September 27, 2004

Mafalda is 40. Sort of like Peanuts with a political edge, Mafalda is immensely popular in Latin America and still a steady seller although Quino drew the last strips in the 70s.

Once rated among the most influential Argentines, Mafalda has been the subject of serious intellectual discussion (pdf) and turned a generation of Argentine children against soup. The collected strips have been translated into many languages, but oddly, not into English until this year.

posted by Plegmund 20 years ago
  • My ex is from Buenos Aires and she loves this stuff. Actually, even with my poor Spanish (I am told that I sound like Tarzan) you can make out the meaning of most of the strips. Good find Plegmund.
  • OMG! I read these when I was but a young teen. Chupa! Chupa!
  • Growing up in Quebec, I watched animated versions of the strip on provincial TV, mostly between the animated movies (Tintin, Lucky Luke) they'd show in the summer/chrismas time. An ex of mine also had the whole comic in a big book. I must say, in terms of repetitive jokes (So many Chinese, soup as oppressor of children), I prefer Peanuts.
  • Ah. Mafalda was amazing! I often found jokes from Mafalda in Calvin and Hobbes and other strips. Quino's comic strip was subtly political, and has a lot of followers just because of that.
  • Mafalda was a true work of art. And its' political subtlety seems childlike today, but by the end of the strip, was enough to win you a one-way military helicopter trip... afair, never saw a bus filled with granaderos speeding towards some manifestation on any Peanuts strip, as it did on Mafalda. Quino ended up fleeing to Spain. Check out his excellent non-translation needed humor here. SOPA!
  • great post plegmund