Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

lady missing one eye, her face was full of pimples, and she had a big belly. Her image
was grotesque, and in order to bring more hilarity, by the use of irony, the name of the
witch was changed to Hermelinda Linda González (the surname came from her creator,
who decided to give her his own name).
In March 1968, the first issue of Hermelinda Linda appeared. It was well received and
gained fame quickly, reaching 220,000 copies of the weekly issue in its best period at
the end of 1969, and around 110,000 in the early 1970s, and 76,000 at the end of the
decade.
Image unavailable
due to copyright
restrictions
Image 3.1. ‘Hermelinda Linda’. Óscar González
Hermelinda Linda (12 June 1979) (in colour)
Hermelinda Linda was so popular that it saved Editormex from bankruptcy, and
also generated enough profits to buy new machines for printing and to create another
publishing house, Editorial Litorel. During the 1970s, Hermelinda Linda - as was the
case with La Familia Burrón- was one of the most popular comic books in the country,
it was exported to other countries in Latin America, 2 and in fact sold better than the US
comic books which were gaining a market share in Mexico. 3 Hermelinda Linda was so
successful that in 1984 there was a movie inspired by the adventures of this witch, and
2 Anne Rubenstein, Del Pepín a Los Agachados. Cómic y censura en el México posrevolucionario
(México, Fondo de Cultura Económica), p. 30.
3 Harold E. Hinds, Jr. and Charles M. Tatum, Not Just For Children. The Mexican Comic Book in the
Late 1960s and 1970s (Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 19.
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