Mafalda (Spanish: [maˈfalða]) is an Argentine comic strip written and drawn by cartoonist Quino. The strip features a six-year-old girl named Mafalda, who reflects the Argentine middle class and progressive youth, is concerned about humanity and world peace, and has an innocent but serious attitude toward problems. The comic strip ran from 1964 to 1973 and was very popular in Latin America, Europe (especially Spain), Quebec, and Asia. Its popularity led to books and two animated cartoon series. Mafalda has been praised as masterful satire.

The comic strip artist Quino created Mafalda in 1963. He had received a proposal by fellow artist Miguel Brascó, and the comic strip would be a covert advertisement for the "Mansfield" line of products of the Siam Di Tella company. The characters would use their products, and all of them would have names starting with "M". The name "Mafalda" was selected as an homage to one of the characters of the 1962 Argentine film Dar la cara. The comic strip was conceived as a blend of Peanuts and Blondie. Quino and Brascó offered the comic strip to the newspaper Clarín, but they noticed the advertisement nature and did not publish it. The covert advertising campaign was never carried out, but Brascó published portions of those comics at the magazine Leoplán.

Julián Delgado, senior editor of the magazine Primera Plana, proposed Quino to publish the comic strip, if he removed the advertisements. It was first published in the magazine on 29 September 1964. Initially, it featured only Mafalda and her parents. Felipe was introduced in January. Quino left the magazine in 1965, and the comic strip moved to the newspaper El Mundo. Quino introduced new kids: Manolito, Susanita, and Miguelito; and Mafalda's mother became pregnant. The newspaper was closed in December 1967.

Publication resumed six months later, on 2 June 1968, in the weekly Siete Días Ilustrados. Since the cartoons now had to be delivered two weeks before publication, Quino was not able to comment on the news to the same extent. After creating the characters of Mafalda's little brother Guille and her new friend Libertad, he definitively ceased publication of the strip on 25 June 1973.

After 1973, Quino still drew Mafalda a few times, mostly to promote human rights. In 1976, he reproduced Mafalda for the UNICEF illustrating the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The comic strip is composed of the main character Mafalda, her parents and a group of other children. However, the group was not created on purpose, but was instead a result of the development of the comic strip. The other children were created one at a time, and worked by countering specific aspects of Mafalda. The exception was Guille, Mafalda's brother, who was introduced during a period when the author did not have other ideas.^{[circular reference]}

The characters aged at about half the real time-scale while the script ran. They also went through minor changes largely due to the evolution of Quino's drawing style.

Most strips that were not too closely tied to then-current events were chronologically republished in ten small books simply named Mafalda and numbered from one to ten, with two strips on each page. This excludes the very first ones, published in Primera Plana, but never reprinted until 1989.