Tina's Pals ("Turma da Tina") is a Brazilian comic strip series, part of the Monica's Gang series, created in 1970. The stories are aimed at a more teenage group of readers, rather than the kids who would read other Mauricio de Sousa's works and thus center around teenagers. However, Mauricio prefers not to mention drugs, sex, alcoholic drinks, or other similar subjects, which are very popular among teenagers. Instead, the strips are written with themes related to school or university, dating, problems with parents, etc.
Originally the stories recounted the life of Tina and her family living in Salvador, Flip (Toneco) was the original protagonist. The stories changed when Tina joined the hippie culture and started to act alongside Curly (Rolo). In the late of 1970s, Mauricio left the hippie style and started to work with a less particular way of life for them, making the characters become more modern and changing their personalities over the years.
Publication history
During the year of 1970, during the debut of Monica's first comic book series Mauricio de Sousa decided to create a new comic strip series to replace the absence of his characters in the newspapers. In that same year several new characters were created, however the only characters that were kept were the boy Flip along their siblings Toim and Tina (that was a hippie kid in the first stories), his father and grandma, that later had their comics published also in the Monicas comic book starting at the 6th issue. After a few years Mauricio de Sousa began to be more interested in creating stories involving Tina, and later created their friends Curly (which was also another hippie character) and Puff in 1972, and the comics with Flip together family were becoming less frequent until get absent in the later comics.
At the end of the '70s the comics had gigantic changes in the art style and personalities of the characters: Tina and her friends become teenagers and have abandoned the hippie culture, Tina started to be drawn with more realistic and feminine features, and after the 80's appeared new characters like Puff's boyfriend: Steve (who eventually became a main character after a few years) and several other one-time characters. Since the '80s the comics have become one of the most popular franchises created by Mauricio de Sousa, continuing to have more modern stories and solding special titles and miniseries over the years.
Characters
Main characters
Tina – A short form to say Cristina, Tina was introduced in 1970 as a hippie as young as Monica. During the eighties, she was redesigned as an older teenager with a more casual style. In the most recent stories she appears as a young adult. Tina is interested in fashion, music and beauty. She likes to dance and hang out with her friends. Among her pals, Tina is the least interested in dating. Curly (Rolo) – Curly was originally portrayed as a calm, easy-going hippie. His style was inspired by de Sousa's brother Márcio's own style. After the hippie attire was dismissed, women started to play the most frequent role of his strips. In most of these strips, he is flirting with any kind of girl who appears in his way, by any means necessary. Another passion of him is music. He plays the electric and acoustic guitar, sometimes alone, sometimes in a band. Puff (Pipa) – Tina's best friend, very cheerful, passionate, fat, and zaftig. But, above all those qualities, Puff is very jealous of her boyfriend Steve, which led to constant arguments between the couple. these arguments are a frequent subject for their strips. However, they always end together as strongly as before. Steve (Zecão) – Puff's boyfriend, suffer quite a lot with Puff's jealous of him. Like Curly, he enjoys music.