13, Rue du Barnacle

13, Rue del Percebe is a comic series from Spain created by Francisco Ibáñez. The first page was published in the first issue of the second period of the magazine Tío Vivo (March 6, 1961) and soon became enormously popular due to its novel and unusual structure. In the 80s, in the midst of Ibáñez's conflict with Bruguera, having lost the rights to all of his series, he created a spin-off of the same 7, Rebolling Street.

Background

Before 13, Rue del Percebe, there had already been other comics that had used the resource of developing a plot in a building with a sectioned façade in order to see its interior. For example, at the beginning of the XX century, Joaquim Xaudaró published a page entitled A house on Christmas Eve. Will Eisner also shows us what goes on in a building on a "School for girls" from his series The Spirit. The closest example in time and aspect was a page called A day in Villa Pulgarcito by Manuel Vázquez Gallego where the characters from Pulgarcito appear on different floors of a building. Perhaps for this reason the idea of the series is sometimes attributed to Vázquez. In any case, all these examples were specific cases that Ibáñez had the ability to make commonplace.

Editorial trajectory

The first comic was published on March 6, 1961 in Tío Vivo magazine. Ibáñez published 314 pages of the series until 1967, although he was replaced for a little less than two months by Joan Bernet Toledano who produced seven pages in November and December 1967. In 1968 Ibáñez took over the reins of the comic again, producing 27 more pages until which again leaves the series in the hands of Bernet Toledano, who continued it with 57 more installments until January 26, 1970. Later repeated comics were published in the magazine, sometimes changing the cartoons from one page to another, until the closure of Tío Vivo in 1981. However, in the 1970 Summer Extra there was still a new page by Juan Martínez Osete.

In 1971 and 1972, two compilations of the comics were published in the Olé Collection of the Bruguera publishing house, and from 1990, Ediciones B dedicated new albums to this series. There were also compilations in the collections Wizards of humor and Super Humor from 1975. However, the most complete compilation of the comics was carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1981 and 1983 with nine albums under the title Ausgeflippt - Fischstrasse 13 - irre Typen, heisse Sprüche. Perhaps the good reception of the series in Germany was what motivated Bruguera to take it up again with 36 new comic strips that made up the tenth compilation album. In Germany, five more albums were published with comics never seen in Spain by unknown cartoonists, presumably German. In 2002, there was a compilation in the Super Humor format that included a new comic by Ibáñez, with a prologue by Luis Alberto de Cuenca.

In March 2016, Ediciones B published a comprehensive edition of 13, Rue del Percebe that compiles all the stories created by Ibáñez in a large, hardcover edition of which, barely a week later, the second edition went on sale. This edition has been made to coincide with the 80th birthday of its author

Signature of copies of the integral edition in Plaza de Catalunya during the 2016 Diada.

The Inhabitants

Model of the 13 Rue del Percebe building exhibited in the window of a Vitoria shop (2019)

13, Rue del Percebe is a macro vignette that occupies one page, divided into non-sequential vignettes, and which humorously shows an apartment building and the community that inhabits it:

• Ground floor
  • Colmado Senén: Located on the left, there is Don Senén's ultramarine shop, a distrusted shopkeeper who always finds ways to deceive clients with the weight and freshness of the merchandise (although sometimes he gets shot by the cane, for example, when he tries to swindle a free-fighting champion), which recalls Margarito Celemín, a very pillory seller de Blas Sanchís, Dependent Vicentefrom Escobar, The shopkeeper Sisebuto and his apprentice is a brutePedro García Lorente.
  • The goalkeeper: It is annexed to the Colmado Senén, inhabited by the cotilla portera of the community of neighbors, who remembers Doña Tomasa, with friction, goes and rents her mansion of Escobar and Doña Lío Portapartes of Raf; of the latter it has even its own physicist with bow, shawl, apron, dark skirt and broom to sweep. He often speaks to Don Hurón or with one of those who try to use the elevator to explain their malfunction or the reason for being replaced.
  • The elevator: Although it is an inert being, it is a character in its own right in the same way, as it suffers the most diverse peripecias and phenomena. As soon as it does not work well as it is stolen as it shrinks when wet as it is in repair and is replaced by various alternative methods (such as a cannon, a giant bellow to push the travellers to the upper floors or TNT cartridges), or is replaced by new versions commissioned to various builders (such as a chess game manufacturer, one of the funeral pops or a glass window).
  • The sewer: In front of the gate is Don Hurón (Doroteo Hurón), who lives in a sewer that was possibly rented by the owner of the pension, judging by what he ensures in the first delivery of the series. It often appears by commenting on its problems with the porter, usually about despoiled transients that fall for the sewer's locker or on the attempts of a series of rats that live in the well to dispute the house.

