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 and young adults. However, Mauricio prefers not to mention drugs, topics about sexuality, 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 Monica's 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

Recurring

Media

In 1971 a song to Tina (based on her hippie version) was composed for the album "A Bandinha da Turma da Mônica", in 1987 another song for Tina was composed for the album "Turma da Mônica", entitled Tina Torna Tudo Legal (lit. Tina Makes It All Cool). In 1979 there were plans for a live-action series starring the characters made in partnership with TV Cultura, and having as actors Beth Caruso as Tina, Vick Militello as Puff, and Kadu Moliterno as Curly, however the project was canceled before there was any filming. The series had some special comic books (as part of the series Gibizinho) in the '90s by Editora Globo, four starring Tina, four starring Curly and one starring Puff. In 2007 was published by Panini Comics a science-fiction miniseries starring Tina and her friends entitled "Tina e os Caçadores de Enigmas" (lit. Tina and the Enigma Hunters). The miniseries lasted with 3 issues, and subsequently had two sequels in 2008, in the same year was published a special comic entitled "Tina Especial". In May 2009 the series received its own comic book series entitled Tina, which ran until October 2011 with a total of 30 issues. After the cancellation, in 2014 was released a new version of the comic book featuring a new art style and new characters, but the changes have received a negative reception that resulted in the cancellation in 2015. The series also has an almanac with classic stories, the first series was published between 2004 and 2006 by Globo, currently the almanacs are published by Panini Comics since 2007. Curly also makes a cameo in the Monica's Gang's 2007 animated film: Uma Aventura no Tempo. In 2019 a graphical novel produced by Fefê Torquato based on Tina titled: Tina - Respeito, was released as part of the Graphic MSP.