3. Creating a New Imagination: L’Avventuroso (1934–43)

American Comics

It would not be possible to offer here a complete history of American comics, but it is useful to highlight some key factors in their development, ones which are fundamental to the comprehension of the history of Italian comics and the differences between them. First, American comics began to be published in the 1890s as comic strips in newspapers, either as daily strips or pull-out supplements in Sunday papers, meaning they were aimed at an adult readership. The scholar of comics Ian Gordon summarises the main difference between European and American comics at the time, highlighting that the publication of comics as strips in ‘mass-circulated newspapers […] set American comic strips apart from the earlier European forms [of illustrations and caricatures] and made them mass market products’.³ This publication format made comic strips highly successful, so much so that by the 1930s the comic strip page was, according to a series of newspaper surveys conducted by George Gallup, ‘the most popular and frequently read part of a newspaper’.⁴ It was from daily and Sunday comic strips that in 1929 the very first comics magazine was published: The Funnies (New York: Dell, 1929–30).⁵ In these origins of American comics magazines lies the first crucial difference from the history of Italian comics: in Italy, comics began to be published in children’s periodicals at the beginning of the twentieth century, excluding adults from their readership. For example, the Corriere dei Piccoli, widely regarded as the first Italian comics magazine, was distributed as a supplement of the newspaper Corriere della Sera and to be sold separately, highlighting the difference in the readership targeted.

Second, modern American comics magazines developed from a marketing experiment carried out by companies such as Gulf Oil and Procter and Gamble. In 1933 Gulf Oil published its own comic weekly, Gulf Comic Weekly, which only featured original strips and was given away at their service stations. The weekly was so successful that it soon reached three million copies and led Procter and Gamble to start publishing their own magazine, Funnies on Parade. Gulf Comic Weekly contained already-published comic strips and was ‘the first stapled half-tabloid-size pamphlet of comics of the kind that would later be known in the realm of American popular publishing as “comic books”’.⁶ The process of creation of comic weeklies represents another key difference from modern Italian comics magazines, one which also influenced the readership targeted: they were created in the United States as a give-away to attract customers, while in Italy they were born as a profitable product to be sold on news-stands and specifically aimed at children. Italian comics magazines were created by publishing companies already active in the periodical press, whereas in the United States they were the result of commercial practices enacted by companies outside the publishing industry.

Third, although American comics magazines derived from newspaper strips, they were influenced strongly by film animation and pulp magazines. Above all, the latter seem to have played a crucial role in the development of the modern comics magazine. According to Paul Lopes, ‘the field of pulp magazines […] had the greatest direct influence on the structure and rules of art in the new field of comic books’.⁷ This was due to the involvement of the most successful comic-book publishers in the pulp industry and to the nature of the pulp product itself, which aimed to be a low-budget, low-commitment entertainment product. During the Depression American readers favoured purely escapist literature. Pulp magazines, as well as daily comic strips and comics magazines, offered to the public adventures and light stories that could distract them from the grim daily news. Historian Mike Benton highlights that, in 1940, the comics field saw a boom in the publication of superhero comics, leading some pulp magazine publishers to join the race. As Lopes summarises it, ‘the early comic book field was fundamentally shaped by the formulas, genres, and commercial practices of the pulp field’, from which ‘comic book producers borrowed narrative and illustrations’.⁸ The illustrations in pulp magazines exercised considerable influence on both the style of comic book illustrations and the fascination they produced in their readers. Pulp artists created covers characterised by realistic drawings, the style of which was later reproduced by comic artists (Fig. 2).⁹ Moreover, pulp magazines had created an imaginary world made up of powerful men fighting villains and saving beautiful women, something that found further expression and success first in comic series and later in the new genre of the superhero adventure. The influence of pulp magazines is a specifically American feature that cannot be found in Italian comics, highlighting how comics reflect specific cultural backgrounds and respond to the taste of the readership. If one were to compare the two, the illustrations in pulp magazines, their role in the development of artist’s styles and their influence on readers’ tastes are similar to the role of the illustrations in popular romanzi d’appendice in Italy in the 1920s.

In the United States of the Great Depression comics were deeply rooted in American culture and superheroes not only embodied what young Americans dreamt of being but, more importantly, also the morals of American society and the Manichean dichotomy that characterised its culture. Characters like Mandrake the Magician (1934), Flash Gordon (1934), The Phantom (1936) and Superman (1938) were all an expression of American values and morals that were subsequently exported to Italy through successful comics magazines such as L’Avventuroso and Jumbo.

In spite of all the differences noted above, in the 1930s American and Italian educators reacted in a similar manner to the growth of comics. From 1936 onwards comics were perceived, both in Italy and the United States, as a threat to the education of young children. John A. Ryan analyses the effects of comics on children and on American society in general, asking the question: ‘Are the comics moral?’.¹⁰ In Italy educators and pedagogues accused comics of immorality, judging them unsuitable particularly for children, thereby highlighting the fact that in Italy comics were still considered a children’s product.

The Development of a Modern Italian fumetto and the Fascist Regime¹¹

The origin of modern comics has been identified by historiography with the first publication of the ‘Yellow Kid’, illustrated by Richard F. Outcault, in the New York World in 1895.¹² In Italy the start of the comic era is conventionally dated to thirteen years later, 27 December 1908, the day the first issue of the Corriere dei Piccoli appeared on the news-stands. In its first year of publication Il Corriere dei Piccoli – often called simply Il Corrierino – featured many American comic strips, including ‘Buster Brown’ by Outcault (translated as ‘Mimmo, Mammola e Medoro’), ‘Happy Hooligan’ by Frederick Burr Opper (published with the name ‘Fortunello’) and ‘Katzenjammer Kids’ by Rudolph Dirks (called ‘Bibì e Bibò’). Before Il Corriere dei Piccoli, other Italian children’s magazines such as Il Novellino (1898–1927) and Il Giornalino della Domenica (1906–27) had featured American comics, but the extensive use of American comics and the generally superior number of comics published set Il Corrierino apart from the others.¹³

Foreign comics were also imitated, with Italian versions of American comics such as ‘Schizzo’ by Attilio Mussino, reproducing ‘Little Nemo’ by Winsor McCay. Moreover, Italian authors were encouraged to create Italian protagonists, such as the popular ‘Signor Bonaventura’ (1917), created by Sergio Tofano in response to the popular strips of the unlucky ‘Happy Hooligan’ drawn by Burr Opper. Therefore, in the field of comics we can identify a process of Italianisation at the very beginning of the creation of modern Italian comics – or, more generally, the ‘domestication’ of American comics in Italy, to use the term coined by Brienza to describe the process of the cultural adaptation of foreign comics to align with the norms, tastes and expectations of the receiving readership.¹⁴

There was also a crucial difference in the relationship between images and words, one of the main features that affected the readership. In American comics, words and images were on the same level and co-existed in harmony to narrate a story and convey a message. In Europe, on the other hand, and especially in Italy, words were considered to be more important, a ‘nobler’ means of communication, and hence images were relegated to the status of a visual support to the message conveyed by the text. This imbalance in Italian comics is visible in the long captions added under the illustrations, a characteristic of early Italian comics. Leonardo Becciu, one of the first to retrace the history of Italian comics, interpreted this European attitude of adding written text and thereby altering the appearance of American comics as a consequence of Europe’s Humanist tradition: ‘[L]’Europa “umanista” non voleva e non poteva neppure accettare l’idea che la “sacra” parola si riducesse al rango di ancella del disegno’ [‘Humanist’ Europe did not want and could not even accept the idea that the ‘sacred’ word was reduced to the rank of maidservant to the drawing].¹⁵ This attitude caused Italian comics to be considered a product for children, which meant they needed to use language appropriate for a young readership and have a primarily educational purpose. As a result, speech bubbles, the iconic features of modern comics, were replaced by captions placed under each panel and containing new text in the form of nursery rhymes. The narrative was then completely changed, creating a new meaning from the original American comics and often with the effect of separating the visual and textual narratives. In other words, in Italy comics as a new medium were altered in their main characteristic, with words dominating over images: American comics strips were adapted to the Italian tradition that saw illustrated stories as children’s literature. Things changed in the 1930s, when both the readership of comics and the balance between words and images changed. The evolution of Italian comics was, however, influenced by Fascist rule, just like the rest of the popular press.

Comics During the Fascist Regime (1925–38)

Mussolini’s regime had a particular interest in the education of young Italians, who were considered the future of the nation. In February 1925 a meeting of the Gran Consiglio stressed the importance of educating Italian youth,¹⁶ ‘affinché braccio, cuore e mente dei giovani siano preparati a nuove conquiste’ [so that the arms, hearts and minds of young people are prepared for new achievements].¹⁷ As historian Antonio Gibelli notes, ‘le pratiche politiche e culturali di conquista dell’infanzia e dell’adolescenza possono essere considerate per molti aspetti come un modello di quelle di manipolazione delle masse. È la nazionalizzazione dell’infanzia come un fattore decisivo della nazionalizzazione delle masse’ [political and cultural practices for the conquest of childhood and adolescence can in many ways be seen as a model for those for manipulating the masses. It is the nationalisation of childhood as a decisive factor in the nationalisation of the masses].¹⁸ From this perspective it is clear that the education of children was crucial to the idea of creating a new Italian nation and people. Through the moulding of Italian children according to Fascist ideals, the foundation for the future Fascist nation and its people would be set. This interest in Italian children’s education found expression in the centrality of school reform and youth organisations, but also in the publication of the first Fascist children’s periodical, Il Giornale dei Balilla, published for the first time on 18 February 1923, just weeks after the March on Rome. The magazine had the same structure as Il Corriere dei Piccoli and included comics with rhymed captions alongside educational columns. However, it had a clear political aim that resulted in comics delivering socio-political messages, such as ‘Mimmo Piangimai’, a child who fights against undisciplined children, or ‘Fasciolino’, a balilla committed to the Fascist faith. The political aim is also clearly expressed by Dino Grandi’s editorial opening to the first issue:

Il nostro giornale è dedicato ai fanciulli italiani. Questi viventi fiori della nostra razza, educati al ricordo degli eroismi compiuti da quegli altri fanciulli che andarono alla guerra cantando e fermarono l’invasore sul Piave, e all’esempio di quelli che per la seconda volta salvarono l’Italia […], i nostri Balilla, […] troveranno in queste pagine l’alimento della loro intelligenza e del loro cuore. Non si conquista per sempre l’anima della Nazione, se non si cura l’educazione intellettuale e morale dei fanciulli e dei giovinetti […]. Per questo, o fanciulli d’Italia, il Fascismo vi predilige.¹⁹

[Our journal is dedicated to Italian children. These living flowers of our race, educated to the memory of the heroic acts performed by those other children who went to war singing and stopped the invader on the Piave, and to the example of those who for the second time saved Italy, […] our Balilla […] will find in these pages the nourishment of their intelligence and their hearts. It is not possible to conquer the soul of the Nation forever, unless the intellectual and moral education of children and youth is taken care of […]. For this reason, oh children of Italy, Fascism favours you.]

