Captain Thunder

Captain Thunder is an adventure comic series, created in 1956 by scriptwriter Víctor Mora Pujadas and cartoonist Miguel Ambrosio Zaragoza (Ambrós), which is a one of the most successful in the history of Spanish comics.

The protagonist is Captain Trueno, a Spanish knight from the Middle Ages at the time of the Third Crusade (late 12th century). Accompanied by his friends Goliath and Crispin, and sometimes also by Sigrid, Thunder's girlfriend and queen of the island of Thule, he travels the world in search of adventures in which he acts as a defender of justice and a liberator. of the oppressed

Creation and editorial trajectory

Both the medieval genre and that of the navigators of the 16th and 17th centuries had been previously explored by Spanish cartoonists and scriptwriters. Manuel Gago García (Gago) had created El Guerrero del Maske, set in the time of the Taifa Kingdoms, while Iranzo had devised the adventures of the character El Cachorro, an intrepid sailor in the fleets of Felipe III. Unlike these works, Captain Thunder will defend much more universal values and far from the simplistic struggle against "the Moor" or the fight against the savage American cannibals.

Captain Thunder was born in a decade, the fifties, in which both the United States and Spain released medieval adventure films such as The Valiant Prince, Ivanhoe and The Talisman. Elements appear in them that will later be reproduced in a similar way in the stories of Captain Thunder. In Ivanhoe, for example, there is a scene in which the protagonist appears at a tournament clad in black armor and with his face hidden, just as it happens in the first issue of the official collection (Blood and Fire), in which Captain Thunder appears in the same way in a tournament held by Ricardo Corazón de León.

First period (1956-1968)

In its first period, from 1956 to 1968, it became the most popular and widespread comic strip in Spain, maintaining a maximum weekly circulation of about 350,000 copies. It was published at that time using the variety of most widespread formats for the comic, as were the series of landscape notebooks since 1956 and, on the other hand, through the youth magazine format ("El Capitán Trueno EXTRA", also weekly, with a complete adventure every two or three issues, inspired by the Franco-Belgian cartoon).

Furthermore, favored by the great success of the character, his adventures were included in the central pages of the children's publication Pulgarcito, also edited by Bruguera. On designated dates of summer holidays and Christmas of each year, the so-called "Almanacs" were also published, which included complete self-contained adventures, independent of the booklets and EXTRA. The printing was done (except for all the covers, which were already in color) in black and white, or two-tone, during this first period.

Given the volume of work generated by the success of the publication and the expansion of editions, its creators had to look for collaborators:

• Guion:
  • Ricardo Acedo collaborated with Mora in the booklets from 26 to 45.
  • Jordi Bayona wrote some episodes in Captain Trueno EXTRA.
  • Cassarel (pseudome de Vidal Sales) intervened in the episodes of the Pulgarcito.
• Drawing:
  • Beaumont, he continued Ambrós.
  • Once Ambrós left the series, the drawing recayó directly into other drawings: Beaumont himself, Julio Briñol, Adolfo Buylla, Félix Carrión, Luis Casamitjana, José María Casanovas, Comos, Francisco Díaz, Juan Escandell, Gil Bao, José Grau, Fuentes Man, Tomás Marco, Martínez OsÚete, Ángel Pardo, Claudio Tinoco, Vicente Torregrosa and José.

As Víctor Mora himself declared in a TVE Weekly Report program, Captain Trueno would currently be what we could call a defender of human rights. This conception or characterization of the character caused him certain problems with the censorship of the time and the Franco regime, always extolling the victory over the agnostics and atheists (projected in the fight against the infidel Muslim) and advocating the values of the most orthodox Catholicism. In this way, the gradually more accentuated intervention of the censors promoted in some cases (or limited in others) certain situations, among which two aspects are denoted, one of a sociological-religious type and another with implications of a political nature:

• In order not to favor the idea of living a couple (or in common) outside the marriage, Queen Sigrid does not at all times accompany Captain Thunder, but only on a few occasions.
• The Kingdom of Thule is not shown as a parliamentary monarchy, but as a kingdom with paternalistic and semi-authoritarian dyes. Members of Parliament are appointed by a Council of Elders, traditional depositaries of ancestral wisdom.

