Talk:Mafalda

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[edit] Rating

200.38.162.21 21:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)I find it insanely funny that this article is rated as "Comics of unknown quality". Mafalda is the best known comic of all Latin America, of all time. This, of course, being America-centric wikipedia should be a clue of why nobody has ever heard of her. Here's an idea - not knowing about something doesn't make it any less important.



Regarding the following text from the entry: "She has occasionally been compared to Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown, most notably by Umberto Eco in 1968, for reasons Quino doesn't understand. This comparison has made publication of "Mafalda" in English difficult." It would be nice to know the reasons stated by Eco and by Quino. A reference would be nice, though I suspect where Eco might say something (I will look it up). An explanation of why this comparison has made publication in English difficult would be nice, I really do not understand this, quite on the contrary. --Cangelis 14:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


I agree with Cangelis... I am removing the statement "This comparison has made publication of 'Mafalda' in English difficult," since it doesn't seem to make sense. Perhaps the author of this statement could include a reference or an explanation later in the article. Luiscolorado 13:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not at home and without any resource here, but my father has Todo Mafalda with a forword by Eco. It is sourced as Article paru en Italie aux Editions Bompiani en 1968 et traduit en français en février 1989 dans le "Magazine littéraire".
I have but vague remembrances that Quino's answer to that may be quoted in Mafalda Intégral. As of this being a reason why it was hardly translated, I don't have a clue and I can only hope that I didn't write that myself. :-)
--Valmi ✒ 11:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I googled to get the the following quote: "Since our children are soon to become through our choice a multitude of Mafaldas, it would be rash not to treat Mafalda with the respect a real person deserves." source http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_2000_July/ai_63845121 --Anonymous

Here's a partial translation: "To understand her, it's useful to trace parallels with another great character whose influence on her is not small: Charlie Brown. ...Charlie Brown belongs to a prosperous country, an opulent society in which he tries desperately to be integrated, begging for happiness and solidarity; Mafalda belongs to a country thick with social contrasts, which at all costs seeks to integrate her and have her happy, but she rejects and denies all attempts." Eco goes on quite a bit in that vein. His main point is that Mafalda is a better heroine for the times than Charlie Brown. He was writing the introduction to the first Italian edition. I don't know why Quino would blame this for the failure to find American publishers! Zompist 19:31, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


Why does this article talk about Schultz and Charlie Brown in the first paragrph. Also a comment about Felipe's dream girl that refers to Charlie Brown. Shoudnt all this be included as a subtopic? When i read the article, i found it a bit annoying how it refers to Schultz as if it wasnt completely independent. (Antonio.sierra 07:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC))
I was just reading this interview: [1]. I don't know if it's a reliable source (it looks like it is) but here's a quick translation of one of the questions:
Your Mafalda strip has been compared to Schulz's Peanuts...
Of course, because I began writing it on demand to promote a brand of appliances and they asked me to make it similar. I bought all of Schulz's books I could find in Buenos Aires, I studied them and tried to make something like it, but adapted to our own reality. The campaign never worked because the magazine that intended to publish the strip noticed it was an undercover advertisement, so I kept it stored in a folder until a year later, in 1964, when I saved them for the magazine Primera Plana.
If this is real, then this part of the article is definitely untrue: "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." It would then be appropriate to include a section with Eco's comparisons between the strips. 24.232.16.91 01:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Felipe in love

I think it is worth mentioning the fact that Felipe is in love with the daughter of the pharmacist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 57.66.78.1 (talk • contribs)

Why do you think that's so important? She appears in only a few strips of one volume. Mariano(t/c) 06:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe because he is Felipe. Or maybe because he was in love with the pharmacist's daughter himself.--FocalPoint 16:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nervocalm

So is it pills or drops? I think in some strips it's implied that it's drops. Felipe, though, takes it as pills ("nervocalm grageas"). So which is it? :o) Vince In Milan 03:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

For your convineance Nervocalm is availablein both pills and drops formats. BTW, I guess Quino didn't register the brand, for there are now a couple of products with that name. Mariano(t/c) 09:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Translation register

Am I the only one wondering if words like "we´re screwed" and "bitching out" are really appropriate to 1960s 5 year olds. I´m not denying that they´re appropriate translations now but they wouldn't've been then and I´m wondering if we shouldn't keep that in mind.--Shadebug 12:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to have the original... Mariano(t/c) 14:35, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
We do, for "we're screwed"; it's one of the pictorial examples. I checked with my wife, a native speaker (Peruvian) and professional copy editor; she thinks "We're screwed" is fine as a colloquial translation. (Sonamos is literally "We're dreaming", but this is an idiom, apparently Argentine.) Slang is hard to translate, but the kids in Mafalda definitely don't speak like 5-year-olds, and more than the Peanuts kids do. Zompist 22:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
True enough but keep in mind the 1960s angle too. I just don't think it conveys the time frame or the message. It's more somewhere between "we're screwed" and "we have to stop kidding ourselves". I'm not old enough but I'd say that a politically interested 1960s adult would not say "we're screwed" and would certainly not bitch anybody out.--Shadebug 19:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

200.38.162.21 21:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)"Sonamos" is not "we are dreaming". It's "We sounded", a phrase that can't be translated. It basically means "We are in trouble". It doesn't mean "We are screwed".

