At long last the entirety of Quino’s classic Argentine comic strip Mafalda will receive worldwide English release. Published by Elsewhere Editions and translated by Frank Wynne, the first of five planned 120-page hardcover volumes will hit shelves April 8, 2025.
Created by Quino (real name: Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón), Mafalda is a comic strip that ran in magazines and newspapers in Argentina from September 1964 to June 1973. Inspired by Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and Chic Young’s Blondie, the gag strip featured precocious six-year-old Mafalda, her family and friends in stories that satirised the world as well as the Argentina of the time – which was then undergoing rapid economic and social change, political instability, and intermittent military coups. A heady mixture of wholesome gags interspersed with biting satire and social commentary, the themes in the strip included progressivism, feminism, humanism, democracy, and world peace. Although the strip ended in 1973 and Mafalda‘s creator passed away in 2020, the strip remains a critical landmark in world comics whose influence continues to this day.
The strip has been translated and become beloved beyond its borders – finding success and eager audiences across Latin America, Asia and Europe. In August, to celebrate sixty years of the character, French publisher Glenat released a tribute book of homages by a collective of female cartoonists including major names like Pénélope Bagieu, Florence Cestac, and Aude Picault. Some of the languages the comic has been made available include French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Armenian, and Hebrew. While an English translation was produced domestically in Argentina, up to now there has been no worldwide release.
The comic has also been adapted into animation and film. In the 1970s a slate of 260 cartoon shorts featuring the character was produced which were later tied together into a film. In August 2024, it was announced that Netflix had picked up a new Mafalda animated series that will be produced, directed and showrun by award winning Argentinian director Juan José Campanella.
In 2020, The Economist wrote about the comic and its influence in Latin America following the author’s death:
“Mafalda was more political than Peanuts and more modern than Asterix, but she enjoyed similar popularity….Mafalda has sold more than 20m books as well as T-shirts, mugs and other memorabilia. The original comic strips reflect a particular milieu and time: middle-class Argentina in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. But much of Mafalda’s wit is universal and feels fresh even today. She plays a prominent role in a long and continuing tradition of political satire in Latin America.”
The English edition is handled by multi-award winning Irish writer and translator Frank Wynne. The bulk of his career to date has been literary translation but in the 1980s and 1990s he was a comics editor at London-based British publisher Fleetway and worked on the influential comics magazine Deadline (most famous for introducing Alan Martin & Jamie Hewlett’s Tank Girl to the world).
An imprint of Archipelago Books, Elsewhere Editions is a children’s book publisher that specialises in translated works. Founded in 2017 it has build a strong catalogue of visually eclectic children’s illustrated books from across the world. The ambitious five-book Mafalda collection will be its first foray into publishing comics.
The synopsis for the first book in the forthcoming translation:
“Six-year-old Mafalda loves democracy and hates soup. What democratic sector do cats fall into? she asks, then unfurls a toilet paper red carpet and gives her very own presidential address. Mafalda’s precociousness and passion stump all grown-ups around her. Dissident and rebellious, she refuses to abandon the world to her parents’ generation, who seem so lost.
“Alongside the irascible Mafalda, readers will meet her eclectic entourage: dreamy Felipe and gossipy Susanita, young-capitalist Manolito and rebellious Miguelito. You can clearly see Mafalda is small, when she is dreaming in bed or soaring on a swing — “As usual, as soon as you put your feet on the ground, the fun finishes,” Mafalda grumbles — but her hopes for the world and her heart are as huge as can be. Generations of readers have discovered themselves in Mafalda’s boundlessly adventurous spirit, and learned to question, rebel, and hope.”
English (US) · 