José Zabala-Santos
cartoonist
José Zabala-Santos (sometimes spelled as Jose Zabala Santos) (20 July 1911 – September 7, 1985), nicknamed as "Mang Pepe" ("Mister Pepe" in the Tagalog language) by hometown neighbors and as "Zabala" by colleagues in the cartooning profession, was a successful cartoonist in the Philippines and was one of the pioneers of Philippine comics. He became one of the most popular cartoonists in the Philippines during the 1950s because of his cartoon characters such Popoy, Sianong Sano, and Lukas Malakas. Zabala is one of the "respected names" of artists in the Philippine cartoon and comics industry.
Biography
Although born in Calumpit, Bulacan, Philippines in 1911, Zabala spent his childhood years in Malabon, Rizal. He was a resident of Kuatro Kantos, Malabon. He first learned how to draw through his mother, a painter.
Education
He attended college at the School of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, where he met Francisco Reyes, another Philippine comics pioneer. However, he quit school when he was 16 years old. One of the reasons is that the UP School of Fine Arts was not offering cartooning classes He instead opted to enroll and earned a diploma in a cartooning course offered in the United States via correspondence learning.
Career
Zabala officially started his cartooning career in 1932 through the sponsorship of Amado V. Hernandez, who was then the editor of Sampaguita magazine.
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This entry incorporates text from “José Zabala-Santos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.