The interest of the regime in using the press for children to educate young Italians in the values and ideology of Fascism is further demonstrated by the publication in 1927 of a comics periodical for young girls, La Piccola Italiana (1927–43). The creation of these magazines steeped in Fascist ideology is another expression of the process of the Fascistisation of the press started by the regime soon after coming to power. Just as in the daily press, children’s periodicals had to adopt Fascist rhetoric, so magazines like Il Corrierino or Il Giornalino della Domenica introduced Fascist protagonists and symbolism.²⁰

If in the first years of Mussolini’s rule the main impact on children’s periodicals was the inclusion of Fascist precepts, the 1930s brought far more significant changes. In this decade American adventure comics were introduced and met with such previously unseen success that they pressured the regime into paying more attention to comics and taking measures to ‘protect’ Italian culture. The innovation brought by American comics was not limited to publishing, but also exercised an impact on the Italians’ exotic imagination, which had previously been shaped by novelist Emilio Salgari, leaving a lasting mark.²¹ The first to publish Adventure comics was the weekly Jumbo, launched on 17 December 1932 by Lotario Vecchi, who had founded the publishing house SAEV (Società Anonima Editrice Vecchi) in Milan in 1923. Jumbo distanced itself from the model set by Il Corrierino and marked the beginning of a new era for comics periodicals. The main novelty of the magazine was the publication of adventure comics that expanded the readership from children to young adolescents. Comics coming from overseas kept the traditional captions, but for the first time in Italy speech bubbles were also included as they appeared in the original versions. While the presence of speech bubbles may not seem revolutionary per se, their importance lies in the characterisation of the text as part of the message conveyed by images. As such, the narrative followed the plot and turned the stories into entertainment rather than an educational moment. This marked the first shift in the Italian comics press from a purely informative use of comics to their originally intended scope of entertaining the readers. Vecchi’s move granted him a jump in sales and soon made Jumbo more popular than Il Corrierino.²²

Jumbo can be seen as a key representation of the British phase in Italian comics pinpointed by Becciu, who divides the development of Italian comics in the 1930s into three stages: the ‘British’, the ‘American’ and the ‘autarchic’ phase.²³ Jumbo imported many British comic strips, among them the popular ‘Little Snow Drop’ by Frank Jennens, published with the title ‘Il segreto del nonno’ [The Grandfather’s Secret]. It also featured one of the most interesting comic strips, representative of the practices of that era when it came to the production of comics: the Italian adaptation of another British comic, ‘Rob the Rover’ by Walter H. Booth, given a new Fascist identity as ‘Lucio l’avanguardista’ [Lucio the Avantgardist], from the name of the Fascist organisation for boys between thirteen and eighteen. ‘Lucio’ is an example of how foreign comics were incorporated into Italian culture, in this case by adopting Fascist symbolism: Lucio is a member of the Fascist Youth Organisation, wears its uniform with the characteristic black shirt and flies a bi-plane named ‘Dux’. His allegiance to Mussolini’s system of power is echoed in his adventure set in Africa in 1936 with a Fascist woman at his side named ‘Romana’, a homage to the myth of the Italians’ Roman spirit. ‘Lucio l’avanguardista’ follows the same pattern and adventurous plot as its original British version, transformed into a representation of Fascist values (Fig. 3).²⁴

Whereas Jumbo stood out for its innovative features, the presence of captions continued to align the magazine with the Italian tradition that emphasised words over images, not to mention its reinforcement of the regime’s notion of comics as a means for disseminating its ideology. Jumbo was nonetheless a pioneering magazine, the first to conceive of comics as entertainment, even though it was an entertainment meant to educate children and please the Fascist rulers:

JUMBO vuol divertire i propri lettori ed insegnare loro tante belle cose! Le storielle […] avranno sempre un fine altamente morale: saranno una esaltazione delle virtù civili che ogni bimbo italiano deve avere o prepararsi ad avere nell’esempio fulgidissimo del Re Vittorioso, e sotto la guida del Duce.²⁵

[JUMBO wants to entertain its readers and teach them many good things! The little stories […] will always have a highly moral scope: they will be an exaltation of the civic virtues that every Italian child must have or prepare to have in the most shining example of the Victorious King, and under the guidance of the Duce.]

In 1932, just a few months after Jumbo, Nerbini published Topolino, a children’s magazine that marked a turning point in the history of Italian comics. Compared to the other magazines featuring comics, Topolino had more stories written for children and only two of its eight pages were dedicated to comic strips. Its importance and success stem from the presence of the eponymous character, Walt Disney’s famous Mickey Mouse, at the time a very popular film character. The anthropomorphous mouse appeared on the cover page in an original comic strip created by artist Giove Toppi, with no speech bubbles but with the traditional captions in rhyming couplets (Fig. 4). Topolino signifies a step forward in the modernisation of Italian comics and is the first magazine created with the sole purpose of entertaining its readers:

Questo giornalino non ti promette altro che di farti passare qualche lieto momento, di svagarti un poco, e non ha la benché minima idea di fare il saputone con te. Se imparerai qualche cosa, tanto meglio, vuol dire che il giornalino ti avrà insegnato senza farsene accorgere. D’altronde dei maestri ne hai abbastanza.²⁶

[This magazine promises you nothing more than to give you a few happy moments, to amuse you a little and it has no intention of being a know-it-all towards you. If you learn something, so much the better, it means that the magazine will have taught you without being noticed. After all, you have enough teachers.]

The early history of Topolino has been retraced in detail by Leonardo Gori, Fabio Gadducci and Sergio Lama in Eccetto Topolino, but it is important to highlight here how its publication was fundamental for the development of modern comics magazines in Italy. It was because of Topolino that Nerbini connected with Guglielmo Emanuel, the Italian agent for King Features Syndicate, and bought the rights to several American comic strips, such as ‘Tim Tyler’s Luck’ by Lyman Young (‘Cino e Franco’).²⁷ Already in its first year Topolino started featuring more comics and soon the text became less relevant, another step towards the modern predominance of images over words in children’s magazines. The change was openly addressed by the editor-in-chief of Topolino, Collodi Nipote (the pseudonym of Paolo Lorenzini), and linked to the new taste of the young readers:

Dai primi numeri di questo giornalino al presente, ultimo dell’annata, troverete parecchia differenza poiché l’Editore, nell’intendimento di conformarsi ai gusti dei ragazzi d’oggi e rendere loro sempre più gradito ‘Topolino’, lo è andato ricolmando, ognor di più, di vignette e storielle figurate.²⁸

[From the first issues of this magazine to the present, the last of the year, you will find a great deal of difference because the publisher, in order to conform to the tastes of today’s children and make them appreciate ‘Topolino’ more, has increasingly been filling it with cartoons and illustrated stories.]

In Nerbini’s view, images were the key to the new medium, which soon became the core of his most successful creation: L’Avventuroso, published in 1934. Nerbini was not the only publisher to have understood the potential of comics: Lotario Vecchi was also working at another magazine, L’Audace, which he launched following the success of Jumbo.

The story of L’Audace can be taken as a clear example of the evolution of the modern Italian comics magazine, embodying the British and American phases in Italian comics, plus an early stage that can be defined as a ‘traditional’ phase, when speech bubbles were eliminated and words dominated the scene. In January 1934 L’Audace appeared on the news-stands as a ‘traditional’ children’s magazine in its format and content, publishing only stories in text with no images. This feature made L’Audace look obsolete when compared to Topolino and Jumbo. In August, to keep up with the increasing number of comics magazines appearing on the news-stands, Vecchi transformed L’Audace by introducing comic strips, mainly British material from the Amalgamated Press. Text, however, still predominated over images and the differences between British comics and the increasingly popular American adventure comics published in other periodicals still made L’Audace look outdated.²⁹ From October 1934 onwards the publication of L’Avventuroso pushed Vecchi to change once again the format and content of L’Audace: from February 1935 captions were removed and the original speech bubbles reintroduced, with images finally prevailing over words. What is more, L’Audace began to offer to its readers unpublished strips of already famous comic strips such as ‘Guido Ventura’ [Brick Bradford] by Clarence Gray and William Ritt, ‘L’intrepido Bill’ [Broncho Bill] by Harry F. O’Neill and ‘La Pattuglia Volante’ [Radio Patrol] by Eddie Sullivan and Charlie Schmidt. All these titles had already been published in I Tre Porcellini (Milan: Mondadori, 1935–37), Jumbo and L’Avventuroso respectively, but the existence of daily strips and Sunday pages in the United States allowed the Italian representative of King Features Syndicate to sell them separately to different publishers, allowing Vecchi to publish original material in L’Audace. Vecchi did not rely only on King Features Syndicate material to modernise his comics magazine, but also used material from the United Features Syndicate, securing the first original strips of an unpublished hero ‘Tarzan’.³⁰ In spite of all these efforts, however, L’Audace was never able to compete with L’Avventuroso and Topolino, so by 1938 Vecchi abandoned the project and the magazine ceased publication.

The parabola of L’Audace is representative of the dynamism of the Italian comic book industry in the mid-1930s. Comics were becoming so popular that by 1937 the main publishers in the field (Vecchi, Del Duca, Nerbini and Mondadori) were publishing eighteen different comics magazines overall; if we include the smaller publishing companies, the total rises to thirty-five weeklies.³¹ A clear dividing line can be set with the advent of L’Avventuroso, after which many comic weeklies were issued as an attempt at either joining a successful market or competing with Nerbini’s periodical. Among the latter, Il Vittorioso, published by Azione Cattolica, represents possibly the most effective attempt to challenge Nerbini’s success, particularly for its continuity after the ban on foreign comics in 1938. It was a magazine that published only Italian-made comic strips, which means ones written and drawn by Italian artists with no translations or adaptations of foreign material. Il Vittorioso was, in general, aligned to the establishment and garnered a faithful readership, which found in the saga of its original and most popular hero, ‘Romano’ [Roman], an echo of Fascist ideology, particularly in its patriotism.³² Appearing between 1938 and 1943, ‘Romano’ is the result of the re-elaboration of the popular American comics that its creator, the Italian Kurt Caesar, placed in the setting of the Fascist regime and its wars: the Spanish Civil War, Italian East Africa, the Mediterranean. Leaving ideology aside, ‘Romano’ is the epitome of the Italianisation of American comics: the drawing style, the rhythm of the adventures, the dynamism of the illustrations and the integrity of the hero are all drawn from the American model, to which the values of Fascism and Roman Catholicism are added in perfect synthesis. The choice of exclusively publishing Italian comics, and the Fascist alignment embodied by ‘Romano’, ensured the continued publication of Il Vittorioso and protected it from censorship, which from 1938 onwards specifically targeted comics. While other publications were struggling to sell, Il Vittorioso gained more popularity, becoming the longest running comics magazine of its kind created in the 1930s.³³

The creation of a character like Romano reflects the importance of comic characters in challenging the boundaries between realism and fantasy. As products created to be consumed mainly by children – whose perspectives are still forming – the essence or identity of such characters becomes crucial for fostering identification with the protagonist and therefore with the values he embodies. Fictional characters exist in a liminal space between reality and fiction, inviting readers to engage with them as both imaginary figures and tangible entities within their cultural framework. A figure like Romano exemplifies how characters function as psychological and ideological vessels which readers actively construct through their engagement with the text and visuals. The inherent gaps and indeterminacies in the construction of comics characters allowed young readers unconsciously to fill these spaces with Fascist ideals, making the process of internalisation more effective precisely because it relied on active engagement rather than mere passive reception. In short, the indeterminacies in character-construction typical of the comic medium are crucial for engaging readers’ imagination.³⁴ Furthermore, the visual component of comics adds another layer to Romano’s function as an ideological vessel. The visual design, including his facial expressions, actions and setting, works in conjunction with textual cues to guide reader interpretation. However, the indeterminate aspects – what is left unsaid or unseen in the empty space between panels delineated by gutters – create openings for ideological projection. This sort of identification of the character with a set of values was soon perceived by the regime as a threat to the education of Italian children, leading to strict legislation to control the production of comics.