• First floor
  • First left: It is the consultation of a non-competent veterinarian with a clientele variopinta, which deals with the most diverse cases. His name and surnames are unknown, since the people he deals with refer exclusively to him as "doctor".
  • First right: She lives the petty pension owner continually overcrowded, highlighting women's attempts to accommodate more tenants through strambotic and draconian methods. It's blonde, slightly curly hair short and with a certain tendency to a slight overweight. Like with the doctor, his identity is unknown, or he was even a cartoon where a client was placed on the back by a billboard, in which "Pensión Rita" is read.

• Second floor
  • Second left: On this floor there is an old woman of the Animal Protective Society who, eternal lover of these, does not stop changing pets (usually cats or dogs but has even had an elephant and a whale) or having the most varied problems with them, these situations remind those of Doña Trini and her animals from Escobar.
  • Second right: It's the only floor whose tenant has changed over the years. In principle, a mad scientist lived, who tirelessly worked to create horrifying monsters, but who were always good at him (clearly inspired by the Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's novel). Then the doctor left (his last appearance was in the vineyard 165, in 1964) and left the floor empty, being replaced by the porter as a sort of real estate agent who tried to sell the floor to several characters, being the state of this the comic motive. Finally it was acquired (in the viñeta 189) by an unsuccessful tailor with a lot of carture and a more than questionable professionalism, capable of sewing suits with four legs, camel hair coats with humps, "fresco" suits with ghost sheets included or costumes of framed paintings or lights, being unable to always recognize their mistakes.
• Third floor
  • Third left: In him lives a pathetic thief named Ceferino Raffles who does not seem to be able to stop stealing useless things (such as a zoo hippopo, the mooring of a boat or a mailbox) and his pissed wife. They are the representation of Caco Bonifacio of Enrich, having the same dress (antiface, jacket and pants with patches) and an assistant, in the case of Bonifacio de Panchacio and in the case of Ceferino his wife.
  • Third right: He is occupied by a woman and her three young children, incorrigibly naughty, who in the first deliveries had an older sister who then disappeared (perhaps because he found a husband at last). When I was, I was looking for a boyfriend, but his naughty brothers "loving" to make him unmarried because of his "travesuras." These "angelites" were able, in many others, to use a tooth hunting trap to "help" her sister to hunt boyfriend, flood the floor to create a pool or pass her mother's pearl necklace through the coffee grinder. The story of the brothers who spoil their sister's dates reminds them of The Terrible Fifi of Nené Estivill and Lidia and his brother Jaimito Joso.

• Azotea
  • The attic: It is a quarter located on the left of the building (on the floor of Ceferino, the thief) of tilted roof, above which is the sign that gives name to the building. In it lives Manolo, a painter who is always harassed by his creditors. In fact, more than by painter, he is known as a sempiterno debtor and by his wits to escape from his creditors (which causes the laughter of a black cat that appears sporadicly next to Manolo); it is precisely from the wisdom and deceptions of where he gets his "solute". This character recalls the protagonist Aniceto, incomplete artist of José Escobar Saliente or Guillermo the conqueror by Gin, although his greatest influence would be Manuel Vázquez Gallego.
  • The cat and the mouse: On the roof there is a black cat that is usually tortured by a cruel mouse that has fun at its coast, for example, using it as a target for the throwing of knives, waking it from the TNT-based nap or whipping against it all bees of a hive.

• Additional items
  • The stairs: They appear attached to the porto elevator along the different floors, but they never see anyone using them, so they become a decorative element, which is not functional. In fact, their singular appearance would make them impracticable to go down and climb to any floor.
  • The spider: It appears on the stairs, hanging from a thread or a web, and every time it disguises itself in a different way, which reminds Mortadelo a little.
  • Guest characters: By the building appear Mortadelo and Filemon, who make some sporadic appearance in this place. At the same time another of the characters of Ibáñez, the Miope Rompetechos, appears in the building.

Peridis with The Curse of Queen Leonor(Feria del Libro de Madrid, 2016); up to the right, you can see part of the cover of the integral 13, Rue del Percebe.

