Excerpt from strip #1822: "We're screwed, guys! It turns out that if you don't hurry up and change the world, it ends up changing you!"

Mafalda, first written and drawn in 1962, is a comic and a series of animated cartoons and a movie (1982), written and drawn by the Argentine cartoonist Quino. The strip features a girl named Mafalda (5 years old at the time of the comic's creation) with a deep concern about humanity and world peace who rebels against the world as it is; it ran from 1964 to 1973, enjoying high popularity in both Latin America and Europe. This is the 4th image of Mafalda comic strip nr. ... This is the 4th image of Mafalda comic strip nr. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ... Cartoonist Jack Elrod at work. ... Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino, is an Argentine cartoonist born on July 17, 1932 in Mendoza. ... Humanity refers to the human race or mankind as a whole, to that which is characteristically human, or to that which distinguishes human beings from other animals or from other animal species primal nature. ... World peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations. ... Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ... This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size. ...

History

The character Mafalda — whose name was inspired by David Viñas's novel Dar la cara — and a few others, were created by Quino in 1962 for a promotional cartoon that was intended to be published in the daily Clarín. Ultimately, however, Clarín broke the contract, and the campaign was cancelled altogether. A day is any of several different units of time. ... Clarín is a major newspaper in Argentina, founded by Roberto Noble on August 28, 1945. ...

Mafalda became a full cartoon following the suggestion of Julián Delgado, at the time senior editor of the weekly Primera Plana and a personal friend of Quino. It ran in that newspaper from 29 September 1964, at first featuring only the characters of Mafalda and her parents, and adding Felipe in January 1965. A legal dispute arose in March 1965, and so publication ceased on 9 March 1965. September 29 is the 272nd day of the year (273rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... March 9 is the 68th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (69th in Leap years). ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ...

One week later, on 15 March 1965, Mafalda (at the age of five) started appearing daily in Buenos Aires' Mundo, allowing the author to follow current events more closely. The characters of Manolito, Susanita and Miguelito were created in the following weeks, and Mafalda's mother was pregnant when the newspaper shut down on 22 December 1967. March 15 is the 74th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (75th in leap years). ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... For the newspaper that gave News Corporation its name, see The News (Adelaide). ... December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ...

Publication resumed six months later, on 2 June 1968, in the weekly Siete Días Illustrados. Since the cartoons had to be delivered two weeks before publication, Quino was not able to comment on the news to the same extent. After creating the characters of Mafalda's little brother Guille and her new friend Libertad, he definitively ceased publication of the strip on 25 June 1973. June 2 is the 153rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (154th in leap years), with 212 days remaining. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday. ... June 25 is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 189 days remaining. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ...

After 1973, Quino still drew Mafalda a few times, mostly to promote human rights. In 1976 he produced a poster for the UNICEF illustrating the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... UNICEF Logo UNICEF Flag The United Nations Childrens Fund (or UNICEF) General Assembly was created on December 11, 1946. ... Convention on the Rights of the Child Opened for signature 20 November 1989 in - Entered into force September 2, 1990 Conditions for entry into force 20 ratifications or accessions (Article 49) Parties 193 (only 2 non-parties: USA and Somalia) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child...

