Mauricio Araújo de Sousa (; born October 27, 1935), known artistically as Mauricio de Sousa or mononymously just as Mauricio, is a Brazilian cartoonist and businessman who has created over 200 characters for his popular series of children's comic books named Turma da Mônica (Monica and Friends).
At 17 years of age, he worked for a daily newspaper called Folha da Manhã as a crime reporter. In 1959, Mauricio quit that job and began his comic book career, and created Monica and Friends. Mauricio's characters were inspired by children he knew from his childhood and by his own children. His later style is slightly reminiscent of that of Osamu Tezuka, a famous Japanese manga artist and personal friend. Mauricio's work has garnered recogniation both in his home country and abroad, which includes a number of international awards. In 2011, he was honored in the seventh edition of the Festival Internacional de Quadrinhos, at Belo Horizonte.
The son of Antônio Mauricio de Sousa and Petronilha Araújo de Sousa, Mauricio was born in Santa Isabel, São Paulo, and lived in an environment surrounded by art, as his father, in addition to being a barber, was a poet, composer and painter, and his mother was a poet. His house was always full of books, providing a very cultural environment. In his house, it was common to host soirees, artist meetings and chorinho circles.
According to himself, he learned to read with comic books when he was 5 years old and found an issue of the magazine O Guri, which was missing its cover in the trash, and asked his mother to read it, even at a time when he didn't know how to read, much less what the object he had found was. Seeing that her son liked it, Petronilha decided to teach her son to read, while Antônio Mauricio brought more comic books for their kid.
His mother wanted him to become a child singer, but his shyness did not allow him to pursue it, even though his mother was firm and demanding with Mauricio. When he was just a few months old, Mauricio moved from Santa Isabel to neighboring Mogi das Cruzes, where he began drawing posters and illustrations for radio stations and newspapers. When he told his father about wanting to make a living as an artist, he told him: âÂÂMauricio, draw in the morning and manage in the afternoon.âÂÂ
MaurÃÂcio's father criticized the Vargas government in his newspapers Vespa and A Caveira. In 1940, the police raided and destroyed his printing shop, and the family moved to São Paulo for two years.
Mauricio wanted to make a living from his arts. To that end, in 1954, he sought a job as an artist in São Paulo, but only found a position as a crime reporter at Folha da Manhã. He spent five years writing this type of report, which he illustrated with drawings that were well-received by readers. Mauricio de Sousa began drawing comics on July 18, 1959, when a story about the dog Bidu (which would later come to be known as Blu in official English translations), his first character, was approved by the newspaper. The comic strips featuring the dog and his owner, Franklin, gave rise to the character Jimmy Five in 1960.
Accused of being a communist, Mauricio was fired by the editor-in-chief of the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, returning to Mogi das Cruzes. During this time, he began submitting a catalog of his strips to local newspapers. In 1962, he was hired by the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa, for which he created the character Pitheco and his gang. Pitheco's debut in Tribuna da Imprensa was on April 25, 1962.
Mauricio returned to work at Folha de S.Paulo in 1963, bringing back the strips of his character Jimmy Five along with several other new characters. Along with journalist Lenita Miranda de Figueiredo, he was responsible to create the children's supplement Folhinha de S. Paulo. That same year two of his most important characters, Monica and Horacio were created. Around this time, he also founded Bidulândia Serviços de Imprensa, later renamed MaurÃÂcio de Sousa Produções, which operated as a syndicate for distributing newspaper strips. In 1970, he partnered with publisher Abril to launch Monica's solo comic book making his characters gain more recognition in the following years.
In the 80s he moved his comic strips to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, where his characters have been used to illustrate the children's supplement Estadinho ever since.
In 1997, the cartoonist founded the MaurÃÂcio de Sousa Cultural Institute, whose mandate is to develop social action campaigns that translate serious subjects into a comic book format to appeal to both young and adult readers.
Mauricio started publishing Turma da Mônica Jovem ("Monica Adventures") in 2008, an offshoot series from "Monica and Friends", featuring Monica and her friends now as teenagers, adopting black-and-white pages, as well as art style heavily influenced from manga. Issue No. 34 of the "Monica Teen" comic book, presenting the first real kiss between Monica and Jimmy Five (they had already kissed in two previous occasions, but in a different context) had 500,000 sales.
In 2012, Mauricio published a two-issue story arc in the Monica Teen comic book featuring some of Osamu Tezuka's main characters, such as Astro, Sapphire and Kimba, joining Monica and her friends in an adventure in the Amazon rainforest against a smuggling organization chopping down hundreds of trees in the jungles of the Amazon. This is the first time that Tezuka Productions has allowed overseas animators to use Tezuka's characters. Rock Holmes, another character created by Tezuka, has featured as a villain in the story arc.
Mauricio's public service work has earned him international recognition. Among the honors was awarded are the Brazilian presidential medal of honor for his promotion of human rights; an honorary doctorate in public service from La Roche College of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brazilian International Press Association.
Mauricio was married to Marilene Sousa for 12 years and together they had four children; Mariângela, Mônica, Magali and MaurÃÂcio Spada. Later on, while being in a relationship with Vera Lúcia Signorelli, he had two daughters named Vanda and Valéria. His relationship with Vera lasted until her death by a car accident in 1971. Two years later he married Alice Keiko Takeda, and together they had three children; Marina, Mauro and MaurÃÂcio Takeda de Sousa. MauricioâÂÂs last child was Marcelo de Sousa, who happened to be a fruit of a relationship while he and Alice were estranged.
Most of his children were the source of inspiration of the creation of characters such as Monica, Maggy, Marina, Mary Angela, Nimbus, and Nick Nope. One of his sons, MaurÃÂcio Spada e Sousa, died of a heart attack on May 2, 2016.
Mauricio de Sousa is portrayed by his son Mauro de Sousa in the 2025 Brazilian biographical film Mauricio de Sousa: O Filme.
Some of Mauricio's creations include:
Mauricio has been credited with creating the character Solzinho, the mascot of the toy retail chain Ri Happy, having designed the character in the same year the store chain opened in 1988. The mascot retained his design until 2022 when he was redesigned with no relation with Mauricio and his studio.