Captain Thunder It is one of the iconic titles of 20th-century Spanish culture. With a script by Víctor Mora and illustrations by Ambros, the series captivated thousands of readers from its first issue in 1956 until well into the 1960s. And its readership continued to grow with each successive re-edition, right up to the present day.

The categorization that confines it to an adventure comic is both accurate and misleading. It is undoubtedly an adventure. But, fortunately, both the vicissitudes of the script and the uneven talent of the successive artists fostered encounters that this exhibition seeks to explore: encounters with literature, insofar as Captain Thunder repeats or imitates episodes that can be found in the Iliad or Odisea, in Verne or Swift, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in the legacy of the Eddas and the sagas, in Gilgamesh or in Rabelais.

But there were also encounters with architecture. Grand buildings and small vernacular architecture were sighted in Spain, perhaps for the first time, in Trueno's adventure, which traveled the world and cataloged its landscapes, both natural and urban.

Encounters, finally, with technology, both past and future: weeks in a balloon before such a device existed, gunpowder when that element was only an oriental pastime, and the presence of ballistics and robotics.

The exhibition, across its three thematic sections (literature, architecture, technology), is linked by a political thread: the stories of a Spaniard who finds himself unable to settle in Spain, those of a perpetual exile filled with longing, and those of a champion of freedom and justice during a dictatorship. With all its ambiguities and misunderstandings. With all its sagacity.

The memory of Víctor Mora will be present at this exhibition, which will become our tribute to one of the creators of an essential comic in the history of our country.

The CBA will host, as part of its program of On Mondays, at CírculoA series of activities linked to the exhibition. The first of these, on October 10, will be a conversation between Patxi Lancers (exhibition curator) and José Antonio Ortega Anguiano (comics specialist).

The film series The Arthurian hero of a thousand faces, which will be projected in the Cine Estudio During the months of October and November, it completes the programming that the CBA dedicates to Captain Thunder.