Fascist Censorship against American Adventure Comics (1938–43)

The Fascist regime’s first step towards the control of comics was taken in March 1937, when Dino Alfieri declared that the aim of its Ministry of Popular Culture was to ensure that any cultural production aimed at the Italian people followed a Fascist ‘spirit’. As a result, new legislation was introduced to increase State control over the periodical press, including comics magazines. Given the predominantly American or American-inspired content of comics, they needed to be overhauled and should instead ‘svolgere soggetti italiani ispirati alla vita e alle vicende dei nostri esploratori, navigatori, aviatori, agli eroi della nostra guerra’ [[have] developed Italian subjects inspired by the life and events of our explorers, navigators, aviators, of the heroes of our war].³⁵ Targeted action against comics was taken on 19 July 1938, when Alfieri ordered publishers to ‘far scomparire entro tre mesi ogni soggetto o vignetta d’importazione o d’imitazione americana’ [make any subject or panel of American import or imitation disappear within three months].³⁶

Comics were not the only victim of a stricter control over cultural production. Mussolini’s government took action on the whole of the children’s periodical press and literature with a campaign against foreign influences that were allegedly contaminating the morals of Fascist youth. Such a view was summarised at the convention on children’s literature (Convegno nazionale per la letteratura infantile e giovanile) held in Bologna in 1938 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Professor Guido Mancini (official representative of the Secretary of the Fascist Party): ‘[L]a letteratura italiana infantile e giovanile [deve essere] dominata dai seguenti principi: esclusione assoluta di ogni importazione straniera, sia nel materiale scritto e illustrato, sia nello spirito; ispirazione schiettamente italiana’ [[I]talian children’s and youth literature [must be] governed by the following principles: the absolute exclusion of any foreign import, whether in written or illustrated material or in spirit; a genuinely Italian inspiration].³⁷ From a legislative point of view, the ‘decontamination’ of children’s publishing meant the:

abolizione completa di tutto il materiale d’importazione straniera, […] soppressione di quelle storie e illustrazioni che si ispirano alla produzione straniera. Riduzione a metà delle pagine della parte dedicata alla pura illustrazione con conseguente aumento del testo finora quasi totalmente sacrificato. La stampa per ragazzi dovrà essenzialmente assolvere una funzione educativa, esaltando l’eroismo italiano, soprattutto militare, la razza italiana, la storia passata e presente d’Italia. L’avventura avrà la sua parte, purché sia audace e sana, ripudiando tutto ciò che vi è nelle storie criminali, paradossali, tenebrose e moralmente equivoche che inquinano tanta parte della stampa per ragazzi. […] Tali direttive che hanno […] un’ispirazione razziale e autarchica, dovranno essere attuate completamente entro il mese di dicembre.³⁸

[complete abolition of all foreign imported material, […] suppression of those stories and illustrations inspired by foreign production. Reduction to half the pages of the part devoted to pure illustration with consequent increase of the text hitherto almost totally sacrificed. The children’s press will essentially have to fulfil an educational function, exalting Italian heroism, especially military, the Italian race, the past and present history of Italy. Adventure will have its share, as long as it is bold and wholesome, repudiating all that there is in the criminal, paradoxical, gloomy and morally equivocal stories that pollute so much of the children’s press. […] These directives, which have […] a racial and autarchic inspiration, are to be fully implemented by December.]

A particularly revealing insight into Fascist perceptions of comics at this time can be gleaned from an article in La Stampa from December 1938. According to journalist Giorgio Vecchietti, five of the thirty comics magazines published at the time were selling over 100,000 copies, followed by another ten that were printing between fifty thousand and eighty thousand copies, for:

una tiratura complessiva di circa due milioni e una vendita di un milione e mezzo di copie. Se si calcola che ogni numero passa per le mani di almeno tre ragazzi, se ne conclude che ogni settimana più di tre milioni di piccoli lettori si appassionano, fanno il ‘tifo’ più appassionato […] per i loro eroi, di forme e di spiriti non italiani se non addirittura antiitaliani.³⁹

[a total circulation of about two million and sales of one and a half million copies. If one calculates that each issue passes through the hands of at least three children, it can be concluded that every week more than three million young readers are excited, do the most passionate ‘cheering’ […] for their heroes, of non-Italian, if not even anti-Italian, shapes and spirits.]

The popularity of American comics was, therefore, cause for concern on account of their wide dissemination among the younger generation, who, instead of growing up following the ideals for becoming the ‘new men’ envisioned by the Fascist revolution, were being manipulated into adopting an American mindset and morals and even exposed to anti-Italian values:

Tengono il cartello infatti una settantina di storie in continuazione di genere poliziesco e avventuroso, di pura marca americana, e una quarantina di non meglio accertata derivazione o imitazione ‘yankee’. […] Disegnatori e soggettisti impongono così all’attenzione, anzi alla ammirazione del fanciullo italiano un modo di vivere, di pensare, di agire rigidamente americano. Mai propaganda fu operata con tanta ampiezza di mezzi e garanzia di successo. […] [T]utto ciò, di grande o minuscolo, su cui il nostro ragazzo posa l’occhio è infallantemente, spietatamente americano.⁴⁰

[About seventy stories of the detective and adventure genres, pure American in brand, constantly hold the stage and about forty of no better ascertained ‘Yankee’ derivation or imitation. […] Artists and scriptwriters thus impose on the attention, or rather for the admiration of the Italian child a rigidly American way of living, thinking and acting. Never was propaganda operated with such breadth of means and guarantee of success. […] [E]verything, large or tiny, on which our boy lays his eyes is infallibly, ruthlessly American.]

Even Italian comics that imitated American products were, allegedly, contaminating the minds of the young by contributing to the spread of foreign values that often went against Fascist Italy and, in general, Italians:

Biondo, slanciato, di tipo anglosassone, razzialmente puro è sempre l’eroe, l’invitto; bruno, basso, tozzo, meridionalmente acceso, violento e subdolo è sempre l’antagonista, in tutto simile a quella figura di emigrante latino, o meglio italiano, i cui cineasti di Hollywood amano riservare le parti mortificanti del villain.⁴¹

[The hero, the unconquered, is always blond, slender, Anglo-Saxon, racially pure; the antagonist is always dark, short, stocky, lit from below, violent and devious, in every way similar to that figure of the Latin, or rather Italian, emigrant for whom Hollywood filmmakers like to reserve the mortifying role of the villain.]

This view reveals the complex emotional and psychological mechanisms through which young readers engaged with comic characters, making them an important element in propaganda and indoctrination. As Bennett and Royle argue, the hero is ‘the person with whom we “identify”, with whom we sympathise or empathise, or whose position or role we imaginatively inhabit’.⁴² This process of identification, operating on both the conscious and the unconscious level, explains the regime’s concern about Italian youth’s consumption of and engagement with Anglo-Saxon heroes. Given that character identification is not merely passive reception but an active process of identity construction – whereby readers fill in the psychological and ideological gaps in fictional figures – the hostile response by the Ministry of Popular Culture to American comics aligns with its broader project of forging a new Italian (and Fascist) identity. The regime recognised that the ontological ambiguity of fictional characters made them particularly powerful vehicles for transmitting cultural values and shaping young readers’ developing sense of self. It is not surprising, then, that the final attack on comics took the form of an official directive from the Ministry of Popular Culture which banned both foreign comics and any Italian imitation. Comics were to return to being purely Italian, as Vecchietti reports:

All’alba del 1° gennaio [1939] […] i giornali per ragazzi, per ordine del Ministro della Cultura popolare, appariranno in veste totalmente, italianamente rinnovata: cadranno le innumerevoli vignette straniere, le pagine scritte equilibreranno quelle di pura illustrazione, le avventure, gli ardimenti, i giochi avranno una marca, un’ispirazione, uno stile finalmente italiani.⁴³

[By order of the Minister of Popular Culture, at dawn on 1 January [1939] […] children’s journals will appear in a totally renewed, Italianised guise: the innumerable foreign cartoons will fall by the wayside, the written pages will balance those of pure illustration, the adventures, the feats, the games will have a brand, an inspiration, a style that is finally Italian.]

Vecchietti echoed the view of the Fascist regime on American comics, considered a corrupting influence from which Italian children should be protected. In the view of the Ministry of Popular Culture, Italian comics magazines had to return to being culturally Italian, which meant the traditional predominance of textual narrative over visuals. Exalting the decision made by Mussolini’s government, Vecchietti welcomed the resurgence of traditional Italian children’s periodicals as a novelty that would transform children’s publishing for the better. His view appears perfectly in line not only with the latest directives against comics, but also with the Fascist relationship with the past as well as with its ambivalence towards modernity.

Italian publishers of comics had to comply with the new directives, so American comics disappeared, but not entirely at first. Conscious of their popularity, which meant high sales figures, in some instances publishers hid the American origin of comics by Italianising names and settings, or by publishing Italian copies of American stories.⁴⁴ In response to the action by the Ministry of Popular Culture against American comics, and in order to try to please the new generation of readers who had moved on from Salgari’s exotic adventures, comics magazines included comic strips that were formally Italian but imitated the original American heroes and incorporated the new collective imaginary. The ploy worked for a few months and between June 1940 and December 1941, when the attention of the regime was diverted by the war effort and propaganda, the American heroes returned under Italian names, for example, Jungle Jim (Geo) and Superman (Ciclone). Once Italy and the United States were officially at war, however, American comics had to disappear fully, leading to a plunge in sales for comics magazines.

