Maitena Burundarena (Buenos Aires, May 1, 1962),[1] better known as Maitena, is an Argentine cartoonist.
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Maitena drew erotic strips for several European publications such as Makoki, in Barcelona.[2] In Argentina, she worked in Sex Humor, Fierro, Humor, and Cerdos y Peces.[1]
She also worked as a graphic illustrator for Argentine magazines and newspapers, as well as publishers specialized in school texts. She was also a TV screenwriter, restaurateur and bar owner.[1]
Her first strip, Flo, was published in Tiempo Argentino, a Buenos Aires newspaper. Her work was compiled in a book called Y en este rincón, las mujeres.[3]
In 1993, Para Ti -a leading Argentine women's magazine- approached her to do a weekly humor page. Such was the origin of Mujeres Alteradas ("Women on the Edge"), a comic strip now published widely throughout the world. In 1999, Mujeres Alteradas was 'translated' from Argentine Spanish to European Spanish and started appearing in El País Semanal, the Sunday edition of El País, from Madrid. Mujeres Alteradas has been translated into several languages.[1]
The strips have been collected into five books published by Lumen in Spain and Sudamericana, in Argentina. Mujeres Alteradas has sold 150,000 books just in Argentina.[1]
Between 1998 and 2003, Maitena also published a daily comic panel in La Nación´s humor section, under the name Superadas.[3] This strip is currently published in several Argentine newspapers such as La Voz del Interior (Córdoba) and Los Andes (Mendoza). The strip is also published in several other international newspapers.
Towards the end of 2002, selected strips were published as a book named Superadas 1.[4]
In June 2003, Maitena began to publish the Sunday strip Curvas peligrosas in the La Nación.[3]
Unlike many fellow Argentine humourists (such as Quino in Mafalda, Caloi, Roberto Fontanarrosa or Rep), who rely on their characters' circumstances, Maitena focuses on the inner feelings of the female world.[5]
She is of Basque (maitena is Basque for "the most beloved") and Polish ancestry. Her father, Carlos Burundarena, was a Basque-stock conservative academician, the last minister of education of the Argentine dictatorship of the 1980s (he was previously chancellor of the National Technological University). Her mother was an architect with Polish ancestry.[6] Maitena lives in Argentina and Uruguay. She is married and has three children, aged 26, 24 and six.[1]