Pumby #200

History

Pumby the character first appeared in issue #260 of the Jaimito magazine in 1953–54, drawn and written by Valencian artist José Sanchis Grau (19 June 1932 – 2 August 2011), who conceived the cheerful black cat as a vehicle for fantasy-driven humor aimed at children. The standalone Pumby magazine launched in April 1955 under Editorial Valenciana — a Valencia publisher founded in 1932 by Juan Bautista Puerto Belda that, under artistic director José Soriano Izquierdo, had become one of the two most important Spanish comics publishers alongside Editorial Bruguera. The magazine was structured as an anthology cuaderno of 20 pages mixing color and two-tone printing, featuring Sanchis's Pumby stories alongside strips by an ensemble of house artists including Palop, Nin, Karpa, Liceras, Edgar, and Rojas de la Cámara; by the time issue #200 appeared in 1961, the title had already spawned a successful spin-off, Super Pumby (launched 1959), and was generating print runs documented at up to 56,000 copies.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Pumby #200 was distributed in mid-1961 (the adjacent issue #199 is documented by Tebeosfera with a distribution date of 8 July 1961), placing #200 in the same July–August 1961 window.
• The issue falls within the format documented for issues #35–437: stapled cuaderno, 26.5 × 18.5 cm, 20 pages, color cover with bicolor and color interior pages, carrying the subtitle 'Publicación Infantil.'
• José Sanchis Grau is the principal creator and artist of the Pumby strip and served as both writer and penciler; the Tebeosfera record for the adjacent issue #199 credits J. Sanchis as guionista and dibujante, with Rojas as a contributing historietista — the same team active across this portion of the run.
• The Super Pumby superhero incarnation — Sanchis's Superman-inspired powered alter-ego for the cat character, fueled by orange juice — debuted in 1959 and was in active publication alongside the main Pumby magazine during this period, making 1961 the era when the character's dual identity was at its most culturally prominent.
• The magazine's ensemble of recurring strips cataloged in this issue includes animal-protagonist series (Plumita, Becerrín, Caperucita Encarnada, Conejín) and comedy duos (Payasete y Fu-Chinín, drawn by Palop), as well as supporting characters from Pumby's world such as Profesor Chivete — all part of the 'Villa Rabitos' universe Sanchis built across hundreds of issues.
• The complete Pumby run totaled 1,204 regular issues plus 44 out-of-series extras, published from April 1955 through November 1984, making it one of the longest-running children's comics magazines in Spanish history.
• In 1967, Editorial Valenciana launched Pumby — Libros Ilustrados, a 57-volume luxury reprint series collecting serialized adventures from the regular magazine, including stories originally published in the era surrounding issue #200.
• Sanchis fought a landmark legal battle to reclaim authorship rights to Pumby from Editorial Valenciana's heirs; Spanish courts ruled in his favor in 1999, a precedent-setting victory for creator rights in Spanish comics. In 1996 (some sources say 1997) he received the Gran Premio at the Barcelona Comic Salon for his body of work.

Cast · 18 characters

Full credits