Mafalda is a typical comic-strip kid, endlessly curious about the world around her and often asking her parents awkward questions. She even looks a bit like the protagonists of Peanuts and Nancy. But the resemblance ends there. Unlike Charlie Brown and Nancy, Mafalda follows the news; but her logic is that of a six-year-old, and her questions about the adult world often send her parents into a panic.

Created by Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known as Quino, Mafalda was a comic strip that ran in Argentina from 1964 to 1973 and was popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world (although it was banned in neighboring Chile). Now, Archipelago Books is publishing the first North American English-language edition of the comics, with the second volume due out on December 1, under its Elsewhere Editions imprint. In addition, Netflix is adapting Mafalda into an animated series, written and directed by Juan José Campanella, which will premiere in 2027.

During Mafalda’s original run, Argentina was ruled by a military dictatorship with little tolerance for dissent. “The history of Mafalda is the history of Quino saying things you can’t say in a dictatorship,” said Frank Wynne, who is translating the series. In 1966, when Mafalda was running in the newspaper El Mundo, the Argentine government was overthrown. “The day after the coup, the only opinion piece in the newspaper was a single panel cartoon of Mafalda looking slightly hopeless,” Wynne said. She is looking out at the reader and saying, “So THIS is what they taught me in school....” The implication is that the lessons about democracy and peace were lies.

It’s not all that heavy. Mafalda mixes the politics of the day with more typical childhood activities such as playing with dolls, going to school, and complaining about food (her hatred of soup is a running gag), and Quino often takes a whimsical approach. When Mafalda notices that Argentina is on the bottom of the globe, Quino literally flips her whole world upside down. Mafalda reasons that Argentina is an underdeveloped country because the knowledge is falling out of people’s heads, but she ultimately solves the problem by turning the globe upside down, at which point everyone else turns right side up again.

“Mafalda asks questions about the world that most of the adults she knows can neither understand nor explain,” Wynne told PW. A lot of the humor in the comic comes from her parents’ frustration with being peppered with questions about communism, capitalism, the Vietnam War, Argentina’s brain drain, and other issues, causing sleepless nights and trips to the pharmacy for nerve tonic. Quino shied away from naming specific politicians and actions, which is one reason the strip lasted so long. This also gives the comic a timeless feeling. In the final strip in the first book, Mafalda rolls up her sleeves, spits on her hands, and demands, “Where do I have to start pushing to get this country moving forward?”

Mafalda survived as long as it did, Wynne said, because the strip is about a child, and because she never mentions the government or its leaders by name. In 1974, after the return of Juan Perón, Quino ended the strip and moved to Spain. He initially said that he had run out of ideas, but, Wynne said, “He did eventually admit that he stopped drawing it because they would kill him. One of the most common questions he was asked was, What would Mafalda be like when she grew up?, and he said, ‘Dead.’ There would be no way for someone like Mafalda to grow up in a country like that and keep asking questions.”

Like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, Mafalda was not created for children, but it is a comic about children, and editor Emma Raddatz believes Mafalda has a lot to offer readers of all ages. “We think Mafalda should be read by both children and adults,” she told PW. “We like to publish children’s books that young people can pick up at different moments of their lives and understand in fresh ways. Mafalda often baffles the adults around her. In Book two, she asks her dad whether the New Year really exists, or, she wonders, is it like democracy, something she hopes for and expects but never sees with her own eyes? Mafalda's dad tosses his hands in the air and cries out in exasperation. We all love this baffling.

“Children may be confused while they read Mafalda,” Raddatz continued, “but so are the adults around them when children repeat Mafalda’s questions about time, capitalism, war, and freedom. It is nice for parents and kids to meet each other at these moments of confusion, or to share in Mafalda’s hopeful epiphanies.”

The series and its heroine also continue to be relevant. As Wynne said, “Mafalda still reflects our world, because our world has not really improved very much.”