Cartoon artists, on the other hand, were forced to imitate the graphic style of Ambrós or Ángel Pardo (the only one, along with Fuentes Man, who kept his own graphics), having, in most cases, to cut the heads (frequently whole bodies) painted by Ambrós or Pardo to be pasted on top of their drawings. Thus, at certain times, it is very common for the same face to appear several times in the same story, or for characters drawn by Ambrós to mix with those of Pardo, forming a kind of collage and causing problems. composition integration. Likewise, due to these editing conditions, the repetition of entire cartoons, simply retouched, appear in comics. With the exception of Ángel Pardo and Fuentes Man, they were forbidden to sign their work, even having to imitate Ambrós' signature in some cases.

Antonio Bernal was allowed greater creative freedom, who, in addition to the covers for Trueno Color, published in the EXTRA of the sixties a drawing course in which he was also forced to use cut-out faces. Most of the manual text in the series of notebooks and EXTRAS is done by Ángel Duque, one of the best Spanish letterers.

Interface (1968-2010)

Captain Thunder's image is often used for the promotion of a comic book hall.

After the first compilation of the adventures of the notebooks in the Giant Album format in the sixties (black and white), the reissue in full color (TRUENO COLOR) of the original material of the notebooks began in 1969, EXTRAS, Pulgarcito pages, and Almanacs. This publication had various periods and diverse fortunes during the 1970s.

During the following decades, attempts were made to boost the character with new adventures, but they did not achieve the success of the first period.

In the eighties and nineties of the last century, Captain Trueno Amador García, Jesús Blasco, Luis Bermejo, Jesús Redondo, John M. Burns, Rafa Fonteriz and Paco Nájera were cartoonists. These new authors were allowed to express their style with absolute freedom, except for Amador García, whose only contribution was the inking and coloring of Ambrós's pencils in the comic strip The Fortune Teller with the Dead Eyes (1983) published in Toutain Editor's Historia de los Cómics. There were also two cartoonists who never published their work: Jaime Marzal and Jaime Brocal Remohi.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its creation, which was celebrated on May 14, 2006, Captain Thunder was the object of a new sentimental-nostalgic boom. This impulse was reflected in the great sales of El Gran Libro del Capitán Trueno, in which its author, Armonía Rodríguez, wife of Víctor Mora, recounted the history of the series from an internal vision. A new adventure was also published as a tribute called Silences, the youth of Captain Thunder which, drawn by Alfonso López and with scripts by Pepe Gálvez, explored the hero's early youth, in the years before the beginning of his adventures in Palestine (Third Crusade), as well as his possible family history.

Second period (2010-present)

In 2010, Ediciones B set out to start a new era of the series with continuity over time. The first album of the new series was in charge of the scriptwriter Ricard Ferrándiz and the cartoonist Joan Boix. It was titled The Last Combat and narrates the death of the two protagonists, which caused some controversy. This album was followed by two other new adventures by the same authors: Atlántida, in 2011, and The Sword of the Invincible, in 2013.

Starting in 2017, the editorial opted for the cartoonist José Revilla, who would take care of both the drawing and the script. He published a new adventure titled The Circle of Fire, with which Ediciones B intends to promote a new Captain Thunder series with continuity over time.

Plot

Captain Thunder's scripts shy away from giving a Manichean or stereotyped vision of other races and cultures. In this way, we find both enemies and friends among the Norwegian Vikings (Ragnar), the continental Chinese, the American Indians, and even among the Spanish themselves, human groups in which honest and brave characters appear alongside execrable idiots, the who, for example, want to practice "man hunting" with his own servants. Despite being a work with heroes and villains, not all of the participants that are parading are good or bad in a permanent or absolute way. One example is the Viking Ragnar Loghbroth, Sigrid's adoptive father, who confesses on his deathbed that, although he attacked and plundered the rich ships of the merchants as a pirate, "it is also It is true that I fought [the Viking's story continues] the slave traders". These he helped to regain their freedom.

The author advocates the defense of Science and technical advances: for example, when the magician Morgano is released and Crispin asks him, in the laboratory, if that is where he performs his magic, that one answers him: "the only magic that there is is here, in the books of Science". The magician Morgano's inventions constitute (except for the anachronies that Mora warns in the comic itself), valuable dynamic elements of the series and, one of them in particular, the hot air balloon, will allow the writer to easily move the hero and his companions around several continents. Thanks to this magician (who builds the first balloon in the series), Captain Thunder learns how to make this flying device, which will take him to distant, exotic and unexplored places and continents for the supposed time of adventures (Mongolia, Japan feudal, Africa or America). On the other hand, the apparent "magic" that is inserted in the adventures is never such, but has a rational explanation, either by chemical reactions or by ingenious tricks, tricks caused by false magicians to scare and reinforce superstition, dependence, submission and manipulation of the people (Although, in the most recent adventures, magic does appear as such).

