18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Mafalda, Argentina's Very Opinionated Cartoon Heroine, is Coming to America
When the Argentine cartoonist best known as Quino died in 2020 at age 88, he left behind a child who questioned authority, hated soup and belonged to the world.
Mafalda, the eponymous star of Joaquín Salvador Lavado's beloved comic strip, is by any measure a global sensation: statues in Argentina and Spain; a handful of animated TV credits (including an upcoming Netflix series); calendars, coffee mugs and makeup bags adorned with her trademark bob and bow tie everywhere from Mexico City to Milan.
And yet Mafalda is a relative unknown in this country, with few translations in English and little to no distribution of the comic in the United States. A forthcoming five-volume collection from Elsewhere Editions is set to change that. For those who see in Quino's work a road map for navigating a polarized political climate, the first volume, due June 10, can't come soon enough.
'This is seriously the comic that the country needs in this moment,' said Ricardo Siri, who grew up reading 'Mafalda' in Argentina and now lives in Vermont. (He is also the author of 'Macanudo' and other work under the pen name Liniers.) 'Mafalda has her point of view, but she always accepts as friends people who are very different from her.'
When wider American audiences do meet Mafalda, they'll find a girl who resembles Ernie Bushmiller's iconic character Nancy, but whose antics are entirely her own. Mafalda reaches for outer space on a seltzer-fueled jetpack, and is open to all kinds of experience. Even if she's unlikely to help Democrats and Republicans get along, her brand of innocent but opinionated curiosity could show the so-called adults in the room how to do better by future generations.
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