EYEONE | SEEKING HEAVEN

This is the first batch of scans from the Cantinflas Show magazines I read voraciously as a kid.

During a good portion of my childhood we had no TV at home. Once in a while I would be allowed to cruise out to a friend's house for a couple of hours to watch old Batman re-runs and Japanese giant robot cartoons, but for the most part, my media consumption of choice (and necessity) was reading printed matter. Once I figured out how to makes sense of letters, I read everything from the back of shampoo bottles to my Grandma's entertainment magazines.

I was always drawn to the pictures in things I read. The Cantinflas Show magazine was one of my favorite things to look at, and I must have poured through all the issues I got my hands on hundreds of times.

Cantinflas Show was based on a TV show by the same name that I never knew existed. It featured the cartoon version of world-renown Mexican actor Mario Moreno Cantinflas traveling to different places and throughout time, recounting the lives of famous authors, artists, and historical figures. The stories were heavily Eurocentric; nevertheless, I got to learn about Galileo, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Jules Verne, Cleopatra, Rembrandt, and many others.

The illustrations in these always blew me away. I believe they were done by animator Jose Luis Moro (he created the show in collaboration with Cantinflas,) but I could be wrong as there are no credits I could find in any issue of the magazine.