Pumby #5
Pumby #5 sits within the inaugural months of what would become the leading children's comic magazine in postwar Spain, at a time when Editorial Valenciana was assembling the full cast of supporting characters and anthology strips that defined the series for nearly three decades. As one of the earliest issues of the run, it represents the formative moment when creator José Sanchis Grau's black cat — already a hit from his debut in Jaimito #260 — was being established alongside a rotating roster of animal-protagonist strips contributed by the house's best cartoonists. The magazine went on to win Spain's National Children's Magazine Award three times (1963, 1965, and 1975) and reached a weekly circulation of 56,000 by 1975, making these founding issues the seedbed of one of the most culturally durable comics properties in Spanish history.
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The Pumby magazine was launched on 23 April 1955 by Editorial Valenciana, the Valencia-based publisher founded by Juan Bautista Puerto that had already made its name with adventure cuadernos like El Guerrero del Antifaz and Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín. The title grew directly out of the popularity of José Sanchis Grau's cat character, who had debuted in Jaimito #260 in late 1954 with a one-page strip called 'Un Perrero con Mucha Vista'; the editorial decision to spin that strip into its own biweekly magazine came just months later. Sanchis — born in Valencia in 1932 and already a prolific contributor to Jaimito — wrote and drew the flagship Pumby stories himself, while a stable of colleagues including Palop, Karpa, Edgar, Liceras, Nin, and Frejo supplied the anthology strips that filled out each issue. In its early years (issues #1–124), the magazine appeared fortnightly in a compact 24×17 cm format with 19 pages, half in color.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Pumby #5 was published by Editorial Valenciana in 1955, one of the very first issues of a series that would run to 1,204 numbered issues plus 44 special extras before closing in November 1984.
- The title character, Pumby ('el Gatito Feliz'), was created by José Sanchis Grau and first appeared in Jaimito #260 (late 1954) before graduating to his own magazine on 23 April 1955.
- Becerrín, the young bull character featured in this issue, was created by artist Palop specifically for the Pumby magazine in 1955; the strip later evolved to include companion characters Monucho and, eventually, the Ratón Cuqui.
- Blanquita, the white cat and Pumby's closest companion, and Don Jirafito, a recurring giraffe character, are both established supporting cast members of Sanchis's main strip present across the early run.
- Caperucita Encarnada, drawn by Edgar, is a comedic riff on Little Red Riding Hood in which El Lobo (the Wolf) perpetually schemes against the title character and her friends but never succeeds — the name 'Encarnada' (flesh-colored/crimson) was used in place of 'Roja' (red) because under Franco's dictatorship the word 'rojo' carried politically charged connotations linking it to the losing Republican side of the Civil War.
- In its earliest issues the magazine measured 24×17 cm, was published fortnightly (quincenal), contained 19 pages with interior pages alternating color and two-tone printing, and carried the subtitle 'Publicación Infantil.'
- The Pumby magazine earned Spain's Premio Nacional de Revistas para Niños in 1963, 1965, and 1975, cementing its status as the dominant children's comics periodical of its era.
- Sanchis's rights to the Pumby character were not formally recognized until 1999, when Spanish courts ruled in his favor after he filed dual lawsuits against parties who had registered the Pumby name and image without his authorization.