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Americas · Country

80 artists 38 comics

Mexico.

World
Comics

Mexico

1921

In short

Mexican comics, called historietas, reached a golden age in the 1940s and 1950s, when a single magazine could sell 350,000 copies a day, and in 1989 they still made up 80 percent of all periodicals.

Gabriel Vargas's La Familia Burrón (1948) ran for 61 years, and Kalimán ran weekly for 26 years and 1,351 consecutive issues.

Comics from Mexico

From the shelf

  • Cover of Memín Pinguín
  • Cover of La Familia Burrón
  • Cover of Lágrimas, Risas y Amor
  • Cover of Karmatron
  • Cover of Rarotonga

Mexico in numbers · 01 • 04

80

38

1921

1960s

Artists

Artists from Mexico in the archive.

Comics from Mexico in the archive.

Don Catarino y su apreciable familia, the earliest comic from Mexico in the archive.

The decade when the most new comics from Mexico began.

historieta

historieta · Comics from Mexico

History

Mexico in 3 chapters

  1. 1869

    to 1939

    Chapter 01

    Press comics

    The first press historieta, 'Rosa y Federico' by José Tomás de Cuéllar and José María Villasana, appeared in La Ilustración Potosina in 1869, followed by José Guadalupe Posada's Don Chepito and the political satire of the Porfiriato. Balloon strips arrived with Rafael Lillo's Las aventuras de Adonis (1908), and Juan Bautista Urrutia's Ranilla (1922) was the first truly popular character.

  2. 1940

    to 1977

    Chapter 02

    Golden age

    In the 1940s and 1950s a single magazine could sell 350,000 copies a day, with titles such as Memín Pinguín and La Familia Burrón (1948), and Editorial Novaro introduced the US comic-book format in 1949. Later titles included Kalimán, Tradiciones y Leyendas de la Colonia (1963), Rius's Los Supermachos (1964), Hermelinda Linda (1965), El Monje Loco (1967) and Casos de Alarma (1971).

    Cover of Memín Pinguín

  3. 1978

    to 2016

    Chapter 03

    Sensacionales and decline

    From 1978 the adult pocket format known as the Sensacionales appeared alongside El Libro Vaquero, as the industry entered a decline that lasted until 2016. Even so, in 1989 historietas were read by 61 percent of the population and made up 80 percent of all periodicals.

Essentials

The comics to know

Essentials

The people to know

Artists

More artists from Mexico

All 80 artists
Comics

More comics from Mexico

All 38 comics