Bob Penuelas (born 1957) is an American

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

illustrator and writer. He created the comic-strip character

Wilbur Kookmeyer ''Surfer'' is an American quarterly magazine periodical focused on surfing and surf culture, founded in 1962 by noted surfer, writer, photographer, artist and humorist John Severson (1933–2017). The magazine went on hiatus from 2020 until Au ...

, which appeared in ''

Surfer Magazine ''Surfer'' is an American quarterly magazine periodical focused on surfing and surf culture, founded in 1962 by noted surfer, writer, photographer, artist and humorist John Severson (1933–2017). The magazine went on hiatus from 2020 until Augus ...

'' from 1986 to 2006. Penuelas was born and raised in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

. He learned to draw from his father, a technical illustrator. He was heavily influenced by

MAD Magazine ''Mad'' (stylized in all caps) is an American humor magazine which was launched in 1952 and currently published by DC Comics, a unit of the DC Entertainment subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. ''Mad'' was founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman an ...

. In his early teens Penuelas learned to surf and soon was creating surfing-related art..At that time he was influenced by

Rick Griffin Richard Alden "Rick" Griffin (June 18, 1944 – August 18, 1991) was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. He was a key figure in the underground comix movement as a fouding member of the ' ...

, whose artwork regularly appeared in ''Surfer Magazine''. Penuelas began his career as a comic-strip artist with the creation of the ''Maynard and the Rat'' strip for ''Surfer Magazine'' in 1980. Between 1980 and 1985 he produced 25 two-page episodes for ''Surfer''. In 1985, Penuelas introduced Wilbur Kookmeyer into the strip. Wilbur drew a large positive response from readers. In 1986, Penuelas replaced ''Maynard and the Rat'' with the ''Wilbur Kookmeyer'' strip. In 2006, after 74 episodes Penuelas retired the strip. Since then, he has released a series of posters reproduced from the strips.

References

External links

Bob Penuelas' official website

'How to draw a wave the Wilbur Kookmeyer way!' – An art tutorial by Bob Penuelas
American comic strip cartoonists Living people Artists from San Diego 1957 births {{Comic-strip-creator-stub