'Zipi y Zape'.
Josep Escobar Saliente, who is considered one of the pioneers of Spanish comics, published his first cartoons when he was fourteen years of age. For years he combined his work as an illustrator with a job at the post office. At the end of the Civil War, in 1939, Escobar focused completely on drawing. Soon he became one of the main collaborators of the publisher Bruguera and the magazine Pulgarcito, where he started his two most famous series: 'Carpanta' and 'Zipi y Zape'. This last series shared a big resemblance with Wilhelm Busch's 'Max und Moritz' and Rudolph Dirks' 'The Katzenjammer Kids'.
At the same time, Escobar created lesser known characters, like Petra, Doña Tula, the dog Toby, the duo Don Optimo and Don Pésimo, and the super-hero parody Plim el Magno. In 1957 he was one of the co-founders of Tio Vivo, for which he also created 'Blasa, la Portera de su Casa'. He also published in La Olla and España de Tanger, and set up an art correspondence course.
He multiplied his side activities with drawing caricatures, press illustration and working in the animation field. Many of his works has been collected in album publications. Until the early 1990s, he continued to work on his major characters, 'Zipi y Zape', in periodicals like Zipi y Zape ad Super Zipi y Zape.
Josep Escobar was a strong influence on Francisco Ibañez.