You beat me to that... "we're dreaming" would be "soñamos", with a Ñ. I still agree that "we're screwed" is not correct, especially since "sonamos" is a rather old-fashioned way of saying "we're in trouble".

I think "sonamos" is more "we're screwed" that "we are in trouble", because it has a final connotation. This porteño slang is a reference to the sound objects make when smashed, broked or putted down.

--Damifb 16:28, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oedipus Guille

I´m surprised to see no reference to Guille´s intense posessiveness towards his mother, any reason for that?--Shadebug 12:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Probably because it's a typical thing from kids his age. And its only shown in a couple of strips. Mariano(t/c) 14:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] House of Malfada in Bs As?

I was reading news from Clarin, and said that legislation had created a house of Mafalda in Buenos Aires. I was just wondering whether I was reading that correctly since my Spanish isn't that great, and whether it's important enough to be added in the mafalda page. 132.239.90.173 20:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

If you were reading this online, do you have a URL? Zompist 22:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
[[2]] 128.54.129.225 05:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
That's Quino's house, not Mafalda's. --Mariano(t/c) 12:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mafalda's mother name

This article doesn't mention Mafalda's mother real name, which is Raquel. Mafalda does mention it once in early strips. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Juanchito2006 (talk • contribs) 02:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

Yes it does. On the other hand it also mentions Mafalda's father real name, which I'm quite sure I never saw in the strip. Can anybody confirm? --Valmi ✒ 20:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mafalda's Father

Why this article doesnt make mention to Mafalda's Dad? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.45.111.69 (talk) 04:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC).

Huh? It does. Zompist 17:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
It even mentions his name. ;-) --Valmi ✒ 02:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Political Wordplay

Shouldn't an article about Mafalda make reference to the fact that about 90% of the strips are political in nature? Let me give you the very best example (found on Mafalda 3) Miguelito is tip-toeing, and a bypasser asks Mafalda why that is, and she responds "Well, he's just found out that in the other half of the world, people are sleeping, so he doesn't want to wake them up" and then she ponders "He still hasn't figured out that in this world one half is incapable of hearing the other" making a reference to the bipolar political map of the sixties.

I've read the whole of Mafalda and I don´t think that 90% figure is right. It is much less, actually. Besides, the article already says: "usually dealing with politics, war and sex".

--Damifb 16:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'd say it's 95% political :) It's really hard to single out strips missing any political allusion (however, it's not about specific events, if that's what you mean), and the 5% that doesn't deals with human behavior and relations; usually the two subjects are interrelated. You know, there are cases here in Greece (where Mafalda is highly popular) in which simply mentioning the comic puts you in the left-wing activist category! For sure it gives the discussion a political turn. Just my small contribution... Daprof 01:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi my friend. Do you have ´´Toda Mafalda´´ (The Whole of Mafalda) in Greece? Just curious... --Damifb 19:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
No, unfortunately... Only the 12 small books -- and some other albums with generic sketches by Quino. 147.102.142.90 00:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC) -> Daprof 00:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Concerning citations and improvement

Many of the things mentioned in the section "Characters" are completely out of focus and in some cases downright wrong (eg. Mafalda's hate for James Bond ???). I'd like to make serious contribution to the article but I have to take into account two things beforehand...

i. Do the 12 small books offer sufficient knowledge of the characters and their evolution? I think they do, but after all the comic is not exactly character-specific... however I'd like to listen to somebody who has read more than the 12 books.

ii. How can we cite specific strips? Is there a general Wikipedia guideline? In this case we cannot use distinctive "marks", as there are no dates or titles.

If there's someone who can help me with these issues (especially the second one), I could attempt a big scale improvement within the next month. Daprof 01:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

There's not much more to Mafalda than the 12 volumes. There are a couple more strips in Toda Mafalda though. Strips are uniqueli distinguished with a small number at the first (last?) box of the strip. --Mariano(t/c) 01:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
The James Bond reference is correct, though it'd take awhile to track down the specific strip. It's only one or two strips, though, nothing like the repeated theme of her disliking soup. The stuff that isn't in the 12 small books was published in Mafalda Inédita (as well as Todo Mafalda-- it's about as long as one of the small books.Zompist 07:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both! I also want to correct myself, when I said "the comic is not exactly character-specific" I meant to write that it's not action-specific; it relies heavily on the characters, but rather on what they think and say instead of what they do, so it can't be very helpful for an encyclopedia article to mention traits that appeared 2 or 3 times (James Bond is a good example of this, or Guille's "crush on Brigitte Bardot", come on... this is stuff for a fan page or forum).

Cheers again. Daprof 11:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you: those topics are not that recurrent, and probably unimportant. --Mariano(t/c) 12:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

As promised, I begun working on the article (so far I've only changed the intro a bit). I plan to try to embed "Trivia" in an "Overview" (will be tricky), do something about the citations, and heavily hack the characters section (have a look at french or spanish wikipedia to see what I mean). Daprof 12:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)