Adventure Comics and Entertainment: L’Avventuroso

By the 1920s Giuseppe Nerbini was publishing popular characters who were part of the collective imagination, such as Buffalo Bill, Lord Lister and Nick Carter, with circulation figures of up to fifty thousand copies.⁴⁵ These publications highlight both Nerbini’s role as a publisher of popular characters and stories and his early interest in overseas productions. In 1922 Giuseppe Nerbini and his son Mario – who worked at the publishing company, mainly supervising the periodical section – joined the Fascist movement and used their political affiliation to protect their business and enjoy a certain freedom. The letters sent by Mario Nerbini to the Segreteria particolare del Duce (the Private Secretariat of the Duce) in the 1930s, along with his direct discussions with Mussolini about his magazines, raise the possibility that his political alignment may have been, at least in part, a pragmatic business strategy. Similarly, the publication of American comics was a business choice and cannot be interpreted as a form of resistance.⁴⁶ Like other publishers in the 1930s in all fields of the periodical press, Nerbini published the content that allowed him to sell more copies than any other comics magazine: American comics heroes.

Nerbini had been active in the children’s periodical press since the beginning, publishing magazines such as Il Giornale di Fortunello (1920–22), Monella (1925–36) and L’Avventuriero (1926); in the 1930s his comics magazines played a key role in the shaping of the modern Italian comics press. After the success of Topolino, Mario Nerbini – head of the company from 1933 – decided to launch a new project focused on American adventure comics: L’Avventuroso. Interviews and historical accounts show that Mario Nerbini himself played a central role in its shaping and production. According to an interview he granted to journalist Franco De Giacomo in 1966, Nerbini supervised the work of artists and writers and, above all, organised the layout of the magazine and approved the translations: ‘[V]olevo fare tutto da me […]. Poi guardavo tutti i giornali, davo i soggetti…insomma, facevo tutto da me. […] [Anche] l’impaginazione, […] andavo nelle tipografie a impaginare, tutto [facevo tutto]’ [[I] wanted to do everything myself […]. Then I would look at all the journals, the topics…in short, I would do everything by myself. […] [Even] the layout, […], I would go to the printer shops and did the layout, everything [I did everything]].⁴⁷

There is not much information on how the publishing company and editorial staff of L’Avventuroso were organised; however, when looking at Nerbini’s collaborators a certain continuity can be noticed: artists such as Corrado Sarri, Tancredi Scarpelli, Guido Moroni-Celsi, Giorgio Scudellari and Giove Toppi had worked with Nerbini, illustrating his popular novels. In L’Avventuroso, together with other regular illustrators such as Roberto Lemmi, Rudy Coghei, Ferdinando Vichi, Guido and Mario Fantoni and Carlo Cossio, they created American-style comics. Among the regular collaborators there were also writers, including Paolo Lorenzini (Collodi Nipote), Enrico Novelli (Yambo), Emilio Fancelli and Luigi Motta. These writers were all active across different popular publications: Lorenzini had edited Topolino; Yambo had worked for Il Novellino at the beginning of the century and also wrote stories for Topolino; Fancelli was the literary heir to adventure writer Emilio Salgari; and Luigi Motta also collaborated with Omnibus. As in other popular publishing sectors, it is possible to highlight a network of recurrent names in comics publishing. The role of the publisher, Mario Nerbini, seems to have played a key part in the success of L’Avventuroso, which changed Italian comics and established record sales figures of 300,000 copies on average every week, outpacing even Topolino, which had established itself on 250,000 copies.⁴⁸ The story of L’Avventuroso offers a glimpse into how the field evolved and radically changed, paving the way for modern Italian comics as we know them today.

The Golden Age of American Comics in L’Avventuroso and Fascist Censorship, 1934–42

The golden age of Nerbini was brief, but between 1934 and 1938 it produced several radical innovations in Italian comics, with L’Avventuroso at the centre of this moment. After 1938 new constraints meant that the impact of his comics was reduced, so much so that in 1942 L’Avventuroso passed to Mondadori before being discontinued in 1943. As Gadducci, Gori and Lama put it: ‘L’Avventuroso di Mario Nerbini […] è un fenomeno che travalica l’editoria per ragazzi e assume anzi le proporzioni di un autentico fatto di costume’ [Mario Nerbini’s L’Avventuroso […] was a phenomenon that transcended the children’s press and acquired the proportions of an authentic fact of custom].⁴⁹ For Juri Meda, ‘inaugura un nuovo modo di intrattenere i giovani lettori, niente più monelli e comicità ma eroi coraggiosi e invincibili’ [it inaugurates a new way of entertaining young readers, no more pests and comedy but brave and invincible heroes].⁵⁰ Journalist Giuseppe Trevisani identifies the revolutionary impact of L’Avventuroso in its entertaining nature:

I ragazzi […] si buttarono avidamente su quel foglio che era diverso da quanto era stato fino a quel momento consentito e consigliato loro di leggere. Tutti i loro giornaletti […] erano stati fino a quel momento edificanti e istruttivi. Questo giornalaccio tutto figure finalmente non insegnava niente […]. Era soltanto divertente, nella sua sciagurataggine, nel suo italiano a volte persino sconnesso.⁵¹

[Kids […] threw themselves eagerly onto that paper, so different from what they had been allowed and advised to read up to that point. Up to that point all their magazines […] had been edifying and instructive. Ultimately, this rag, composed entirely of pictures, did not teach anything […]. It was only amusing, in its wretchedness, in its sometimes even disconnected Italian.]

For its success and innovation, L’Avventuroso is the key to the ‘American revolution’ in Italian comics. As already noted, much research has been carried out on this magazine; however, these studies are mainly limited to the innovation that was the introduction of American heroes, with little attention paid to whether and how these comics were adapted to an Italian readership. Here L’Avventuroso is analysed with a particular focus on how the magazine changed over the years of its production, highlighting the presence of American models, their genres, style, changes in Italian comics and the impact of censorship.

Nerbini published L’Avventuroso from 14 October 1934 to 28 February 1943, a total of 439 issues, before ceding the magazine to Mondadori (February–March 1943). L’Avventuroso usually consisted of eight pages, but the number changed over the years: six in 1936; ten in 1938; twelve in 1939; and up to sixteen in 1943. Until 1937 the price remained stable at thirty cents (in Italian lira); then from issue 131 it started to rise: forty cents in 1937; fifty cents in 1938; sixty cents in 1940; reaching a peak of 120 cents in 1942 and then dropping to sixty cents again in 1943.⁵² Its format followed the size and layout of a large newspaper: it measured 31x43cm, slightly larger than Topolino (35x25cm), Il Corrierino (c. 22x29cm) and L’Intrepido (23x30cm). While other Italian comics magazines such as Jumbo, L’Intrepido and Il Vittorioso came out on Saturdays, L’Avventuroso came out on Sundays, the same day as Il Corriere dei Piccoli and American Funnies.

The launch of L’Avventuroso was advertised on the last page of Nerbini’s earlier magazine Topolino on 14 October 1934. The advertisement claimed that the new weekly was ‘il più grande settimanale illustrato di avventure’ [the greatest illustrated adventure weekly] and announced it would publish the first strip of the American science-fiction hero Flash Gordon. For the very first time adventure comic strips such as ‘Secret Agent X-9’ (‘Emozionante storia d’audacia e spionaggio’ [Thrilling tale of audacity and espionage]), ‘Radio Patrol’ (‘ardimento, imprese fantastiche ed eroiche’ [bravery, fantastic and heroic deeds]) and ‘Jungle Jim’ (‘Storia di viaggi ed esplorazione nella Jungla [sic] misteriosa’ [A tale of travel and exploration in the mysterious Jungle]) were to be introduced in Italy (Fig. 5). The advertisement also highlighted the presence of three hundred illustrations, a figure which confirms Nerbini’s commercial focus on images. Right from the very first issue of L’Avventuroso one can see a radical change from the established organisation of the children’s periodical as set by Il Corrierino: almost the entire magazine was dedicated to comic strips, to the detriment of other sections, games and written stories.

On the same day it was advertised, L’Avventuroso appeared on the news-stands, its first page showing ‘Flash Gordon’, who soon became the star feature of the magazine. The novelty of the magazine was immediately clear from the introduction of a science-fiction fantasy hero, who offered the readers a new exotic imaginary.

As Leonardo Gori notes, starting with its title L’Avventuroso offered its readers a different imaginary world, stimulating the same exotic collective imagination powerfully promoted by Salgari’s novels and influenced by Hollywood films:

La testata […] è un vero e proprio editoriale: sulla sinistra, un nero, un giallo, un indiano, interpretazioni dei tipi contemporanei proposti da Hollywood. Rappresentano l’alterità minacciosa ma anche affascinante, non sono semplici ‘cattivi’ ma incarnazioni dell’esotico ammaliatore. Sulla destra, al posto di un intrepido ‘avanguardista’ o di un eroico balilla, c’è niente meno che un poliziotto americano! Il ‘buono’ è dunque anch’esso esotico, diverso.⁵³

[The masthead […] is a true editorial: on the left, a black [man], a yellow [man, i.e., an Asian], an Indian, interpretations of contemporary models proposed by Hollywood. They represent the threatening but also fascinating otherness; they are not mere ‘villains’ but incarnations of the exotic charmer. On the right, instead of an intrepid ‘avantgardist’ or a heroic ‘balilla’, there is none other than an American policeman! The ‘good guy’ is therefore also exotic, different.]

On the second page there was a serialised novel by Emilio Fancelli, ‘Filibustieri del gran golfo – grande romanzo d’avventure’ [Pirates of the Grand Gulf – Great Adventure Novel], the only page on which words dominated. However, even here the presence of two large, elaborate illustrations by Giove Toppi capture the readers’ attention, modernising a traditional feature and drawing attention away from the words (Fig. 6).

On page 3 was the first strip of ‘Radio Patrol’ (published in the United States from 1933 onwards as a daily strip and as a Sunday strip from 1934), the first detective comic strip to be published in L’Avventuroso. As far as translation is concerned, ‘Radio Patrol’ is an interesting example which reveals two contradictory approaches to the original American version. It is the first comic strip whose title was not translated in L’Avventuroso, suggesting an accurate reproduction of the original comics. However, we can clearly identify a process of Italianisation in the translation of the dialogues, from names to the use of the traditional Italian polite form of address, the second person plural ‘voi’. In particular, the names of the two protagonists were slightly changed: policewoman Milly Day became Molli Dal; and the main character’s name went from Pinky to Pinki – the English ‘y’ changed to the Italian ‘i’. Like other American comics adapted for the magazine, it became a long running series: it was regularly published in L’Avventuroso until issue 62 – when it was moved to Nerbini’s other successful comics magazine, Il giornale di Cino e Franco [The Journal of Cino and Franco] – and again from issues 89 to 206, when the series was suspended.⁵⁴ The story, set in Boston, features the adventures of a team comprising Sergeant Pat and policewoman Milly Day, who fight crime in a police patrol car (hence the title of the series), helped by a child named Pinkerton Jr (known as Pinky). Written by crime reporter Ed Sullivan and illustrated by Charlie Schmidt, ‘Radio Patrol’ was characterised by the realism of the look and events, which contrasted with the science-fiction and fantasy heroes in L’Avventuroso, such as Flash Gordon: the investigative team fight crime by using their intelligence and the innovative two-way radio-car system, not by relying on any superhuman physical strength. The sequence of illustrations has a cinematic look: events move fast and the sequence of events is intense.

