Pink Christmas Wishes from The Pink Panther

I spent most of my professional years as a cartoonist, drawing and writing stories for The Pink Panther comics that were designed for the overseas market. Thanks to The Pink Panther (and Beep Beep, the Road Runner),  I managed to make a living and raise a family, and consequently, I will always feel a certain amount of indebtedness to this character.
Over the years, I've tried to keep him alive in my life by doing some new little illustration featuring this funny feline every once in a while. 

Thank you, Friz Freleng, David H DePatie and Blake Edwards for creating him!

As a bonus, I'm sharing the classic Pink Panther Christmas TV Special, which first aired on ABC on December 7, 1978. It was directed by Bill Perez and produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises.

                                          

(Another special, "A Very Pink Christmas", was produced in 2011 but the less said about it, the better).

THE GREAT MOVIE CARTOON PARADE!

This is an excellent (and long out of print) book about cartoons and cartoon characters, written by John Halas and David Rider. It was first published in 1976 by Triune Books in the UK and Bounty Books in the USA and I don't think there were any further editions. The text is quite informative and the BIG sized pages (14.75" x 10.25") are beautifully illustrated with some truly nice pictures of many cartoon characters, some of which are really obscure but nevertheless worthy of a glance. From Mickey Mouse to the Pink Panther, it covers many studios and eras and the sheer size of the images alone make it an attractive addition to any cartoon collector's library.

The book's price back in 1976 was $9.95!

                        

                            

    Due to its large size, the only real problem for me was finding a good fitting place for it in my bookshelf!

FERNANDO LLERA - Mini-Biography

FERNANDO LLERA is a comic book artist, editorial cartoonist, illustrator, actor and writer from Mexico City.   He created his first comic strip, "MOBSTER NICK" in 1970. Six comic book issues of MOBSTER NICK were published by NOVARO under the Domingos Alegres banner in 1973-74.     From 1974 to 1992, he wrote and drew the Spanish language versions of "THE PINK PANTHER" and "BEEP BEEP, THE ROAD RUNNER" comic books for Western Publishing Company's Latin American licensees, Editorial Novaro and later Editorial VID.  He performed as a comedian at several local dinner theaters.  In 1985, he wrote and appeared in two comedy TV series. He's also a licensed radio announcer and from 1995 to 2007, he co-hosted a daily two hour radio talk show for Grupo Radio Centro, a large Mexican radio network.  He has illustrated several humor books and his cartoons have been published in several magazines. He published some editorial cartoons for Mexico's Reforma newspaper from 2004 until 2006. He has also appeared as an actor in Mexican films: HASTA MORIR ('Til Death - 1994) and BORRAR DE LA MEMORIA (2010). He was interviewed on-screen for a feature length documentary about the NOVARO era: NOVARO, THE MEXICAN COLOSSUS (2016). Since 2006, his editorial cartoons have been appearing regularly in Excelsior, a Mexican daily newspaper. 

NEW YEAR 2018 IS COMING!

¡SANTOS CÓMICS! TV Interview

I had lots of fun as the guest of Martín Arceo's TV show "¡SANTOS CÓMICS!" which aired Tuesday, July 19, 2016   at www.rompeviento.tv 
He proved to be a wonderful and knowledgeable host.
We talked about comic books, The Pink Panther, The Road Runner, Laurel and Hardy and editorial cartoons among many other topics and the time just flew by! Thank you for the invite, Martín!
The show can be seen and downloaded now at 
https://vimeo.com/175449818

The Gold Key Years

Beep Beep The Road Runner and The Pink Panther kept me busy writing and drawing comic book stories for them during the 70s, 80s and part of the 90s. Thanks to these wonderful characters, I made a comfortable living and gave my son an education. I will always be grateful to the great artists who were responsible in creating them: Friz Freleng, David H. DePatie and Chuck Jones. Somehow, after Dell, Gold Key and Whitman comics disappeared, life has never been the same for me!

ALFONS MOLINÉ's NOVARO (El Globo Infinito) - Ediciones Sinsentido 2007

From Madrid, Spain comes this 2007 book narrating the rise and fall of NOVARO Publishing Company, which was Mexico's biggest comic book publishing house during the late 40s and up until the mid 80s when it went bankrupt.  Novaro had the printing rights to all of Dell, Gold Key, DC, Marvel and Harvey comics from the U.S. and distributed Spanish versions of all their titles all over Latin America, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.  I worked there for 13 years doing several projects, including The Pink Panther and Beep Beep, The Road Runner comics, and was proudly mentioned in the text.

My "Beep Beep The Road Runner" Covers from the 1970s

These are the last of my covers that made it to the U.S. for Gold Key comics:

These are the Latin American editions:

Beep Beep #1080 - February-28-1975

Beep Beep #1052 - August-19-1974

Beep Beep #1076 - January-20-1975

Beep Beep THE ROAD RUNNER # 46, October 1974 - #FernandoLlera

One of the very few instances where my artwork for the Latin American editions of The Road Runner was also published in the U.S. : Beep Beep The Road Runner #46, October 1974!

Novaro Publishers' Comic Characters by LLERA

Teaser: LA HISTORIETA DE NOVARO (In production)

Watch this video here:

http://zuplemento.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/trailer-la-historieta-de-novaro/

Recordando a Editorial NOVARO

Watch video here:
recordando-a-editorial-novaro-video.html