Mafalda

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.

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!". From left to right: Mafalda, Felipe, Miguelito (above) and Manolito (below).



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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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, war and sex - 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'). Mafalda is also somewhat tomboyish at times, mostly to make a contrast with the more traditionally feminine Susanita, her first female friend.

* 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. He is obsessed with his house plants and wages a continuous war with the plant-eating ants in his apartment. (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. Their stereotyped 'normality' serves as a contrasting backdrop to their daughter's assertive and nonconformist personality. It's assumed that Mom's name is Raquel, since Mafalda in one strip says "Lo siento Raquel, pero en momentos como este, "Mamá" es solo su pseudónimo" (I'm sorry Raquel (Rachel), but at times like these, "Mom" is merely a pseudonym).

* Felipe (19 January 1965): A dreamer who is deeply scared of school, even though he's the brightest member of the gang. He often wages intense internal battles with his conscience, innate sense of responsibility, and top school grades that he hates (*shows Mafalda a note where his teacher compliments on his grades* "That is the worst good 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, the latter being inherited from his mother. He has a crush on a girl from the neighborhood, 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 too embarrassed to admit to them. He is perhaps the only friend of Mafalda who doesn't exhibit political or socio-economic inclinations - not surprisingly, his goal in life is to become an engineer, like his father. He shows great ability to play chess and, like Mafalda, he likes The Beatles

* Manolito (Manuel Goreiro, Jr., 29 March 1965): The son of a Spanish (Galician) shopkeeper, more concerned with business and money than anything else. He represents the capitalist ideas. 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 a 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; in one strip his friends are seen at the beach and the mountains during their summer vacation; he is sadly soaking in a sink behind the store. Although they're 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 early morning 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, this once gave his friends a shock.

* 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 (""Children... are all I want to get in life. The car, television and the freezer, will be gotten by my husband, don't think I´m stupid."), and to have a son who becomes a doctor. Her mother is a common Latin-American 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*). 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 for the poor so they'll be able to buy 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 of a very strict mother who tends to overprotect him ("B-B-But Miguelitoooo! The cliff! Be careful, honey!" "... It breaks, Mom?"). 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 who opens my eyes, so..."). His comments could be understood as a symbol of immaturity, or as surrealist expressions ("How can time go round the corners in square clocks?").

* 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 drops as he grows. He and Mafalda have a pet turtle called Burocracia ('Bureaucracy'). Guille is very opinionated and straightforward and loves to ask his parents and sister about the outside world. Guille is the comic strip counterpart of the "Summer of Love" generation - he has hippie tendencies (shown when he's dragged by mom to get a bath, and he makes the "Peace and Love" symbol to Mafalda), and is a rebellious child - much more than anyone else in his sister's group, even Libertad. He is another one of the characters inspired by someone in Quino's real life - his nephew, the musician Guillermo Lavado.

* Libertad (15 February 1970): A diminutive girl whose name means "Freedom", and everybody makes the obvious remark ("reach your own stupid conclusions", as she says). She's of the same age as Mafalda and her classmates 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 French translator. She likes to keep things simple, but when she tries to make it clear, she ends up confusing everyone in her surroundings. She's the most European-like of the bunch, and tends to get in trouble at the slightest provocation with anyone around her.

The characters aged while the script ran, albeit very slowly. Guille is the character that changed the most - from a newborn baby to a 3 or 4-year-old boy. The rest of the gang only went through minor changes, mostly due to the evolution of Quino's drawing style.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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. While Eco thought of Mafalda and Charlie Brown as the voices unheard of children in the northern and southern hemispheres, Quino saw Mafalda as a socio-political strip, firmly rooted on family values. This is one of the reasons adults play a starring role in the strip, while they are never seen in Charlie Brown's universe.

Some people think the appearance of Mafalda's character is dedicated to U.S. comic strip character Nancy − there is a 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. Mafalda replies: "¡Tu abuelita!" ("Your granny!"), a phrase similar to "Your mama!" in English.

Source



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