Pafman is a Spanish comic series created by Joaquín Cera. It features the adventures of Pafman, the world's dumbest superhero, and Pafcat, his Mad Scientist sidekick.
Pafman began in 1987 as a weekly 2-page comic with self-contained stories in the Mortadelo magazine. The series changed to a 4-pages format and, later, Cera started to create long stories beside the self-contained ones. In 1996 Ediciones B (the publisher) closed all its magazines and discontinued all its comics except Mortadelo y Filemón and Superlópez.
In 2004 Pafman came back with a long-story album per year but, since then, the series is being threatened of cancellation because of low sales.note
Pafman contains examples of:
- All Germans Are Nazis: Averted in the story titled 1944 in wich the characters specifically say to the readers that this is not the case.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Constantly, for example in one strip some readers are constantly complaining about inaccuracies in the plot, until the characters just decide to beat them.
- Buxom Beauty Standars: Tina Tonas, the niece of Pafman, is vey well-endowed and is a Dude Magnet due to it (to his annoyance).
- Civilized Animal: Pafcat is a furry cat who behaves human most of the time, but he had been seen trying to catch rats on occasion.
- Distracted by the Sexy: A very sexy villain takes Pafman on a date, waiting for the best chance to take him off-guard and kill him. Pafcat tries to warn Pafman several times that she's an assassin, but Pafman is too focused on his enemy's beauty to even realize.
- Evil Wears Black: The series's main antagonist is the Enmascarado Negro ("The Black Masked"), a guy who is always totally dressed and masked in black. Lampshaded at the end of a short story in which Pafman, disappointed with being a hero, joins the villains and declares: "I've even dyed my suit black so I'll look more evil".
- Exact Words: Played for LaughsPafman: (After somebody has knocked at the door) Pafcat, go to see who is at the door.
(Pafcat watches and comes back)
Pafman: There isn't anybody?
Pafcat: Yes, it's (character), but since you only said "go to see who is at the door"... - Freak Lab Accident: If you put a scientist, a cat and a kg of plutonium in a washing machine, you get Pafcat.
- Funny Background Event: Happens in almost every page of the comic.
- Heroic BSoD: Pafman, near the end of "En Tierra Mediocre", he ended so depressed for his allies betrayal, who start to pummel him that he completely ignored their attacks, absorbed by his Heroic BSoD.
- Hurl It into the Sun: One strip ends with Pafman and Pafcat sending a monster that feeds on energy to the Sun you can guess it's a very bad idea. The strip ends with a vignette of the two in darkness, while a newspaper mentions that, how the monster is having fun crushing countries poking with the pinkie, and ends blaming and insulting the two protagonists.
- Medium Awareness: In one of the strips Pafman knows the true nature of the villain (he is an antrophomorfical couch) by reading the script (but he initially claims not being able to read to fool the villain).
- Miranda Rights: In one comic the main characters say the lines "everything you say could be used against you" against someone. The guy ask what that does mean, so they take the speech balloon that contains this question and smash it in his face.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Lampshaded when a centaur villain presents himself as "Professor Sagittarius" and the main character complains "(All villains) are either professors or doctors."
- Nephewism: Tina Tonas, niece of Pafman. The father of Tina plays a significant role in one strips, though.
- New Job as the Plot Demands:
- Mafrune, a character who appears in this and other series of the author was used a generic secondary character, his profession being wathever the plot demanded, but in the last strips his job is fixed as a policeman boss of the characters.
- Also Malfendi, one of the recurring villains. His job changing between stories (and even between vignettes) is a Running Gag.
- Pun: The series' preferred type of humour.
- Share Phrase: ¡Vamos a morir vivos! ("we're gonna die alive!") Since Commisionner Mafrune says it for the first time in Pafman Redevuelve, a different variation of the phrase appears in each book (Professor Fuyu says it with his characteristic pronunciation in La Noche de los Vivos Murientes, Pafman says it in singular rather than in plural in Pafman in USA, etc.). This is often lampshaded, to the point that in Agente Cero Cero Patatero, the Black Masked refuses to say it (he was supposed to say "they're going to die alive"), and the narrator cow threatens with unmasking him and finally showing his face. After he says it, he walks away thinking "mental note: kill the narrator cow.
- Too Dumb to Live: Almost everybody in the series, but specially Pafman.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Pillina and Lupo, two minions who die in almost every strip they appear.
- Slapstick: The series is rife with slapstick comedy. Even though Tina is usually free from slapstick, she gets this trope in Pafman In USA in spades (she even Lampshades it in the comic telling that she is not used to "these kind of things" like Pafman and Pafcat after getting blown up in an explosion with them).
- Where the Hell Is Springfield??: The adventures of Pafman takes place in Logroño, a megacity only similar to its real-life counterpant in the name, that has a jungle, a beach, a Statue of Liberty and whatever thing you could name.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him??: Enmascarado Negro has no problem doing just that to the niece of Pafman. Even his minions are shocked.
