Spanish cartoonist (1908–1994)
José Escobar Saliente (22 October 1908 — 31 March 1994) was a Spanish comic book writer and artist, born in Barcelona. He signed as "Escobar", and is most famous for his creation "Zipi y Zape", as well as the character "Carpanta". He was also an author and a theater actor, as well as one of the pioneers of animation in Spain during the 1920s, and worked on early Spanish animated movies, such as "La ratita que barría la escalerita" (“The little rat who was sweeping the little flight of stairs”).
Biography.
Escobar grew up in Granollers, where his father worked in the post office. In the 1920s, Escobar began to work for Catalan periodicals such as "Virolet", "La Gralla", "Diari de Granollers", and "Sigronet", at the same time that he also secured a position in the post office, like his father. In the 1930s, he worked on other magazines, such as "Papitu", "Pocholo", "TBO", "L'Esquello", and "L'Esquella de la Torratxa".
Member of a union of professional cartoonists, after the Spanish Civil War Escobar was relieved of his postal duties and imprisoned for a year and a half for these activities. He was released in 1940, though his movements were restricted. In prison, Escobar earned a little money drawing caricatures of his fellow prisoners under the pseudonym "Rebec" (the Catalan word for "mischievous").
Outside from prison, he began working again in comic strips in 1944, and was one of the first collaborators in the magazine "Pulgarcito", first published in 1947. He created Zipi y Zape for "Pulgarcito" as well as the perpetually hungry Carpanta, a symbol of the misery in postwar Spain. For the magazine known as "El Campeón", he created in 1948 the gangsters "Tres Pelos y Kid Pantera". His series "Doña Tula, suegra" (1951) suffered censorship, due to its presentation of marriage as one problem after another.
In 1957, Escobar was one of the founders of the independent magazine "Tío Vivo", which would later become absorbed by Editorial Bruguera, which was responsible for "Pulgarcito" and other magazines, after which time Escobar created "Filomeno y su taxi Genovevo" (1963), "Don Óptimo y Don Pésimo" (1964) and "Plim, el magno" (1969). He continued to work, however, on developing the stories of Zipi y Zape and Carpanta. His characters Zipi y Zape were first published in their own magazine in 1971.
With editorial Bruguera's decline in the 1980s, he founded with other artists (such as Ibáñez) the new magazine "Guai!", published by Editorial Grijalbo, for which he created the characters "Terre y Moto", brothers based on Zipi y Zape. Escobar went back to drawing Zipi y Zape when Ediciones B acquired Bruguera, and continued work on this series until his death.