Spanish comics

Spanish comics are the comics of Spain. Comics in Spain are usually called historietas or cómics, with tebeos primarily denoting the magazines containing the medium.

Origin and definition

The term tebeo is a phonetic adaptation of TBO, a long-running (1917–1983) Spanish comic book magazine and sounds like "te veo" (I see you). This magazine was influential in popularizing the medium In this magazine appeared Los grandes inventos del TBO (The great inventions of TBO) which featured humorous Rube Goldberg-like machines.

Another important humorous comics were Pulgarcito and Lily (the latter for girls)

In Spain, superhero comics were banned by the Francoist regime and thus, the heroes were based on historical fiction.

History

In 1944 a medieval hero El Guerrero del Antifaz (The masked warrior) was created by Manuel Gago and published by Editorial Valenciana. Another popular medieval hero, Capitán Trueno, was created in 1956.

After the Spanish Civil War the Franco regime imposed strict censorship in all media, and comics were not excepted. Despite this, the 1940s and 1950s era is considered a golden age of Spanish comics, since they were at the top of their popularity The editorial Bruguera created in this time a recognizable style of humorous comics with a mixture of comedy of manners and slapstick starring chronic losers. Among the popular characters of this era are El repórter Tribulete by Cifré, Carpanta and Zipi y Zape by Escobar or Las hermanas Gilda by Vázquez. They also published adventure comics such as Capitán Trueno or Silver Roy.