Reading Spanish comic strips is a fun way to practice your Spanish. Here are my top 12 Spanish comic strips and some websites that show the comic strip for free. I must admit that I know Argentinian comic strips much better than those from other Spanish speaking countries. Please feel free to leave a comment and suggest any others that are missing from the list. I have also list here some Spanish web comics. Web comics are great because they are free and easy to access. I hope you find one you like.
1. My personal favourite is Mafalda by Quino. It reminds me a little bit of Calvin and Hobbes, if Calvin had friends. Mafalda is a precocious little girl growing up in Argentina in the 60’s and 70’s but it is surprisingly relevant today. It has definitely withstood the test of time. In fact everything I have read by Quino has been excellent, Mafalda is a great introduction to his work. You can read many of the comic strips here.
2. Macnudo by Liniers is another Argentine comic strip that has been around since 2002 and still appears daily in one of the country’s most important newspapers La Nación. Great artwork and relevant messages, recently Liniers drew the cover of the New Yorker. You can find the comic strip here.
3. Condorito by René Ríos (Pepo) is a Chilean comic strip popular throughout Latin America. It is about a condor who talks and lives as a human. Usually he or someone else falls over at the end of comic strip because of the punchline. You can find most of the comics here from GoComics.
4. Trino is a Mexican cartoonist and comic strip creator. He has many comic strips including Crónicas Marcianas, Fábulas de Policías y Ladrones, El Rey Chiquito, and Pipo y Don Calvino. Fábulas de Policías y Ladrones is probably the best of the bunch. You can read many of them on his website here.
5. Another famous comic strip in the Spanish speaking world is Pulgarcito. This has got to be one of the longest running comic strips of all time from 1921-1986 published in Spain by Editorial Bruguera and written by Francisco Ibáñez Talavera and Jan (Juan López Fernández). You can download some of the editions here.
6. Jan also created Superlópez, a parody of Superman, in 1973 and it is still running today. You can find more information here.
7. Jose Escobar Saliente created Zipi y Zape (Zipizape means”turmoil” or “chaos” in Spain) and Francisco Ibáñez Talavera created Mort & Phil. These are two of the most popular comic strips ever to come from Spain. You can read much of the comic strip Zipi & Zape online here and you can find more about Mort & Phil here.
8. Clemente by Caloi is about a… thing, a bird with no wings perhaps. The comic strip, which ran from 1973 – 2012 deals with life in Buenos Aires, women and football. You can read some of the comics here.
9. A living legend in Argentina Maitena is responsible for creating Mujeres Alteradas, Superadas and Curvas Peligrosas, all of which have found a large following especially amount Argentine women. The comics deal with difficulties of being a young and middle aged woman in Argentina. Mujeres Alteradas was the original probably the best of her work. Maintena has a ton of books of her comics and many can be read here.
10. La Familia Burron is a classic Mexican comic strip by Gabriel Vargas. It is about a lower middle class family living in Mexico City. The comic lasted 60 years until the death of its creator. I couldn’t find many of the comic strip online, but you can read more about it here.
11. Inodoro Pereyra is a classic comic about an Argentine gaucho and his dog living in the Argentinian plains. Created by Roberto Fontanarrosa you can find more and read some of his comic strips here and here.
12. Oski (Oscar Conti) is another Argentinian cartoonist. He has created many different graphic stories, including Vera Historia de Indias and Primera Fundacion de Buenos Aires, which were published as books. His work is hard to find but it is possible to find some of his anthologies. You can read more about him here.
One of my new favourites is El Listo, a web comic by Xavier Àgueda and Octavi Navarro from Spain. It deals with all types of modern issues and you can read it for free.
El Joven Lovecraft was originally a web comic created by Jose Oliver and Bartolo Torres from the Balearic Islands in Spain. The comic has a Gothic style although the content is quite light.
Eh Tio! is web comic from Spain about a group of university students that live in the same residence. They have a ton comic strips that can be found for free here.
Fabulas en Frio is a web comic about penguins.
Cyanide and Happiness is an English web comic strip but you can find great translations of the comic here and here.
Super Lavanderia is a web comic about a boy (David) and his robot friend (Bob) who has the super ability to wash clothes.
Two Kinds is a free Spanish comic book from E-Language School designed for Spanish learners, although it isn’t really funny, it is great for those who like comics and are learning Spanish.
Lastly GoComics.com has a bunch of free Spanish comics some translated from English like Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Dilbert and Ziggy and others that are written in Spanish like Condorito and Gaturro.
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Hi, let me correct one fact: Zipi y Zape were created by Escobar, not by Ibañez. I would also comment that my webcomic is "Unicomicine" (comic strips on films based on comics).
Hey, these are really good resources.
You have all the comics I remember from my childhood in Spain: Superlópez, Zipi y Zape, and Mortadelo y Filemón. I remember another one called Rompetechos; it was fun too, but not as famous as the other ones.
Thanks! I will have to check out Rompetechos.