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MAURICIO DE SOUZA, 1963 |
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Inspired on one of his daughters -as a matter of fact, all characters created by this artist are inspired on childres or in the child sometime adults were, like in the case of PELEZIÑO-, the QUADRINHOS (name given to the comic strips and books in Brazil) artist MAURICIO DE SOUZA created one of the most important character of brazilian comic strips; we are talking about Mônica. Inicially, the character was iontroduced as supporting one in the comic strip of CEBOLINHA (in english it would translate it into LITTLE ONION, another childish comic book character created in 1960) in the year 1963. Mônica started to be on the spotlight and very soon she took a starring role on her own comic strip, surpassing in success and fame all of his adventure partners. |
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At the very beginning, the character was much more agressive and always hit his friends -specially CEBOLINHA and CASCAO- with her stuffed rabbit doll. But this cahanged when a group of children readers of her adventures object this violence and make a stand to stop reading the comic strip if the character wouldn't treat her little friends in a better way. Although Mônica's attacks to his partners diminished, the character kept her bossy aspect and she became the leader of the gang. |
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In
1970,
Mônica
jumped
alone to her own comic book magazine. The sales figures has always
been extraordinary and they increased even more when MAURICIO DE SOUZA PRODUCTIONS (MSP)
joined GRUPO EDITORIAL O GLOBO in 1987 with the mere porpuse of
beating the american company DISNEY in the QUADRINHOS market. Mônica's success allowed MSP to diversify in such a way that the company has occupied different areas of the brazilian market, through their own products and licenses they offer to use their main character. So we can see Mônica in disposal diapers, shampoos, soaps, toys, clothes, etc. |
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Likewise, MSP enterprise has became in the fourth animation producer of the world; counting among their movies a long series of animated films of Mônica and the members of her TURMA (the comic book and strip is named TURMA DO Mônica which means Mônica's gang). Mônica's
popularity has been so big that in the 80s several video games for
the Sega's 8
Bits console Mega System were made in Brazil; this games were a hack
version of another one titled WONDERBOY. Also, at the beginnign of
this XXI century, Mônica
took the same role that once MAFALDA
did in the 70s: be the speaker of UNICEF to promote Children's
Rights. |
| Besides the long list of products and licenses of this character, Mônica has theme parks located on different cities of the Carioca nation and she is considered for some people as the portuguese spoken version of MAFALDA in Latin America, even though she has not reached either the critical sharpness or the precocity of the little argentinian childish character; although both of them are well appreciated by both the experts and fans of our comic creations. | |