Problems with censorship

The then dictatorship of General Franco was enraged by the character who lived in the second right, the mad scientist who dedicated himself to creating horrifying monsters, with the argument that "only God can create life". Due to the pressure, Ibáñez was forced by the censors to remove said character, which led to the only change of tenant in the entire history of 13, Rue del Percebe.

However, Ibáñez managed to remove it through the front door, instead of doing it surreptitiously or with some shame for it. Thus, in the last cartoon in which he appears, the doctor comments with an ironic smile to a surprised friend about his intention to move to another apartment "because it is not going well for the monster he has projected", at the same time that A giant pair of shoes appear next to him as an indication of his size when finished.

13, Rue del Percebe in the 21st century

In 2002, Ibáñez made a special page for the compilation published in the series Super Humor, in which the characters appear updated to the new century: the debtor in the attic, Manolo, now makes his computer scams; the thief Ceferino is now on the board of directors of a bank; the children in the third right are older, and they dance rock and roll and take ecstasy pills; the old woman from the Animal Protection Agency has a robotic dog, and instead of a canary she has a mobile with a melody from Operación Triunfo; the tailor next door has made a "what's in now" suit at the request of a client, which turns out to be a sign with the slogan "No to CO2"; the vet has cloned a lion, which has come out with the head of a donkey; the adjoining pension is populated by squatters; the grocery store offers imported products, although as always their quality is not exactly optimal; the concierge is being rescued by firefighters from a mountain of business mail; and Don Ferret explains to Roofbreaker with a head full of garbage that his sewer is not a self-priming intake for organic waste.

Elaboration of comics

Ibáñez made the comics using a template that had the shape of the building. This appears devoid of furniture and its tenants, leaving the floors empty as if they were uninhabited, as well as the attic, the Colmado Senén store and the goal.

Analysis

13, Rue del Percebe is apparently a series of almost always isolated and independent jokes, with fixed characters, pigeonholed in their immutable role and only united by the building where they live. This allows the reader to read the page in the order they want, clearly non-linear. But to say so would often be oversimplifying things. Often, a fact affects more than one vignette-neighbor or the entire page so that sometimes the sequentiality of reading is directed, thus increasing the comic effect and immersion due to the synergies created in the characters that, purely archetypal, one ends up knowing and accepting, in the same way that many of us know the neighbors of our huge apartment block: through furtive but similar scenes that, day by day, make us form a more or less precise image of them.

The ease of reading this comic, the endless repetition of the same problems with different details, the familiarity that is created with the characters throughout the scattered reading of each page despite the fact that, objectively, most of them the jokes are very simple, as well as an absence of linear reading that, had he known it, would have delighted Marshall McLuhan make this comic a unique case and especially attractive at an unconscious level that few other comics can match.

However, Francisco Ibáñez found it difficult in the long run to continue drawing this series: he could not bear the feeling of cloistering that it produced in him. In his other comics, travel, exteriors, urban or rural landscapes are common, while in 13, Rue del Percebe we have a square of fixed length for each fixed character. However, in 1987, Ibáñez created, for the publishing house Grijalbo, 7, Rebolling Street, a comic strip that used the same formula but this time on a double page and with more characters.

Other media

The building and several of the characters that inhabit it, such as the shopkeeper, the thief, or the concierge, made the leap to the big screen by appearing in some scenes of the movie The great adventure of Mortadelo and Filemón , based on the best-known characters of the author. In the film, 13 Rue del Percebe, is the building where Philemon's mother lives, having the cartoon characters as neighbors.

In May 2010, the house and its tenants were the protagonists of an advertisement for the well-known soft drink brand "La Casera" by the hand of the GRAY advertising agency. This advertisement was directed by Javier Fesser, who already took them to the movies in the Mortadelo and Filemón film mentioned above, although unlike then when only a few of the characters appeared, on this occasion almost all the classic residents of the building are represented.

In 2009, the writer Alberto Gimeno published the novel Hotel Dorado, openly inspired by the comic and in which he tries to give credibility to the cartoonish characters.

Influence and legacy

13, Rue del Percebe gives its name to a street in the municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid.

It has been said that the popular series There is no one living here and La que se avecina took 13 Rue del Percebe as a model to create 21 Calle Desengaño in the first series and 7 Ave del Paraíso street (at the Montepinar Viewpoint) in the second, although both the author of the comic and those responsible for both series have denied this on occasion.