Finally, resorting to an intelligent use of humor and comic situations (says the author in the prologue of The Witch Queen of Anubis,) he departed from the formal channels of Spanish comics from the 1950s and 1960s, where it was unusual and unaccustomed to see the hero smile and laugh out loud.

Characters

The series, like other later ones by the author (El Jabato, El Corsario de Hierro and El Cosaco Verde), also shows of Sigrid, three archetypal characters: a respectful, cautious and brave officer, and two friends who are always with him (one big and strong and the other small and weaker). Paraphrasing Víctor Mora, these two characters, companions of the main hero, were created to give an image of a solidarity hero, not a solitary one. Likewise, the companions Goliath and Crispín allow the writer to impregnate numerous "touches of humor" ( gags ) the narration of the adventures, which he does through the frequent allusions of the first to the great green frog and the jokes, thanks and occurrences of the second towards the plump friend of the.

Another success factor was the treatment given to the heroines. Mora already perceived the incipient social movements that promoted women's liberation, which is why he endowed the women in his works with a decision and leadership abilities far removed from the archetypes that described the typical companion of the warrior, such as the Chinese Lin Chin in the Warrior of the Mask or María, the African woman from Batán in El Cachorro. The hero's lady, Sigrid , became Queen of Thule , a country that she governed with success and without the need for any male tutelage. And, in the development of Captain Trueno's adventures, we find other distinctive notes that separate her from the profiles of the other classic heroines such as Isabel Montero, Captain Fierro's wife b> in El Cachorro [Elena Davis, who would be the wife of Admiral Toledo, is taken as queen by some sinister American cannibals in the purest colonialist version, according to which, a foreigner, without knowing the people and the lands she rules, she is adopted as supreme leader (as is the case with The Phantom); however, Isabel's harshness soon dissolves, she breaks down crying in the arms of her lover and, later, abandoning everything to return to Spain and get married]. Although Sigrid also wishes to marry her hero, she does not for that reason neglect her obligations of good government with respect to her subjects, always returning to Thule, reasons and responsibilities that prevent her from accompanying the hero in many of the adventures of her

• Captain Thunder: “I always dreamed of writing the adventures of a walking gentleman, and Editorial Bruguera gave me the occasion. This gentleman is strong, sympathetic, struggle with noble moral idealism for justice, freedom, fraternity, peace (...) Their role was often to make masses of people aware of the bestial exploitation to which they were subjected by a group of vampires (...) If anything can be blamed is that, from an aesthetic point of view, the captain has all the defects of the positive heroes of the bad Soviet novel... he never has a weakness. He never has anything to blame himself... He is the man who constantly represses himself to be at par with the ideals he defends...” This quote by Victor Mora perfectly defines the main character of the series, both in the positive and negative aspects. “At first the character had some facial features between José Antonio, maybe Rock Hudson, and between Gregory Peck and Cary Grant.”

• Goliath: It is the preferred character by the drawers and many readers. For the first, because he was very comfortable to draw and, for the second, for his sympathy and bonhomy. It is a "tragaldabas", an old firewooder, of great physical strength, which cannot spend more than an hour without eating. However, if there is something you like more than food, this is a good sprout, in which you will use your "toma-toma" or show your opponents why they call you "The Cascanueces" (the qualifier has to do with the heads). If a robust or forged woman knows the "Cascanueces", she will fall in love with Goliath (like a Russian Countess, the Countess Tatiana Robustiana Hermanagilda, appearing in the numbers 254-255-256 of THE TRUENO EXTRA CHAPTER or the Kil-Kil sorceres appearing in a number of the most likely ones). He is also the abnegade and sacrificed character for his companions, as he shows on several occasions by being the first to throw himself from the aerostatic balloon when there is no more lastre available.

• Crispín: He is the youngest character, somewhat shy with the girls, and perhaps with whom the young readers were most identified. Son of the count of Northumbria and his young wife Yolanda; when her mother died, being a baby, she is left in the custody of our friends, becoming with time a squire of Thunder. The jokes between Maese Goliath and Knight Crispín are, of all episodes and situations, the most memorable of the series. As the argumental development progresses, it will become a real "donijan" with the young girls and damsels of their age, gradually acquiring a greater prominence and coming to run adventures on their own, especially in THE EXTRA TRUE CHAPTER. These adventures, in which Crispín is the main protagonist, will approach his unfulfilled dream: to be armed in the future, someday, knight.

