La Familia Burrón

La Familia Burrón (The Burrons Family) is a Mexican comic created in 1948 by Gabriel Vargas. During its more than 60 year publication period, it managed to publish 500,000 copies, making it the longest running publication of the world. The cartoon follows the adventures of a lower-class family in Mexico City with surname Burrón (presumably a word play on the word "burro" which literally means donkey, but is widely used in Mexico as slang for dunce). One of the main characteristics of The Burrons Family is the excessive use of slang, contractions or even invented words in almost every dialogue, hence creating a particular and original invented language that is unique in the world of comics.

In the 40's Gabriel Vargas published a weekly comic of author titled Los Superlocos (Superweirdos), in which several different recurrent characters were featured one at a time, in each issue. The comic focused in slice of life - comedy stories, often based in real life experiences of the lower classes of Mexico described from a satirical point of view. Jilemón Metralla y Bomba, an old retired Mexican cacique was one of the most popular characters in the comic, at the point in their last years of publication, all stories were focused solely on him. The Burrons were born as a result of a bet between Vargas and Cuban screenwriter Fernando Ferrari. The latest challenged Vargas to create a female comic character that could be as successful and charismatic as Jilemón. Vargas accepted, and presented the Burrons Family immediately in the next issue of Superlocos, with no previous announcement to the public in December 1948. For several months, the Burrons shared the comic with Jilemón, but after the first nine months, the family become so popular that Vargas created an independent title just for them. The comic book was initially titled Paquito, and the Burrons adventures were featured under the title "A dog's life", although eventually the comic title was later changed into "La Familia Burrón". The comic was published for over 60 years, from 1948 until 2009, with additional reprints after that date, not just in comics, but also in several newspapers. After the dead of his creator, the comic has been continuosuly reprinted as paperbacks, being the most notorious the reprint from 2011-17 which collected the complete first run of the comic in 10 hardcover volumes.

As a curious thing to note, in Mexico comics are considered in general as a low class of entertaining, main reason why La Familia Burrón has been cataloged as a political cartoon instead, and his author Gabriel Vargas, as a Satirical Cartoonist, not a Comic Artist.

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