Mortadelo y Filemón
Encyclopedia
| Mortadelo y Filemón Mort & Phil |
|
| Created by: | Francisco Ibañez Francisco Ibáñez Francisco Ibañez may refer to:*Francisco Ibáñez de Peralta , Spanish Royal Governor of Chile*Francisco Ibáñez Talavera , Spanish comic book artist and writer*Francisco Ibáñez Campos , Chilean footballer... |
| Genre: | Humor, surrelism, satire Satire Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement... and farce Farce In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,... |
| Publisher: | |
| Original publication period: | 20 January 1958 |
| Country of origin: |  Spain |
| Language of origin: | Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... |
| Number of books published: | 190 |
| Website: | official website |
Mort & Phil is one of the most popular Spanish comics
Spanish comics
See also List of Spanish comicsSpanish comics are the comics of Spain and they are among the most important comics traditions in Europe. Comics in Spain are usually called tebeos, historietas or cómics.-Origin and definition:...
series, published in more than a dozen countries. It appeared for the first time in 1958 in the children's comic-book Pulgarcito
Pulgarcito
Pulgarcito was a weekly illustrated magazine of Spain that was published by Editorial Bruguera from June 1921 to 1986....
drawn by Francisco Ibáñez
Francisco Ibáñez Talavera
Francisco Ibáñez Talavera , Spanish comic book artist and writer. Born in Barcelona, he is the creator of several comic book series, the most famous of which is Mortadelo y Filemón....
. The series features Mort , the tall, bald master of disguise named after mortadella
Mortadella
Mortadella is a large Italian sausage or cold cut made of finely hashed or ground, heat-cured pork sausage, which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat . Mortadella is a staple product of Bologna, Italy...
, and his bossy partner, the shorter, pudgier Phil Pi.
Initially, they were private detectives operating as Mortadelo y Filemón, Agencia de Información, but now both serve as secret agent
Secret Agent
Secret Agent is a British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young...
s in the Técnicos de Investigación Aeroterráquea (TIA is the Spanish word for "aunt", a spoof on CIA, with T.I.A. translating into "Aeroterraquatic (air, land, sea) Investigation Technicians".
Overview
Mort and Phil can be described as a pair of walking catastrophes, and no matter what kind of mission they are assigned they always manage to get it wrong. The results are almost invariably extremely violent, and most often directed towards Filemón (Phil). At TIA (Spanish for "aunt", a parody of the CIA), which combats "enemy organizations" like RANA ("frog") or ABUELA ("grandmother"), they interact with their boss, the bad-tempered Superintendente Vicente; with Professor Bacterio, a black-bearded, disastrous scientist parodying James Bond's QQ (James Bond)
Q is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. Q , like M, is a job title rather than a name. He is the head of Q Branch , the fictional research and development division of the British Secret Service...
; and with the fat, blonde secretary Ofelia, a parody of Moneypenny, whose attempts at seducing Mort always fail.
The series is especially popular in Germany as Clever & Smart. After the 1980s, the albums have featured current news, like computer sabotage, the AVE
AVE
Alta Velocidad Española is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to . The name is literally translated from Spanish as "Spanish High Speed", but also a play on the word , meaning "bird".AVE trains run on a network of...
, Islamic terrorism, Spanish and European politics, and specials for the Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
and the soccer World Cup
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...
.
Ibáñez likes to introduce whimsies unrelated to the action especially in covers.
A water tap can sprout from a tree, two mice may be chatting, a vase can contain a foot or an eggplant,...
An eerie example happened in the final page of "El 35 aniversario" (1993) where a New York scene features an airplane crashing against the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
.
This attracted attention after the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
Ibáñez issues several albums a year. Several animated series were also produced. There was a movie based on the series, made in 2003 in Spain, under the name La Gran Aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón
La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón
La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón is a 2003 Spanish language film based on the popular Spanish comic book series Mortadelo y Filemón by Francisco Ibáñez Talavera. The film was directed by Javier Fesser and stars Benito Pocino and Pepe Viyuela....
(Mort & Phil: The Big Adventure). A second movie was released in 2008, Mortadelo y Filemón. Misión: salvar la Tierra (Mort & Phil. Mission: Save Earth), marking the 50th anniversary
Anniversary
An anniversary is a day that commemorates or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event...
of the series.
Characters
Mort (Mortadelo) : Mort is a bald detective with pebble glasses and a long nose who usually wears a black frock coatFrock coat
A frock coat is a man's coat characterised by knee-length skirts all around the base, popular during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The double-breasted style is sometimes called a Prince Albert . The frock coat is a fitted, long-sleeved coat with a centre vent at the back, and some features...