• Sigrid: Every gentleman must have a lady and Thunder would be no less. Only in this case, besides being frequently abducted, is something else. Sigrid, a blonde of Nordic beauty, Queen of Thule Island, is not the typical lady who patiently awaits on the balcony of her palace or castle the return of her loved one (although, on certain occasions, this same happens to her), but, on the contrary, accompanies in various adventures the protagonist trio, becoming a quartet and saving - on more than one occasion and through his successful intervention- the life of the heroes. The Queen of Thule remained the eternal bride of Captain Thunder because she kept her love and fidelity without getting married.

Assessment and influence

The success of this series caused the rest of the adventure comics of the time to tend to lose their tragic tone and soften their violence, gaining in a festive tone. He had imitations such as Torg (son of León) (1960) and Víctor Mora himself devised other series with similar characters: El Jabato (1958), set in the Roman Empire and with an Iberian warrior as the protagonist; El Cosaco Verde (1960), set in Russia, and finally El Corsario de Hierro (1970) where the protagonist is a Spanish navigator of the century XVII, subsequent period to that of the great geographical discoveries. His influence is also perceptible in much later comics, such as Maese Espada (1982) by Adolfo Usero, with which he maintains undeniable similarities.

Outside Spain, Captain Trueno spread to various countries in Latin America and Europe, being published in Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, being in these last two countries where it achieved the greatest popularity.

Among the repercussions of the series in popular culture, it is worth mentioning the following regarding music: in the 1970s the Spanish rock group Asfalto, in their first album, dedicated the song Capitán Trueno, and soloist Miguel Bosé titled one of his songs El Hijo del Capitán Trueno. It should be noted that despite the extraordinary success in Europe, if the New York Public Library is consulted, only references to the song "Captain Thunder" appear.

Correos y Telégrafos also issued a series of stamps commemorating the character.

Adaptations to other media

Cinema

On February 16, 2000, the Spanish production company Filmax made public a project to carry out a film with El Capitán Trueno as the protagonist, directed and written by Juanma Bajo Ulloa. However, in May 2001, the idea was cancelled. In 2004 a new project was announced again, directed by Alejandro Toledo and scripted by Jordi Gasull and Juanma Ruiz Córdoba, which was likewise abandoned.

On October 7, 2011, Captain Thunder and the Holy Grail was released, directed by Antonio Hernández and starring Sergio Peris Mencheta (Captain Thunder), the shot putter Manuel Martínez (Goliath), Adrián Lamana (Crispín) and Natasha Yarovenko (Sigrid).

Video games

Several electronic video games have also been made, having the crusader knight as the protagonist.

Guide for the reader

For 55 years, from its inception among the other publications of Editorial Bruguera (May 1956) to the present (with Ediciones B as the owner of the rights), Capitán Trueno has been badly mistreated editorially. For this reason, reissues are omitted below and only the strictly original material is detailed:

• The 618 sponsored notebooks that were edited within the collections Dan series and Superadventures.
• The episodes published in the magazine Pulgarcito.
• Adventures appearing throughout the 427 magazines Captain True Extra.
• The Almanaques and Extras of the 1950-1960s.
• The six comic-book novels Heroes e Stories.
• The Adivin of the Dead Eyes, published by Toutain Editor within the series of fascicles "History of the Comics".
• The 14 episodes drawn by Blasco and Bermejo in the magazine Captain Thunder.
• The ten numbers Adventures Bizarras.
• Cita in Córdoba edited by the Association of Friends of Captain Thunder and authorized by the editorial.
• Heart of Warrior published in Micromania number 21, 1990.
• The Mail of Queen Sigrid, edited in a special album of Spanish Posts.
• The albums The Witch Queen of Anubis and The Devil of the Wind Islands.
• The burning villagepublished in the weekly newspaper El Mundo.
• Zagorff the Belicoso!, in the magazine-homenaje edited by the Association of Friends of Captain Thunder.
• Silence, Captain Thunder Youth.
• Chandra, The Usurpador (Reissue of Adventures edited in the central pages of the magazine Pulgarcito).
• The Cautive and other adventures (Second Reissue of Adventures edited in the central pages of the magazine Pulgarcito).
• Last fight of 2010.
• Atlantis of 2011.
• The 2017 Fire Circle.