Lionel's Kingdom (Portuguese: Turma da Mata, literally The Forest Gang) is a Brazilian comic strip created in 1961 and part of the Monica's Gang comic strips. The series is a funny animal comic strip, with mostly anthropomorphic animals who almost all walking on two feet (except for Tim Turtle), wear clothes, and obviously, are able to speak. Their home is a forest, presumably in Brazil, although featuring mostly African animals.
Characters[]
- Thunder (Jotalhão) - Thunder is a very calm green elephant who likes helping his friends. He is constantly running from Ant Rita, as she has an unrequited crush on him.
- King Lionel (Rei Leonino) - The king of the forest. This brown lion feels really pleased to be occupying the throne and to be giving orders to his vassals, although he's not a dictator or an authoritarian. He lives in his palace, which is actually a cavern, protected by monkey-guards.
- Lou Courier (Ministro Luís Caxeiro) – Lionel's most important and loyal vassal and employee. Although he is officially the Minister of Come & Go, he serves Lionel more like a secretary. He serves as a messenger between Lionel and his kingdom, and vice versa, making him also a spokesman. Lou is a blue hedgehog.
- Tim Turtle (Tarugo) – One of Thunder's best friends. This green jabuti wears glasses, and has his head coming out of the middle of his carapace, instead of the front edge, as a normal jabuti. Also, he sometimes has wheels for feet. His Portuguese name is a pun on the word "tartaruga", which means "turtle" in that language.
- Mc Fox (Raposão) – Thunder's best friend, a smart fox.
- Ant Rita (Rita Najura) – A small purple ant. She has a crush on Thunder, despite the differences between them (either in size, species...), and her attempts to make him like her back include creating traps for him to marry her against his will.[2][3] Rita's attempts to date Thunder are almost the only subject of her strips - a similar situation to that of Pithecus and Ooga, characters of another set related to Monica's Gang. Her Portuguese name is a pun on the word tanajura (Atta), a Brazilian species of ant.
- Mr. Zig Zag (Coelho Caolho) – This rabbit also wears glasses and lives under the ground, on a burrow filled with his uncountable children, a reference to the high rates of reproduction of rabbits. The official number of children is 118, although there are no instances where all 118 appear together.