Characters

• Mafalda: The main character, an approximately six year old girl, who hates soup and James Bond, and loves The Beatles. She acts like a typical little girl, but also has an acute and questioning view of life. She often asks her father questions that he doesn't like to answer (usually dealing with politics and war - items she has read in the newspaper or heard on the radio); after the question, he often faints. She also occasionally criticizes her mother for preferring to be a stay-at-home mom and quitting college to raise her. A running gag that Quino often used was Mafalda asking a question in the first panel; in the next you would see her running from the pharmacy with some pills for her father ('Nervocalm').
• Mamá ("Mom") (Raquel, 6 October 1964) and Papá ("Dad") (unnamed, 29 September 1964): Mafalda's parents are a very normal couple, without any particular distinguishing features. Dad works in a very run-of-the-mill insurance office and is obsessed with his plants - to the point of hating ants that sometimes threaten them (Mafalda takes a more moderate approach to dealing with them). Mom is a common homemaker who gave up her university education for the life of a housewife. This contrasts with their daughter's personality.
• Felipe (19 January 1965): A dreamer who hates school but often wages intense internal battles with his conscience, innate sense of responsibility, and top ten school grades that he hates (*shows Mafalda a note where his teacher compliments on his grades* "Those are the worst happy news I've ever been given!"). He loves to play cowboys and read comics, especially the Lone Ranger. He was inspired by journalist Jorge Timossi, a friend of Quino's, and is one year older than Mafalda and most of the others. His most notable physical features are his long face and buck teeth. He has a crush on a girl, Muriel, but he is too shy to talk to her (akin to Charlie Brown's "little red haired girl"). Susanita, Mafalda's close friend, seems to have feelings for him, but is embarrassed to recognize it. He is perhaps the only friend of Mafalda who doesn't exhibit political or socio-economic inclinations.
• Manolito (Manuel Goreiro, Jr., 29 March 1965): The son of a Spanish (Galician) shopkeeper, more concerned about business and money than anything else. He is not very bright in school, except for math, and hates The Beatles, this often being the subject of jokes by his friends. A true entrepreneur, he's always thinking on ways to publicize his father's store, from writing slogans on walls to making his friends listen to advertisements ("But before the joke, a few words from our sponsor.") His most notable physical feature is his brush-like hair, which grows few minutes after he cuts it ("Dunno why the HECK I go to the hairstylist!!!!"). Working in the family business means that he doesn't have as much time for the enjoyments of childhood as his friends do - notable is a strip in which his friends are at the sea and the mountain during their summer vacation and he is sadly soaking in a sink behind the store. While good-hearted, his parents are rather brusque people; once his dad affectionately hugged him and ruffled his hair, but Mafalda thought Mr. Goreiro had beaten him. Mrs. Goreiro often does beat Manolito with a slipper when he wakes up in the middle of the night and delivers a harangue against the school. He idolizes his older brother, a former conscript in the Army who later goes to work abroad; he looks exactly like an older Manolito, which once scared the hell out of his friends.
• Susanita (Susana Beatriz Clotilde Chirusi, 6 June 1965): A frivolous girl with curly blond hair, and Mafalda's best female friend despite their bickering ("Well... you know... I'd rather freak out at you than at a complete stranger" *hug*). Her only goals in life are to find a rich and good-looking husband when she grows up, and to have a son who becomes a doctor. Her mother is a common Argentine stereotype of the time, called "chismosa" (a gossip lady), which is the typical neighbor who butts into other people's lives and talks about them on the phone. Susanita has inherited this trait - much to her friends' chairgrin, since when she starts speaking, it's real hard to shut her up ("Mafaldaaaaa... Did I tell you that my incommunication problem is that I can't incommunicate myself? *sobs*) another is when she says: "Children... are the only I want to have in my life, the car, the television and the freezer, will be gotten by my husband, don't think I´m stupid." She and Manolito sometimes have a very tense relationship, and she also seems to have a slight crush on Felipe. Susanita is a bigoted right wing social conservative, content with the traditional order of society where people shouldn't mix between classes or races. An aspiring socialite, she has no problems with social injustice and is usually oblivious to Mafalda's rants and complaints, with few and disturbing exceptions ("...And we'll organize banquets in which there will be poultry and turkey and pork and all of that! That way we'll raise funds to buy for the poor flour and semolina and noodles and all that rubbish they eat").
• Miguelito (Miguel Pitti, 1966): About two years younger than Felipe and one year younger than Mafalda and the others. He is somewhat selfish but has a good heart and is more naïve than the others, since he's an only child and his mother is very strict and tends to overprotect him. Apparently his grandfather is an Italian refugé and was a supporter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, as Miguelito (too young to know better) sometimes speaks of him in high terms, much to Mafalda's amazement ("Lucky to have a grandpa opening my eyes, so...").
• Guille (Guillermo, 1968): Mafalda's little brother. He loves soup, drawing on walls, his pacifier ('on the rocks' - his almost pathologic dependence on it is a common gag), and has a crush on Brigitte Bardot. For most of the strip he has a lisp (presumably the lisp is Quino's way of communicating Guille's "baby-talk"), which he slowly drops as he grows. He and Mafalda have a pet turtle called Burocracia (Bureaucracy). Guille is very opinionated, straightforward and loves to ask his parents and older sister about the outside world. He is another one of the characters inspired by someone in Quino's real life - his nephew Guillermo Lavado.
• Libertad (15 February 1970): A diminutive girl whose name means "Freedom". Everybody makes the obvious remark ("reach your own stupid conclusions", as she says). She's the same age as Mafalda and her classmate but has the same physical size as Guille. The daughter of left-wing parents, she sometimes indulges in political harangues, without very well understanding the ideas involved, as she tends to be a literalist. Her mother works as a translator of French. She likes to keep things simple, but when she tries to make it clear, she ends up confusing everyone in her surroundings.