‘Radio Patrol’ was not the only crime comic strip published in L’Avventuroso: it was followed by ‘Agente Segreto X-9’, illustrated by Alex Raymond and written by Dashiell Hammett.⁵⁵ According to Carlo Della Corte, ‘Agente Segreto X-9’ was a straightforward representation of the United States in the Roaring Twenties in the look of its protagonist:

Nella prima vignetta […] indossa una sontuosa vestaglia tipo Grand Hotel, e riceve una telefonata con aria assai poco formale, in una posa spavalda alla Clark Gable. […] Alex Raymond crea il suo eroe prestandogli tutti gli attributi di ‘bello e dannato’, del personaggio duro e avventuroso, con un fondo di puritana onestà, simile a quella che lega i protagonisti dei coevi racconti di Scott Fitzgerald.⁵⁶

[In the first panel […] he wears a sumptuous Grand Hotel-type dressing gown and receives a phone call in a very informal manner, in a Clark Gable-like swaggering pose. […] Alex Raymond creates his hero by lending him all the attributes of the ‘beautiful and damned’, of the tough and adventurous character, with a puritanical honesty, similar to that which binds the protagonists of Scott Fitzgerald’s contemporary stories.]

‘Agente Segreto X-9’ also offers a clear example of the process of adaptation to more Italian-sounding names. In particular, it is worth highlighting that names were often not translated but adapted, keeping an exotic hint, as the case of ‘Secret Agent X-9’ shows: the name Dan given to the FBI secret agent does not sound as foreign as the original name, Dexter, but it is still not an Italian name, highlighting the exotic appeal of L’Avventuroso. ‘Radio Patrol’ and ‘Agente Segreto X-9’ are characterised by similarly realistic stories inspired by crime news, although the latter is focused on the adventure of a secret agent whose real identity remains unknown. The secrecy of the protagonist’s identity and his charm make ‘Agente Segreto X-9’ similar to a Hollywood crime film boasting gangsters with no scruples and beautiful women portrayed as damsels in distress or villains. Like other American comic strips in L’Avventuroso, these detective stories faithfully reproduced the original format and included speech bubbles.

Following these two American crime comics, which also offer a realistic look at American cities, the following two pages were occupied by two Italian comic strips that still used captions with no trace of speech bubbles: ‘Dal deserto alla jungla’ [sic] [From the Desert to the Jungle], an illustrated version of Henrik Sienkiewicz’s novel adapted by Paolo Lorenzini and drawn by Giorgio Scudellari; and ‘Il cacciatore di serpenti’ [The Serpent Hunter], written and illustrated by Corrado Sarri. Compared to the American comics, the two stories are static and the illustrations are merely decorative, as the action is all in the captions: without reading them, the reader would have only a vague sense of the story. This is especially true for ‘Il cacciatore di serpenti’, which more than a comic strip resembles a short story divided into captions (Fig. 7).⁵⁷ The tale follows the adventure of two students in Vienna – Franco and Agide – who spend more time drinking, smoking and having fun than studying for their exams, borrowing money from a Jewish money-lender, Isaac. To pay their debts, Franco sells Isaac a gold watch that his grandfather, a famous naval captain, had given him before passing away. Franco soon finds out that to inherit his grandfather’s assets he needs to follow the instructions engraved inside the watch. It is the beginning of an adventure because Isaac has sold the watch to a German hunter who has already left the country for India. The two students and Isaac follow the steps of the hunter, from India to Brazil, among rich women and bandits, until the trio find the watch. The engraving finally reveals the treasure left by the old captain to his nephew: the secret of life, ‘Lavoro – Oro – Risparmio’ [Work – Gold – Savings]. The moral of the story is for children to follow righteous values and not to waste time by indulging in bad habits (like smoking, drinking and selling valuables).

In its content, style and illustrations the story brings to mind the traditional Italian adventure novels of the nineteenth century and forms a contrast to the dynamism and cinematic illustrations of the American comics that preceded it. The same can be said of ‘Dal deserto alla jungla’, although its illustrations are simpler and closer to the modern comic style. The story follows the adventures of two children of engineers working in Suez. The boy and girl are kidnapped by ‘ribelli maomettiani’ [Mohammedan rebels], who offer them their freedom on condition that they repudiate Catholicism. The children refuse, manage to escape and live through a series of adventures while finding their way back home from the desert to the jungle. Like ‘Il cacciatore di serpenti’, the story develops in the captions, although the presence of dynamic illustrations makes it closer to a modern comic than Scudellari’s story. Captions are, however, still crucial for understanding the plot. In its content the story is anchored in Italian traditional values, echoing Roman Catholic virtues and showing that being faithful Catholics leads to salvation. The plot can be seen as very instructive, teaching young Italians the importance of believing in the Church and depicting other faiths – in this case Islam – as the ‘villain’. The two Italian stories are traditional not simply in their style and use of the illustrations, but also in their scope: both contain a moral and teach children to behave well, since well-behaved children are rewarded, just like in the early comic strips published in the Corriere dei Piccoli.

The first issue of L’Avventuroso ends with another American hero, ‘Jim, l’uomo della jungla’ [The Man of the Jungle], a comic strip launched in the United States simultaneously with ‘Flash Gordon’ and illustrated and written by the same authors, Alex Raymond and Don Moore. Set in South-East Asia, Jim Bradley’s story represents the classic adventure hero and white hunter, the good man fighting against evil, which in the strips is embodied by wild aggressive animals, slave traders, or reckless hunters. ‘Jungle Jim’ has all the elements common to other American comic strips published in L’Avventuroso: there is a hero fighting villains, helped by a partner in adventure and, ultimately, in love with a woman whom he saves from dangerous men and/or situations.⁵⁸ ‘Jungle Jim’ could not have been further in style from the two Italian comics that preceded it. From an attack by a tiger to a fight with a puma and a threatening villain, the readers are caught up in the action of a typically dynamic American adventure comic, in contrast to the static illustrations and predominance of words in Scudellari and Sarri’s stories. ‘Jungle Jim’ was printed in the same three-colour printing as ‘Agente Segreto X-9’ and ‘Flash Gordon’: the three comic strips illustrated by Raymond were the only pages in colour, whereas all the other stories were in black and white.⁵⁹

Overall, in the first twelve issues published in 1934 there were three Italian stories and four American comic strips. This balance and the organisation of the magazine remained the same until March 1935. The first noticeable change comes in issue 21 (3 March 1935), in which ‘Jim, l’uomo della jungla’ is moved to an inside page as Flash Gordon, the most popular hero, occupies both the first and the last page. From issue 25 (31 March) the title of Gordon’s story also changed from ‘La distruzione del mondo’ to ‘Le avventure di Gordon nell’impero di Min’ – ‘On the Planet Mongo’ in its original version. The subtitle of the magazine was also modified in July 1935 from ‘Grande settimanale d’avventure’ to ‘Grande settimanale per tutti’ [Great weekly for everyone], thereby expanding the targeted readership.⁶⁰ The change in subtitle highlighted that L’Avventuroso was not a journal aimed at children, protecting Nerbini from the potential accusation of publishing comics morally harmful to the education of children.⁶¹ This was in contrast to earlier publications that explicitly targeted young children: La Piccola Italiana, for example, carried the subtitle ‘settimanale della giovinetta del Littorio’ [weekly for the young Fascist girl], whereas Il Corriere dei Piccoli was clearly aimed at children and Jumbo was subtitled ‘settimanale illustrato per ragazzi’ [illustrated weekly for boys].

The year 1935 was also characterised by two important innovations. First, there was the introduction of ‘Mandrake the Magician’ (‘Mandrake l’uomo del mistero’), which was substituted for ‘Dal deserto alla jungla’ on page 6. The publication of Mandrake in 1935 was characterised by the usual, minor alteration of names: Detective Sheldon and Mandrake’s companion Lothar each lose an ‘h’, becoming ‘Seldon’ and ‘Lotar’; whereas in the second story, ‘The Hawk’ (‘Il mistero della casa da giuoco’), the villain Hawk becomes Rawak and Princess Narda becomes Daran. The protagonist, Mandrake, is the only one to maintain his original name, at least until 1937, when it was also Italianised to ‘Mandrache’ and then appeared as the improbable name of ‘Mandracke’ in 1941. Second, both ‘Dal deserto alla jungla’ and ‘Il cacciatore di serpenti’ adopted speech bubbles, abolishing the captions and marking the end of the ‘traditional’ Italian comic style in L’Avventuroso – at least until 1938, when the Fascist regime banned American comics and their features, speech bubbles included. Many other Italian comic strips found space in L’Avventuroso in 1935, increasing the number of Italian authors:

• ‘Lo spettro di Stoccolma’ [The Ghost of Stockholm] by Sarri
• ‘Il richiamo della Jungla’ [The Call of the Jungle], illustrated by Scudellari and written by Fancelli
• ‘I naufraghi dell’Anna Maria’ [The Castaways of the Anna Maria] by Scudellari
• ‘Il Leone Bianco’ [The White Lion] by Scudellari, clearly inspired by Jungle Jim
• ‘Il Negriero’ [The Slaver], the debut story of Moroni-Celsi in L’Avventuroso – a Western comic that recalls the stories of Emilio Salgari
• ‘La prigioniera del Ras’ [The Prisoner of the Ras], illustrated by Moroni-Celsi and written by Fancelli – the first propaganda comic ever published in L’Avventuroso⁶²
• ‘La regina dei pirati’ [The Queen of the Pirates] by Toppi
• ‘Una donna a bordo’ [A Woman On Board] by Toppi
• ‘Il dramma del sottomarino H-47’ [The Drama of Submarine H-47] by Toppi
• ‘La strana fine di Eddie Parker’ [The Strange End of Eddie Parker] by Gaetano Vitelli
• ‘La fede degli Avi’ [The Ancestors’ Faith] by Vitelli
• ‘La valigia dei diamanti’ [The Suitcase of Diamonds] by Carlo Cossio

A few features from this list stand out. First, the number of Italian comics published in 1935 increased; second, considering the overall number of Italian stories published throughout the year compared to the number of American strips, the Italian comics are shorter; third, from 1935 onwards war enters L’Avventuroso (‘La prigioniera del Ras’; ‘Il dramma del sottomarino H-47’) and with it Fascist rhetoric: ‘La prigioniera del Ras’ constitutes clear propaganda against the Ethiopians. The story follows the adventure of two fourteen-year-old Italian boys in Africa – ‘figli di ingegneri […] amici per la pelle’ [sons of engineers […] best friends] – captured by Ethiopians.⁶³ Both the story and the language used show that L’Avventuroso had partially adapted to the directive of the regime; particularly striking are the comments by one of the protagonists about an Ethiopian, ‘quest’animale c’ha fatto smarrire’ [this animal got us lost],⁶⁴ and the iconographic image of the white woman captured, her life threatened by Ethiopians (Fig. 8). What is more, the two young protagonists resemble classic Fascist characters, protagonists of comic stories like those published after 1931 in Il Corriere dei Piccoli: young, brave balilla who glorify Fascism and its values.

