the flagship Pumby strip, while fellow contributors handled backup features; the editorial strategy of pairing a strong lead character with a rotating bench of humor strips proved durable enough to sustain the title for nearly thirty years.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Pumby #14 was published on 19 November 1955, per the Tebeosfera series index, making it part of the magazine's first year of existence (launched April 1955).
- At this point in the run (issues 1–34), the magazine measured 24 × 17 cm and appeared on a biweekly schedule — a smaller, more modest format than the larger editions that followed.
- The title character, Pumby ('el gatito feliz'), is an anthropomorphic black cat created by José Sanchis Grau, who first appeared in Jaimito #260 in the second half of 1954 before earning his own magazine.
- Becerrín and Monucho — the calf-and-monkey duo listed in this issue's catalog — were created by artist Palop specifically for the Pumby magazine in 1955, with their origin story (a bullfighting encounter between the two) appearing in the earliest issues of the run.
- Caperucita Encarnada, Conejín, and El Lobo are characters in a strip created by Edgar (Antonio Edo Mosquera) for Pumby. The name 'Encarnada' (scarlet/flesh-colored) was used in place of 'Roja' (red) to comply with Francoist censorship, which associated the word rojo with the losing side of the Civil War.
- Don Jirafito is a recurring supporting character created by José Sanchis Grau, who appears across many Pumby adventures as a companion figure.
- The core creative team contributing to the early Pumby run included Sanchis, Palop, Karpa, Edgar, Nin, Liceras, Frejo, and Lanzón — most of whom were already working on the sister title Jaimito for Editorial Valenciana.
- The Pumby magazine went on to win Spain's National Children's Magazine Award in 1963, 1965, and 1975, and eventually reached weekly circulation of 56,000 copies by 1975, establishing it as the leading children's tebeo in the country.