Bob Penuelas (born 1957) is an American

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

illustrator and writer. He created the comic-strip character

Wilbur Kookmeyer Wilbur Kookmeyer is the title character of a cartoon strip by Bob Penuelas which first appeared in Surfer magazine in 1986. Wilbur is a kook, a wanna-be surfer of limited skill. He wants to be cool, but remains dorky. Penuelas created Wilbur ...

, which appeared in ''

Surfer Magazine ''Surfer'' was an American monthly periodical focused on surfing and surf culture, founded in 1962 by noted surfer, writer, photographer, artist and humorist John Severson (1933–2017). The magazine folded in 2020. ''Surfer'' began as a quarter ...

'' 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 Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

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

MAD Magazine Mad, mad, or MAD may refer to: Geography * Mad (village), a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia * Mád, a village in Hungary * Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, by IATA airport code * Mad River (disambiguation), several r ...

. 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. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in ...

, 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 People from San Diego 1957 births {{Comic-strip-creator-stub