. He is always fighting with Phil, his partner, mostly because he tends to mess things up, usually to Phil's discomfort. His favourite hobby is wearing all sorts of (sometimes outrageous) disguises - professional and historical clothes and gear, animals, inanimate objects, even small-sized vehicles like miniature blimp
Non-rigid airship
A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is a floating airship without an internal supporting framework or keel. A non-rigid airship differs from a semi-rigid airship and a rigid airship in that it does not have any rigid structure, neither a complete framework nor a partial keel, to help the airbag...
s and moped
Moped
Mopeds are a type of low-powered motorcycle designed to provide economical and relatively safe transport with minimal licensing requirements.Mopeds were once all equipped with bicycle-like pedals , but moped has been increasingly applied by governments to vehicles without pedals, based on their...
s - which he mostly dons for special tasks or when he is on the run from Phil or his boss. He is the sworn enemy of Bacterio because he used to have lush hair until Bacterio offered Mort a "medicine against baldness". (Mort's full name, "Mortadelo", comes from "mortadela
Mortadella
Mortadella is a large Italian sausage or cold cut made of finely hashed or ground, heat-cured pork sausage, which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat . Mortadella is a staple product of Bologna, Italy...
", a kind of sausage).
Phil Pi (Filemón Pi): Mort's partner and friend. He only has two hairs on his head and wears a white shirt with red trousers. He usually insults Mort because Mort is quite clumsy, but is often at the receiving end of any mishaps which come their way, mostly in the shape of their outraged boss. As the leader of the two-man team he is an educated man and an expert in a variety of fields, such as biology and geology.
Vicente /"El Superintendente", "Súper" or just "El Súper": Vicente is the boss of Mort and Phil and is usually called " Súper" or "El Súper" by his underlings. While he, as the head of the organization, lives in splendor, indulging himself in expensive beverages and Cuban cigars, he keeps TIA's operatives on an extremely tight budget
Miser
A miser, cheapskate, snipe-snout, penny pincher, piker, scrooge, skinflint or tightwad is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities...
; some central story plots revolve around Mort and Phil acquiring and testing new equipment for TIA because the gear used by the organization has long since become (in very mild terms) virtual stone age
Stone Age
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...
.
El Super is bald and has a dense moustache, which makes him the object of mocking abuse by his underlings as a human walrus
Walrus
The walrus is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous circumpolar distribution in the Arctic Ocean and sub-Arctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the Odobenidae family and Odobenus genus. It is subdivided into three subspecies: the Atlantic...
. He is very short-tempered and usually angry because Mort and Phil fail in their missions, leaving a spectacular mess - occasionally at the expense of his own (and expensive) possessions. Just as often, however, he ends up as the one being chased by his underlings, as his frequently short-sighted assignments cause them no end of grief.
Pr. Bacterio : TIA's black-bearded scientist and chief inventor. Mort blames Bacterio for his baldness (he had tried a new hair-strengthening concoction on Mort's then-lush mane, which made the hair fall out instead) and therefore the doctor is the unwilling prime recipient of Mort's practical jokes. His inventions, which are to assist Mort and Phil in their assignments, often fail quite spectacularly, mostly because they achieve the opposite of what they are supposed to do. Sometimes they do work well, but fail at the most inconvenient moment. ("Bacterio comes from "bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
", germ).
Ofelia : The fat and vain secretary of the Superintendente Vicente. She is still single and would like to become involved with someone(usually with Mort), but so far her attempts have been in vain. She is quite touchy her lack of luck with a relationship and being called fat; she reacts with corresponding violence when either of topics are brought up- and with her considerable weight, this is nothing to be ignored. She was the first female character created for the series.
Irma : The boom secretary of the Súper. Mort and Phil are in love with her (much to Ofelia's chagrin), but she is not interested. This character disappeared from the series after only 24 volumes.
F. Ibañez: The creator of the series himself has a number of cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s, either by name or in cartoon form. Mostly he is (humorously) portrayed as the bald and bespectacled "Artist of the Nation", in perhaps the same league as Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
. On several occasions, the series' characters often long for being "as rich as Ibáñez".
"Rompetechos"/the Mole Eyed Guy: A small man with a rather oversized head, receding black hair and a small moustache in a black suit. He is always put in as a comic relief character; although he wears glasses, they must either have the wrong prescription or are totally ineffective, because his eyesight is totally down. This causes him to react in ways which causes some inconvenience to Mort and Phil if they happen to cross his way. He both has his own comic series (little known outside Spain) and cameoes in Ibañez' other works.