Alongside the adoption in some comics of Fascist rhetoric and ideology, other Italian productions such as ‘Il dramma del sottomarino H-47’ remained anchored to the established American model and its author, Toppi, used foreign names for his protagonists, such as James Watson, Cherie, Karl and Marton, to maintain the signature exotic appeal of L’Avventuroso. Toppi’s submarine story ends on 12 January 1936 (issue 66) and is followed by ‘I naufragatori misteriosi’ [The Mysterious Castaways], written by Fancelli and again illustrated by Toppi (19 January 1936, issue 67), another sea-based adventure story with Anglo-Saxon protagonists. More importantly, from issue 69 onwards (2 February 1936) Jungle Jim – the title slightly changed into ‘Le avventure di Jim – L’idolo della Jungla’ [The Adventures of Jim – The Idol of the Jungle] – moves to page 5, leaving the last page of L’Avventuroso to Toppi’s comic, a page as important as the first one, since these pages were exposed on the news-stands and worked as advertisements. The fact that there was now an Italian story concluding the issues of L’Avventuroso did not create any discontinuity in the style of the magazine. Toppi’s protagonists are mostly American or British, like ‘capitano Hearny della polizia americana’ [Captain Heanry of the American police], ‘comandante Simon’ [Commander Simon] and ‘il celebre Land di Scotland Yard e già agente dell’Intelligence service’ [the famous Land of Scotland Yard, previously an agent of the Intelligence Service].⁶⁵ What is more, the style of the illustrations and the sequence of the actions, particularly their dynamism, make this comic strip closer to an American one than any other Italian comics that preceded it. Toppi’s following story, ‘La regina d’Atalanta’ [The Queen of Atalanta], confirms the adoption of the American style by the Italian illustrator.

Toppi was not the only Italian author inspired by an American imaginary. Among the other Italian comics it is worth mentioning Vichi’s ‘Uragano di fuoco’ [Hurricane of Fire], a Western-inspired story; Moroni-Celsi’s ‘Il tesoro degli indiani Lupai’ [The Treasure of the Lupai Indians], which had the same Western setting but, like his other stories, still used captions more than speech bubbles; and, finally, ‘I demoni del West’ [The Demons of the West] by Raffaello Donati, set in North America in 1862 and based on the violent revolt of Cheyenne, Apache and Sioux subdued by American volunteers, among whom is the hero of the comic ‘cacciatore Sure Shot, colpo di fucile sicuro’ [Hunter Sure Shot, a sure rifle shot].⁶⁶ In the second year of publication of L’Avventuroso, a progressive Americanisation of Italian comics can clearly be seen in the adoption of the American model in illustrations, the dynamism, the setting of the stories and the protagonists.⁶⁷

The year 1936 is especially significant also for the appearance of two new comics: ‘Red Barry’ by Will Gould and, more importantly, ‘The Phantom’ by Lee Falk. ‘Red Barry’ was already known to the Italian public under the name ‘Jim il Rosso’ [Jim the Red], as its daily strips were published in La Risata (Milan: Casa Editrice Moderna, 1934–37). Mario Nerbini was able to buy from King Features Syndicate the rights to the Sunday strips and published them under a new name: ‘Bob Star, poliziotto dai capelli rossi’ [Bob Star, the Red-Head Policeman]. ‘Bob Star’ is an undercover policeman who often infiltrates criminal organisations to fight gangsters and solve crimes, such as the kidnapping of a boy – Ouchy Mugouchy, Italianised to Occi-Mucci – who helps Red Barry and assumes a role similar to Pinky in ‘Radio Patrol’. Unlike the other popular detective comics published in L’Avventuroso, such as ‘Radio Patrol’ and ‘Agente Segreto X-9’, ‘Bob Star’ does not have realistic illustrations and the rhythm of the stories is intense and full of twists. Red Barry’s task as an infiltrator keeps the tension high throughout the story, whereas the prominent role of children, such as Ouchy Mugouchy, makes it possible for young readers to identify with the characters. Another important difference between ‘Bob Star’ and the other crime comics published in L’Avventuroso is the role of women, completely absent in the first instalment of the saga and marginal in the following instalment, ‘Un terzetto eccezionale’ [An Exceptional Trio], published from 23 May 1937 onwards (issue 137).⁶⁸

The major novelty of 1936 appears in issue 101 (13 September): ‘The Phantom’. The colouring of the hero’s costume, red, offers an interesting example of Nerbini’s manipulation of the original strips. It has been suggested that Nerbini changed the colour of The Phantom’s costume to red because it was a ‘colore più mediterraneamente adatto alla fantasia italiana’ [Mediterranean colour, more appropriate for the Italian fantasy].⁶⁹ However, not only is there no evidence in support of this claim, but in 1936 ‘The Phantom’ was published in the United States as a daily strip and, as such, was printed in black and white. It seems more likely that the choice of the colour red came about because red was the colour of Flash Gordon’s suit and could therefore easily associate the new hero with the most successful protagonist in L’Avventuroso.⁷⁰ After a few issues, on 6 December 1936 ‘The Phantom’ began to occupy the last page. This comic, in its content and language, demonstrates once more how L’Avventuroso targeted a wider range of readers than other comics magazines such as Il Corrierino, Il Vittorioso and L’Intrepido: the romance between the two protagonists, Diana and The Phantom, is explicit and an important part of the plot; and Diana herself is introduced as one of the main characters, making it appealing also for a female readership. At the same time, both the language and some scenes are quite strong, making the comic unsuitable for young children. In the first instalment, for example, the first strip shows Diana boxing against a man (Fig. 9). In the following instalment she meets the villains and shows her strength by punching in the face one who wanted to take her away. While she fails and is ultimately captured, Diana is one of the very few female protagonists published in L’Avventuroso to show such physical strength and to be portrayed physically fighting men, initially subverting the standard ideal of the damsel in distress – even though only for a few strips. The romance between the hero and Diana is made explicit by showing them kissing, but what makes the comic even more interesting is that Diana is also shown being kissed by another man. Not only is a female character depicted in an intimate relationship with a man, but the romance is further complicated by a love triangle, although Diana’s love for The Phantom is never questioned. The language used by the villains, who call her ‘kitty’ due to her attitude and beauty and hint at their desire for her, is another element which shows ‘The Phantom’ was not appropriate for children, especially considering that the Fascist authorities had not abandoned the idea of comics as a means of education and that the targeted readership included young adults, both men and women (Figs. 10–13). As far as translation is concerned, ‘The Phantom’ was Italianised as ‘L’uomo mascherato’ [The Masked Man]; and his girlfriend’s name changed from Diana Palmer to Diana Palmesi, eliminating any hint at American names. Overall, the publication of ‘The Phantom’ demonstrates how the success of American comics, confirmed by the increasing popularity of L’Avventuroso, led Mario Nerbini to buy the rights to new adventure comics in spite of the Fascist campaign for cultural autarchy and the traditional role reserved by the regime for Italian women.

In 1936 the publication of written short stories was reintroduced on page 2, from issue 90 onwards (28 June). However, unlike in 1934 the stories are short and self-contained, ending in the same issue; the genre varies from a detective story (‘Un’avventura dell’ispettore Clark’ [An Adventure of Inspector Clark] by Gino Francia) to an ‘Oriental novella’ by Luigi Motta (5 July). From issue 105 onwards (11 October) page 2 is again dedicated to a serialised story, a science-fiction novel by Paolo Lorenzini, each instalment accompanied by one or two illustrations by Ferdinando Vichi. By the end of 1936 L’Avventuroso looked more like its first issue in 1934. The look and content of the magazine remained consistent throughout the following year, although in 1937 Mandrake was Italianised to ‘Mandrache’ and Nerbini, for the first time, published a statement defending his magazine and arguing that it was not aimed at children. On 24 January (issue 120, the third of the year), framed on the top right of page 2, Nerbini declared that L’Avventuroso:

non è un giornale per bambini ma per tutti e in special modo per giovanetti e signorine. La nostra Casa ha dedicato ai piccoli lettori ‘Il piccolo avventuroso’ e ‘Il giornale di Cino e Franco’. Non ci stancheremo di ripeterlo finché ci saranno sordi in giro.⁷¹

[is not a magazine for children but for everyone and especially for young men and women. Our [publishing] House has dedicated ‘Il piccolo Avventuroso’ and ‘Il giornale di Cino e Franco’ to younger readers. We shall not grow tired of repeating this as long as there are deaf people around.]

The statement is not signed, but it is plausible that the author is Mario Nerbini himself – the author talks of ‘our [publishing] House’ – defending his magazine from the accusation that, as emerges implicitly, L’Avventuroso was publishing material unsuitable for children.

From the first issue of 1937 onwards L’Avventuroso had ten pages and American stories took up even more space than before. Two new stories featuring Flash Gordon appeared (‘Verso l’ignoto’ [Towards the Unknown]; and, from 20 June, ‘Il re della foresta’ [The King of the Forest]); and two pages each were dedicated to ‘L’uomo mascherato – Nel regno dei Singh’ [The Masked Man – In the Kingdom of the Singhs], ‘Radio Pattuglia’, ‘Agente segreto X-9’, ‘Bob Star – Un terzetto eccezionale’ and Mandrake (now ‘Mandrache il mago benefico’ [Mandrake the Benevolent Wizard]). In short, seven pages out of ten were taken up by American comics. The remaining three pages contained Italian stories, one serialised novel and two comics. As before, the Italian comics boasted an exotic setting and included Marco Spada and Giove Toppi’s ‘Gente Nostra’ [Our People], set in South America and following the adventures of ‘Lola Ardito puro sangue sardo figlia di due emigranti italiani residenti nel Sud del Messico’ [Lola Ardito, of pure Sardinian blood, the daughter of two Italian emigrants living in southern Mexico].⁷² A similar story had been published in April, ‘Pionieri italiani “sentieri di guerra” del Grand-Ovest’ [Italian Pioneers’ ‘warpaths’ of the Grand West], which followed the adventures of Giulio Santoro, an Italian immigrant in Nebraska.

