Women cartoonist: Purita Campos

Purita Campos (Purificación Campos Sánchez)

(18 August 1937 – 19 November 2019, Spain) 

Purita Campos (or Pura Campos) was a Spanish painter and illustrator, and one of the leading artists in European girls’ comics. After modest beginnings in her native Spain, she set the tone for a new wave of more reality-based stories in this genre on the British market. Her best-known series was ‘Patty’s World’ (1971-1988), a co-creation with writer Philip Douglas, about the everyday life of 13-year old Patty Lucas. It quickly became a hit in Spain (as ‘Esther y su Mundo’), the Netherlands (‘Peggy’s Wereldje’) and Germany (‘Biggi’) too. Patty landed Campos an equally fruitful collaboration with the Dutch girls’ magazine Tina, for which she illustrated the title comic ‘Tina & Debbie’ (1974-2010) for several decades. She regularly collaborated with her husband Francisco Ortega on other comics for girls, such as ‘Gina’ (1978-1980) and ‘Dulce Caroline’ (1989).

cont’d Lambiek