The Minister: Vicente's boss (and the only person who he ever toadies to). His appearance changes constantly throughout the series. In recent appearances has been replaced by a caricature of the President of the Government of Spain.
Señora Superintendente: The wife of Vicente (also with an everchanging face). While he may hold the rudder in the TIA, she holds the rudder in their household.
Bestiájez : The giant agent of the TIA. He usually has to hunt down Mort and Phil because they don't want to do their missions. A rather minor character, his face has changed many times in the past. Many other agents appear, most of them having descriptive surnames ending in "-ez" ("Bestiájez" comes from "bestia", beast).
Casimira Nitorta: An expert in "secret chases", she has a penetrating and incisive glance. She's also a relative of "Rompetechos".
Famous people
Numerous celebrities and political personalities have guest-starred or made some cameos:- Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, former presidents of the United States
- Charles, Prince of Wales, and Queen Elizabeth II
- Adolfo Suárez, Felipe González and José María Aznar, former presidents of Spain
- Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder, former Chancellors of Germany
- François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, former Presidents of France
- Adolf Hitler
- Fidel Castro
- Juan Antonio Samaranch, former President of the IOC
- Pau Gasol, Spanish professional basketball player for the L.A. Lakers
- The Marx Brothers, Humphrey Bogart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and several other actors
Animated series
There was an animated series, with the name of "Mortadelo y Filemón" with Spanish voice actors.Film adaptations
Betwenn 1965 and 1970, Rafael Vara directed 16 short films which was united in two films (Festival de Mortadelo y Filemón and Segundo Festival de Mortadelo y Filemón). In 1970 make other film, El armario del tiempo.In other languages
- CatalanCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
: Mortadel·lo i Filemó - ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
: 特工二人组 - CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
: Clever & Smart - DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
: Flip og Flop - DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
: Paling en Ko - EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: Mort & Phil - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: Mortadel et Filémon (Futt et Fil) - GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Clever & Smart (Flip & Flap) - GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
: Αντιρίξ και Συμφωνίξ - ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
: Mortadello e Polpetta - JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
: ᵊᵊᵊꜜꜜᵊꜛꜜꜜꜛꜜ - NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
: Flipp og Flopp (earliest pocket editions), Clever & Smart - PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
: Mortadelo i Filemon - PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
: Mortadelo e Salaminho (in Brazil), Mortadela e Salamão (Portugal) - RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: Морт и Фил (Мортадело и Филемон) - SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
: Clever & Smart - Slovene:
- SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
: Flink & Fummel - TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
: Dörtgöz ile Dazlak - FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
: Älli ja Tälli (used to be first Nopsa ja Näpsä) - SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: Mortadelo y Filemón - Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian languageSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
: Zriki Švargla i Šule Globus
See also
- Francisco IbáñezFrancisco Ibáñez TalaveraFrancisco Ibáñez Talavera , Spanish comic book artist and writer. Born in Barcelona, he is the creator of several comic book series, the most famous of which is Mortadelo y Filemón....
- SuperlópezSuperlópezSuperlópez is a Spanish comic book character created by Jan. Created in 1973, Superlópez is a parody of Superman. Born Jo-Con-Él on the planet Chitón much like Superman's home planet of Krypton, he leaves his planet when he enters a spaceship and presses a button, an accident that sends...
- Capitán TruenoCapitán TruenoEl Capitán Trueno was the hero of a series of Spanish comic books, created in 1956 by the writer Víctor Mora and illustrated mainly by Miguel Ambrosio Zaragoza . The comics were published continuously between 1956 and 1968, eventually becoming the most popular Spanish hero comic of all times: at...
- Spanish comicsSpanish comicsSee also List of Spanish comicsSpanish comics are the comics of Spain and they are among the most important comics traditions in Europe. Comics in Spain are usually called tebeos, historietas or cómics.-Origin and definition:...
- The Adventures of TintinThe Adventures of TintinThe Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
- Lucky LukeLucky LukeLucky Luke is a Belgian comics series created by Belgian cartoonist, Maurice De Bevere better known as Morris, the original artist, and was for one period written by René Goscinny...
- AsterixAsterixAsterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...
- The SmurfsThe SmurfsThe Smurfs is a comic and television franchise centred on a group of small blue fictional creatures called Smurfs, created and first introduced as a series of comic strips by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo on October 23, 1958...
- PopeyePopeyePopeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...