Follow that Bird!

The story of Condorito is an inspiring one. Before I tell you just how inspiring, a bit of history about the legendary bird: 

In the 1940s, a young Chilean cartoonist, Rene "Pepo" Rios created Condorito. Desiring to depict the hard-working common man of the region, Pepo created an endearing character named the Little Condor — half-man, half-condor; an energetic, colorful, resourceful, clever, multifaceted, Hispanic "everyman."

The strip quickly caught on and soon Condorito had his own magazine. Today, Condorito is the best-known cartoon character in the Spanish-speaking world, with fans throughout the Americas; in fact, over 82 million readers consider Condorito an important part of their daily lives, and over 100 newspapers carry the daily strip. Many Hispanics say that they learned to read, at least in part, by reading the Condorito magazine with their parents. 

I got to know Condorito through Atlantic Syndication, the international division of Universal Press Syndicate that distributes Condorito. Since then, my life has changed dramatically. 

For one, my Spanish started improving rapidly. Every time I found myself in a funny or compromising situation, I channeled the phrases of Latin America's most famous fowl. Unfortunately, the phrases I learned from Condorito often resulted in people slapping me, shaking their heads with shame, or --  most commonly -- falling over in shock. 

In retrospect, that's hardly surprising. You see, the most famous attribute of Condorito is without a doubt the art of the "Plop." 

The "Plop" occurs in the last panel of almost every Condorito strip. No matter what happens in the first few panels, something titillating, shocking, funny or flabbergasting always gets said in time for one of the characters to keel over at the very end. 

At first I didn't understand why this happened so often. While a well-timed Plop is a dramatic story-telling device, you can't just have people (and birds) falling down all over the place. It's a big liability for syndicates these days. I was just about to call up the notorious bird and complain about the rampant ploppage when my friend's Colombian wife explained to me that the plop is, in essence, the very soul of the strip. People love it. They look forward to it. And even though you know it's coming, the fun is seeing how things get to that point. With that in mind, I began to discern a whole variety of plops.

There's the sky-plop...

The aqua-plop...

The phone-plop...

And my personal favorite, the double-whammy-plop...

The lesson of this story? Condorito is one hilarious bird. And if you ever find yourself struggling with the punch lines in your comic submissions, you can always take a cue from the Rene Rios playbook: when in doubt, plop it out. 

Oh, and a quick footnote: Senses of humor tend to differ across cultural borders, as Condorito found out during last year's Euro Cup final. That, however, is a story for another blog post. 

Until next time...

- LW

Comments

[rone]

It wasn't the Euro Cup Final; it was the U-20 World Cup played in Toronto, in the Argentina-Chile game.

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[Juan Andres Lara]

Condorito Arrested in Toronto Canada at the Under 20 world cup 2007

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Well-written review! I saw his show in Paris last November. Similar set list, but without the cover songs. I am looking forward to seeing him in San Francisco this weekend. It's a shame Richard Hawley isn't along for the ride.

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Greets
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