While the strip ran, the characters aged, albeit very slowly. Soup is a drink that is made by combining ingredients, such as meat, vegetables and beans in stock or hot water, until the flavor is extracted, forming a broth. ... The James Bond 007 gun logo James Bond 007 is a fictional British agent [1] created in 1952 by writer Ian Fleming, featured in several novels and short stories. ... The Beatles were an English rock band from Liverpool whose members were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. ... The running gag is a popular hallmark of comic and serious forms of entertainment. ... October 6 is the 279th day of the year (280th in leap years). ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... September 29 is the 272nd day of the year (273rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... January 19 is the 19th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... The Lone Ranger was an early, long-running radio and television show based on characters created by George W. Trendle of Detroit, Michigan and developed by writer Fran Stryker of Buffalo, New York. ... March 29 is the 88th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (89th in leap years). ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... Galicia (Spain) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... June 6 is the 157th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (158th in leap years), with 208 days remaining // 1508 - Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, is defeated in Friulia by Venetian forces; he is forced to sign a three-year truce and cede several territories to Venice 1513... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... Social conservatism is a belief in traditional morality and social mores and the desire to preserve these in present day society, often through civil law or regulation. ... Dictator was the title of a magistrate in ancient Rome appointed by the Senate to rule the state in times of emergency. ... Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) was the prime minister and dictator of Italy from 1922 until 1943, when he was overthrown. ... Brigitte Bardot (born September 28, 1934) is a French actress, former fashion model, nationalist, singer, animal rights activist, and considered the embodiment of the 1950s and 1960s sex kitten. ... February 15 is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... Look up freedom in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Leftism redirects here. ...

Books and translations

Most strips that were not too closely tied to current, now forgotten events have chronologically been republished in twelve small books simply named "Mafalda" and numbered from one to twelve, with two strips on each page. This excludes the very first ones, published in Primera Plana, but never reprinted until 1989.

Mafalda in Spanish

1. 1966
2. 1967
3. 1968
4. 1968
5. 1969
6. 1970
7. 1972
8. 1973
9. 1974
10. 1974

• Mafalda Inédita (Unpublished Mafalda) (1989)
• 10 Años con Mafalda (Ten years with Mafalda) (1991)
• Todo Mafalda (The Whole Mafalda) (1992)

Mafalda with Felipe and Susanita in Greek

Although most strips were translated into different European languages as well as into simplified and traditional Chinese, there were only a few publications in English. In the United States of America, his only published work is The World of Quino (1986). Beginning in 2004, however, Quino's publisher in Argentina, Ediciones de la Flor, started publishing English-language collections of Mafalda strips under the series title Mafalda & Friends. This is the cover of the third volume of collected Mafalda work by Quino This work is copyrighted. ... This is the cover of the third volume of collected Mafalda work by Quino This work is copyrighted. ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday. ... For the Stargate SG-1 episode, see 1969 (Stargate SG-1). ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... This is the cover of the Greek edition of fifth volume of collected Mafalda works by Quino This work is copyrighted. ... This is the cover of the Greek edition of fifth volume of collected Mafalda works by Quino This work is copyrighted. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Adaptations

Quino has opposed adapting Mafalda for cinema or theater; however, two series of animated shorts featuring Mafalda have been produced. The first, a series of 260 90-second films, was produced by Daniel Mallo for Argentine television starting in 1972. These were adapted into a full-length movie by Carlos Márquez in 1982. It remains relatively unknown. In 1993 Cuban filmmaker Juan Padrón, a close friend of Quino, directed 104 short animated Mafalda films, backed by Spanish producers. Juan Padrón, born in 1947 is Cubas Premier Animation Director. ...

Trivia

Mafalda has occasionally been compared to Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown, most notably by Umberto Eco in 1968, for reasons Quino states he does not understand. Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) was a 20th-century American cartoonist best known worldwide for his Peanuts comic strip. ... Charles Charlie Brown (occasionally called Chuck by Peppermint Patty and when she first appeared, Marcie) is a character in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. ... Umberto Eco (born January 5, 1932) is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa) and his many essays. ...

Some people think Mafalda is dedicated to Nancy, reference in the strip where Miguelito buys a magazine and it has Nancy on the cover, then he tells Mafalda that she looks like Nancy, to what she replies his grandma does. Nancy is an American daily comic strip written and drawn by Ernie Bushmiller. ...

See also

• Argentine humour

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External links

• (Spanish) History of Mafalda.
• Mafalda at the Internet Movie Database
• Mafalda Online.