Through the theme of emigration Italian artists Italianised exotic scenarios and put Italian protagonists among cowboys and Indians. Rather than altering the American stories by adding Italian features, Italian comics were adapted to the new Americanised imaginary of young adults.⁷³ In these Italian comics it is possible to find different myths in one single story: the myth of the Italian immigrant in America; and the myth of America itself, with its adventures, frontier and promised land and fortune. The setting of these stories is also consistent with the censorship of crime news: Italy had to look peaceful and ordered, while crime and violence were a characteristic of American cities and confirmed the anti-American idea that linked American society with violence (see Chapters 1 and 4). Thus, the American setting of Italian comics satisfied both the readers’ expectations and Fascist propaganda.⁷⁴

Showing the violence of American society did not, however, protect the Italian comics industry. The first effect on L’Avventuroso of the new legislation against comics can be dated to February 1938, when Mario Nerbini rejected a new King Features Syndicate comic, ‘Inspector Wade’ by Lyman Anderson. A letter written by Nerbini to Guglielmo Emanuel, the agent for King Features Syndicate in Italy, illustrates the consequences of the Fascist campaign against American comics: ‘Per l’Ispettore Wade, lo prenderei, ma purtroppo è stata ripresa una forte campagna contro la merce americana’ [As for Inspector Wade, I would take it, but unfortunately a strong campaign against American goods has been resumed].⁷⁵ From March 1938 onwards Nerbini was forced to send all translations of American comics to the Prefecture in Rome to obtain its approval for publication. During the first six months of the year, until issue 205, there were few visible changes in the magazine. Flash Gordon still appeared on the first page with the instalment ‘Verso l’ignoto’ [Towards the Unknown] (started in 1937), followed by three more stories: ‘Il re della foresta’ [The King of the Forest], ‘La setta degli straccioni’ [The Ragtag Sect] and ‘Gordon prigioniero di Ming’ [Gordon a Prisoner of Ming], his last adventure ever to be published in L’Avventuroso. As anticipated, the series was abruptly terminated on 11 September 1938 (issue 206), a date that marks the greatest change in the history of L’Avventuroso: from a modern publication steeped in American comics it shifted towards a more traditional Italian magazine in which, gradually, words started to prevail over images. This change is aesthetically preceded and marked by an important remodelling of the masthead, where, on the right, the figure of an American policeman is replaced by a Fascist policeman from Italian East Africa (Fig. 14).

The new focus on Italian conquests in Africa was confirmed in issue 207 (25 September) – the first without Flash Gordon – when the first page was taken up by Toppi’s ‘I tre di Macallè’ [The Three of Macallè], a colonial adventure based on Edilio Napoli’s novel about the First Italo-Ethiopian War (1895–96). A banner at the end of the page gives readers the hope that Gordon will make an imminent return: ‘Riuscirà lo scienziato italiano Zarro a rendere la vita a Gordon? Lo saprete tra breve’ [Will the Italian scientist Zarro manage to restore Gordon’s life? You will find out soon].⁷⁶ The same banner appeared at the end of issue 209, demonstrating not only that Nerbini still hoped to be able to publish Gordon’s adventures in the future, but also that he knew the importance of American comics for the success of his magazine. Two issues later, on 23 October 1938, another banner advertised the forthcoming publication of ‘Il miracolo di Zarro’ [Zarro’s Miracle], which never happened. The three-month deadline given in July by the Ministry of Popular Culture to the publishers of comics had passed and L’Avventuroso had to comply with the new legislation:

Il nostro periodico ha eliminato gradualmente dalle sue pagine quasi tutte le illustrazioni di produzione americana: attualmente solo due pagine su dodici sono occupate da opere di artisti non italiani, MA ANCHE QUESTE SCOMPARIRANNO AL TERMINE DEGLI EPISODI IN CORSO.

Siamo sicuri che i nostri lettori apprezzeranno questa nostra innovazione a favore della battaglia autarchica nel campo dei periodici di letteratura ricreativa e che l’accoglieranno con la maggior simpatia senza nostalgie per autori e personaggi scomparsi o destinati a scomparire. […] GIORNALI ITALIANI A LETTORI ITALIANI, ecco quello che dobbiamo realizzare in pieno! Per nostro conto rispondiamo PRESENTE e, ripetiamo, al termine degli episodi in corso sospenderemo anche la pubblicazione delle due ultime storie d’importazione, e cioè ‘Tra i pirati cinesi’ e ‘I fuori-legge dell’Oceano’.⁷⁷

[Our periodical has gradually eliminated almost all American-produced illustrations from its pages: currently only two pages out of twelve are occupied by works by non-Italian artists, BUT THESE WILL ALSO DISAPPEAR AT THE END OF THE CURRENT INSTALMENTS.

We are confident that our readers will appreciate this innovation in support of the autarchic battle in the field of recreational literature and that they will welcome it with the greatest sympathy without nostalgia for authors and characters who have disappeared or are destined to disappear. […] ITALIAN JOURNALS TO ITALIAN READERS, that is what we must fully realise! For our part we respond PRESENT and, we repeat, at the end of the current instalments we shall also suspend the publication of the last two imported stories, namely ‘Among the Chinese Pirates’ [Terry and the Pirates] and ‘The Outlaws of the Ocean’ [The Phantom].]

Right from its first issue the success of L’Avventuroso was linked to the presence of American comics, so their disappearance was not welcomed by its readers. Not only did readers not appreciate the ‘innovation in favour of the autarchic battle’, but they complained to Nerbini to such an extent that only four issues later (issue 219, 18 December 1938) the publisher openly responded with another letter:

Ai nostri lettori. In risposta alle molte lettere, non sempre…cortesi che riceviamo da qualche tempo, in seguito a modificazioni, variazioni, soppressioni verificate nei nostri periodici, riportiamo qui sotto le norme emanate dal Ministero della Cultura Popolare, norme a cui devono uniformarsi tutti i giornali dedicati alla gioventù italiana.

Abolizione completa di tutto il materiale di importazione straniera…. Soppressione di quelle storie e illustrazioni che si ispirano alla produzione straniera; Riduzione alla metà delle pagine per la parte dedicata alla pura illustrazione con conseguente aumento del testo, finora quasi totalmente sacrificato…. Questo per nostra giustificazione. Altre ne seguono che in special modo ci riguardano, e alle quali ci atterremo con scrupolo e con disciplina fascista, nella piena certezza di poter riuscire in miglior modo a soddisfare i nostri lettori che ci serberanno la loro cara amicizia.⁷⁸

[To our readers. In response to the many letters, not always…courteous, that we have been receiving for some time, following changes, variations and suppressions that have taken place in our periodicals, we reproduce below the norms issued by the Ministry of Popular Culture, norms to which all magazines aimed at Italian youth must conform.

Complete abolition of all foreign imported material… Suppression of those stories and illustrations inspired by foreign production; Reduction to half the pages of the part devoted to pure illustration with consequent increase of the text hitherto almost totally sacrificed…. This is our justification. Other [norms] follow which especially concern us and to which we shall adhere with scrupulousness and Fascist discipline, in the full certainty that we shall be able better to satisfy our readers who keep their dear friendship with us.]

The transformation of L’Avventuroso in line with the new Fascist directives was complete: comic strips were surrounded by text, which now occupied most of the space. Compared to the first years of the magazine, the only element in the final issues of 1938 that makes L’Avventuroso recognisable is the three-colour printing. Issue 219 marks the beginning of the ‘Fascist phase’ of the magazine and analysis of it shows the profound changes in its content and format. A banner at the end of page 1 advertises ‘interessanti, divertenti e istruttive rubriche’ [interesting, entertaining and informative columns].⁷⁹ The new columns, which surround the comic strips, are focused mainly on Italian greatness, as demonstrated by the beginning of the first new section on page 3, entitled ‘Scoperte e Invenzioni’ [Discoveries and Inventions]: ‘Una nuova scoperta, che renderà assai facile e alla portata di tutti la guida dell’automobile, è dovuta al genio italiano, che mostra la sua bravura anche nel campo strettamente tecnico’ [A new discovery, which will make driving a car very easy and affordable for everyone, is due to Italian genius, which also shows its prowess in the strictly technical field].⁸⁰ With the exception of a column on general knowledge and curiosities – in this issue ‘Le foglie hanno gli occhi’ [Leaves Have Eyes] on the movement of leaves towards the sunlight (p. 3) – the main focus of these sections was on Fascist heroes, such as in the column ‘Eroi dell’Italia Imperiale’ [Heroes of Imperial Italy] (in this issue dedicated to Father Reginaldo Giuliani, whose story was told in a column on page 4); and on Italian historical personalities (such as Benvenuto Cellini, whose life and merits were described in a piece occupying the whole of page 5). A column on pages 8 to 9, ‘Ludi e Ardimenti’ [Games and Daring Deeds], framed two Italian comic strips and was dedicated to sport – in this case a short story about the victory of an Italian team in a motor-racing world championship; whereas on page 10 a column titled ‘Il valore italiano’ [The Italian Merit] highlighted the heroism of Italian soldiers who died in the First World War and the pride of their mothers. In all, the issue contained a total of twelve pages, only four of which were entirely occupied by comic strips – ‘I tre di Macallè’ (p. 1); ‘La regina di Cipro’ [The Queen of Cyprus] (p. 6); ‘L’uomo mascherato’ (p. 7); ‘La capanna del Gran Paradiso’ [The Cabin on the Gran Paradiso] (p. 12) – and two by text (a short story on page 2 and the life of Benvenuto Cellini on page 5). The other six pages had adopted the new formula of a comic strip framed by text.

The recurrent columns introduced in this phase were: ‘Varietà’ [Variety], published for the first time in issue 200 (7 August 1938) and covering many different topics, from flying mammals (issue 213) to trained fish (issue 220); ‘Curiosità scientifiche’ [Scientific Curiosities] and ‘Avvenimenti curiosi e straordinari’ [Curious and Extraordinary Events], both similar to ‘Varietà’; and from issue 220 ‘I grandi avventurosi’ [Great Adventurers], which in some issues replaced ‘Eroi dell’Italia imperiale’. In December 1938 the only American hero who survived was ‘L’uomo mascherato’, whose adventures were published for the last time on 31 December 1938 (issue 221).

The Fascist phase of L’Avventuroso affected not only the balance between text and image, and between Italian and American comics, but also the content of the Italian comics. In 1938 some were explicitly aligned with Fascist policy, such as ‘Jutso il piccolo eroe giapponese’ by Gaetano Vitelli [Jutso, the Little Japanese Hero] and ‘Agli ordini di Franco’ by Mario Tempesti [On the Orders of Franco]. The Fascist re-alignment co-existed with the American influence, visible in some of the Italian comics clearly inspired by the American heroes which preceded them. For example, ‘Gaor, il conquistatore del fuoco’ [Gaor, Conqueror of Fire] by Guido Fantoni recalls ‘Tarzan’; while the series ‘L’ispettore Petrosino’ [Inspector Petrosino] by Vichi, based on the life of the real Italian-American policeman ‘Joe’ Petrosino, recalls ‘Radio Patrol’ in style and setting. ‘L’ispettore Petrosino’, however, also exemplifies a further alignment with Fascist ideology because, while the illustrations are Americanised, its contents reflect the racial laws (approved in 1938) in the villain, Monk Eastman, a Jewish criminal the portrayal of whom – dark clothes and a prominent, hooked nose – echoes the iconography of Fascist anti-Semitic propaganda (Fig. 15).

