Monica's Gang

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The main characters of the gang. From left to right: Monica, Jimmy Five, Smudge and Maggy.

Monica's Gang (originally titled Turma da Mônica in Portuguese) is a popular Brazilian comic book series. The series was created by Mauricio de Sousa, who signs his work as "Mauricio". Plots are centered on the adventures of a group of seven-year-old friends in the fictional neighborhood of "Limoeiro" in São Paulo. The neighborhood was inspired by the neighborhood of Cambuí, in Campinas and the city of Mogi das Cruzes, where de Sousa lived his childhood.^[1]

History

Mauricio began his comic universe in 1959 with a newspaper comic strip titled Bidu, printed on Folha da Manhã, the newspaper where Mauricio worked as police reporter.^[2] Cebolinha followed in 1960. The character Mônica first saw the light of day in 1963. Comic books featuring the characters started appearing: "Bidu" (1960 - cancelled after a few editions),Mônica (1970), Cebolinha (1972), and many more. The stories have been translated to several languages and sold in dozens of countries. The series has been running steadily for over forty years, and generated uncountable spin-offs in the realms of merchandising, animated cartoons, video games, theme parks, and more. Mauricio employs a large staff on his company Estúdios Mauricio de Sousa to execute these projects.
The characters are drawn in a simple cartoon style and the stories often finish with a happy ending. In the end of each comic book, there are three panels with a quick joke, such as newspaper strips. Compared with the Peanuts characters, Monica's gang is less reflective and a bit more fantastic, less psychological and more active.
Characters often break the fourth wall, acknowledging they are performing or even talking to the writers from inside the papersheet. In some stories, they go "behind the sets", as if they were filming a TV show or a movie. The main characters also make fun of other characters for being secondaries (Sunny, a yellow-haired boy is the one that is most mocked for being a secondary character). Another is a recently returned character called Manezinho (diminutive form of "Manuel" in Brazilian Portuguese), who is referred by Smudge as "the new secondary character".
Also, to avoid any copyright problems, when referring to any person, company or band, Mauricio writes something that sounds similar, resulting in word plays, mostly puns and phonetic transcription of foreign terms. Examples: Coca-Cola = Tota-Toia; Michael Jackson = Maicou Jeca; Titãs = Tantãs; Banda Calypso = Apocalypso; Star Wars = Tauó; and so on.
Nowadays the comics are sold in 40 countries in 14 languages.

Characters

Main characters

The four main characters of Monica's Gang are:

• Monica (Mônica)

Main article: Monica (Monica's Gang)

• Jimmy Five (Cebolinha)

Main article: Jimmy Five

• Smudge (Cascão)

Main article: Smudge (Monica's Gang)

• Maggy (Magali)

Main article: Maggy (Monica's Gang)