The new format remained consistent throughout the following years. In 1939 text and image were divided, with pages entirely dedicated either to comic strips or to written sections. Text was no longer used to frame comics and the magazine was now harmoniously divided into six pages dedicated to comics and six to written sections. The regular columns consistently followed the pattern set by issue 219, with a historical Italian personality introduced in each issue and many sections celebrating Italian – and Fascist – achievements. Moreover, from issue 233 onwards (26 March 1939) the description of the magazine changed once again: from ‘Grande settimanale per tutti’ to ‘Grande settimanale a colori’ [Great weekly in colour]. Although the new layout remained consistent throughout the final years of L’Avventuroso, in 1940 a series of events momentarily distracted the attention of the authorities away from comics magazines. In May Alfieri declared that the purification of children’s publishing from any foreign contamination had been concluded; in June Italy entered the war; and in October Alfieri was replaced as Minister of Popular Culture by Alessandro Pavolini. These events resulted in a relative freedom for L’Avventuroso, so much so that, after June, Nerbini reintroduced some American heroes: the abovementioned Italian versions of ‘The Phantom’ illustrated by Lemmi (‘Giustiziere Mascherato’ [Masked Avenger], issues 271–332 (1940); and ‘Uomo Misterioso’ [Mysterious Man], issues 378–88 (1942)); ‘Jungle Jim’ by Toppi and Rudy Coghei (‘Geo’, issues 291–349 (1940–41)); ‘Brick Bradford’ (‘Marco Spada’, issues 351–79 (1941); then ‘La corona d’oro’ [The Golden Crown], issues 380–82 (1942)); and ‘Lone Ranger’ (‘Il solitario della foresta’ [The Loner of the Jungle], issues 259–300 (1940)). More importantly, one of the iconic figures in L’Avventuroso was reintroduced: Mandrake, who appeared in a story titled ‘Il mago ’900’ [Magician 900] from issue 301 until issue 375 (31 December 1941). In February 1941 even ‘The Phantom’ reappeared in its original version by Falk and Moore (issues 333–77). Nonetheless, the number of copies sold never reached the heights of the golden age: in 1940 L’Avventuroso sold a maximum of 100,000 copies.

It has been suggested that among the reasons for the poor sales of L’Avventuroso in 1940 and 1941, despite the reintroduction of some American heroes, are the absence of Flash Gordon, the star of the magazine, and the predictable plots of comics that were not a novelty anymore.⁸¹ Although this interpretation seems valid, one needs also to take into account the impact of the war on Italian families and everyday life, which seems a solid reason for the drop in number of copies sold. Moreover, Mario Nerbini was more cautious in the choice and publication of American strips; and although he considered republishing Gordon under the name of ‘Astro’, he decided not to, given the tight control of the Ministry of Popular Culture, as a letter to Guglielmo Emanuel dated 8 February 1941 shows:

Dalla lettura delle didascalie [di Gordon] mi sono convinto che il lavoro non è adatto per un giornale per ragazzi. Manca la trama avvincente e si ha una successione di fatti che interessano soltanto per una figurazione sensuale in cui si rappresenta una continua lotta fra esseri umani e non umani per il possesso di belle femmine più o meno vestite. Anche a ricoprirle con maglie figurate e allungamento di veli le forme restano sempre di apparenti nudità. È impossibile poi cambiare certe situazioni che appaiono scabrose. Data la vigilanza che esercita sul nostro giornale il Ministero, ritengo che questo Gordon anche modificato […] non sia accettato. Mi dispiace perché ci contavo molto per una maggiore vendita dell’Avventuroso, ma non voglio rischiare troppo.⁸²

[In reading [Gordon’s] captions, I am convinced that the work is not suitable for a magazine for young men. It lacks a compelling plot and has a succession of facts that are interesting only because of a sensual figuration depicting a continuous struggle between humans and non-humans for the possession of beautiful, more-or-less clothed females. Even by covering them with figurative meshes and lengthening the veils, their shape always remains apparently nude. It is then impossible to change certain situations that appear obscene. Given the Ministry’s supervision of our magazine, I believe that this Gordon, even if modified […] will not be accepted. I am sorry because I was really counting on it to increase the sales of L’Avventuroso, but I do not want to risk too much.]

The letter also reveals that the Fascist regime was still monitoring comics magazines and was particularly interested in keeping the balance between images and words in favour of the latter, as shown by a letter from the Ministry of Popular Culture that Nerbini forwarded to Emanuel: ‘[Q]uesto Ministero segnala a codesta Casa Editrice l’opportunità di aumentare – gradualmente – le pagine di testo del giornale per ragazzi “Avventuroso”’ [[T]his Ministry informs this Publishing House of the need to increase – gradually – the text pages in the magazine for young men ‘Avventuroso’].⁸³

With the help of Emanuel, Nerbini altered the American heroes and their adventures to avoid censorship. For example, in Brick Bradford’s comic strips, published in 1941 as ‘Marco Spada’, the villain, originally from Tripoli, was planned to be ‘di Tunisi o del Marocco per ragioni di opportunità’ [from Tunis or Morocco for reasons of appropriateness].⁸⁴ A similar change touched Mandrake, who in the instalment ‘Nel covo delle belve’ [In the Den of Beasts] (issues 355–75, July–December 1941), rather than fighting Nazi spies in the United States finds himself in Germany working with the Gestapo against Anglo-Saxon spies.

At the end of 1941 the Ministry of Popular Culture reaffirmed its commitment against the Americanisation of comics and, more generally, illustrations and on 15 October imposed on publishers of comics magazines the requirement for authorisation by the Prefecture before they distributed their magazines: ‘Poiché alcuni editori di albi per ragazzi […] pubblicano ugualmente quegli albi alla cui diffusione il Ministero ha negato l’autorizzazione, prima di procedere alla distribuzione […] dovranno ottenere […] il visto della rispettiva Prefettura’ [Since some publishers […] also publish those comic books whose distribution the Ministry has refused to authorise, before proceeding with distribution they must obtain […] the approval of the[ir] respective Prefecture].⁸⁵ It was the beginning of a new phase of stricter control that reached its peak in 1942, when the Ministry of Popular Culture once again banned American heroes and, in general, American models. Speech bubbles disappeared and the format of the comic strip divided into panels was also abolished. The golden age of American comics in Italy, which reached its zenith in the years from 1934 to 1938, had come to an end. Modern Italian comics based on the American model would reappear only after the end of the war.

As for L’Avventuroso, the reintroduction of American comics did not alter the structure of the magazine introduced in 1939, which remained consistent until the beginning of 1943, when Nerbini sold L’Avventuroso to Mondadori, who published eleven more issues before suspending its publication (issue 450).⁸⁶ Among the many aspects of comics publishing influenced by L’Avventuroso, and an overlooked point worth examining further, is the image of women disseminated through the American and Italian comics published in the magazine. From both a visual and narrative point of view, the female characters which appeared in L’Avventuroso had an impact on the models of femininity that contributed to shaping Italian comics culture (and more broadly modern Italy’s popular culture). The study of the representation of female characters in comics is also useful for a better understanding of the impact of foreign models on Italian comics, as well as in assessing how American comics and Fascist ideology and censorship conditioned the portrayal of women in L’Avventuroso.

L’Avventuroso and the Image of Women

At the beginning of the twentieth century Il Corrierino introduced its readers not only to the new model of American comics but also to a model of femininity. Characters like Maggie/Petronilla (‘Bringing Up Father’) and Lola/Toots (‘Toots and Casper’) represented women mainly as wives, who had a central role in the comics as protagonists in the domestic sphere. Although Petronilla (Maggie), for example, is a strong character and plays a central role in the comic strip, she is just a wife – perhaps impetuous, but still a wife who runs the household. The role of women as the cornerstone of family life was also reproduced in Italian comics published in children’s periodicals, with American-family comic strips characters becoming a model for Italian illustrators. This is yet another aspect of the Americanisation of Italian comics and Italianisation of American models: Petronilla was taken as a model for Italian comic strips such as ‘Sor Pampurio’ (Carlo Bisi, 1928), a figure who, with his wife Donna Pampuria, represented the typical Italian middle-class family and reproduced the dynamics between American middle-class husband Arcibaldo and his wife Petronilla. However, whereas Arcibaldo and Petronilla strove to improve their social status, Sor Pampurio and Donna Pampuria aimed at stability, highlighting the differences between American and Italian society and confirming the role of comics as a medium that reflects the social and cultural practices of a given society.

At the end of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s Mussolini’s apparatus used comics to disseminate the image of the young, brave, good Fascist girl, with comics aimed at young children which highlighted such Fascist values as motherhood, the central role of family and, above all, the full embrace of the Fascist faith. The editorial opening the first issue of La Piccola Italiana, for example, states that the magazine strives to educate future Italian women, ‘cioè fare di voi oggi “piccole italiane” buone operose ferventi cittadine dell’Italia nuova che, riconsacrata dall’amore dei suoi figli, marcia sicura verso le sue maggiori fortune’ [that is, to make you today’s ‘little Italians’ good, hard-working fervent citizens of the new Italy, which, rededicated by the love of its children, marches confidently towards its greater fortunes].⁸⁷

With the publication of adventure comics such as L’Avventuroso, both the representation of women and their relationship to male protagonists changed, introducing a different model of femininity. In the American comics published in L’Avventuroso, female characters were portrayed as sensual women who had a secondary, yet important role alongside the male hero and whose appearance resembled those of Hollywood stars from the 1930s. These female characters offer significant examples of the models of femininity that counterbalanced the negative image of women disseminated by Nerbini’s other publications, such as Il 420, and diverged from the Fascist model found in women’s magazines such as Grazia. Il 420 was a satirical journal founded by Giuseppe Nerbini in 1914 that became aligned with Mussolini’s system of power. The image of women in the magazine follows Fascist rhetoric: foreign women are the main subject of illustrations aimed at highlighting the superficiality and inconsistency of the female character, while the Italian women, portrayed as mothers, are often used to underline the negative features of foreign women and highlight the superiority of the Italian race. Ethiopian women were, for their part, often the target of satire in Il 420 and depicted as both sensual and primitive.

By contrast, in the early years of L’Avventuroso female characters were important elements of the plot, reliable companions who supported the hero. A clear example of this is Dale Arden, Flash Gordon’s partner, who emanated an erotic femininity and displayed an emancipation that were unfamiliar in Italian comics until then. Dale participated in adventures alongside Gordon, boldly facing dangerous situations. However, Dale Arden’s courage and audacity were counterbalanced by her vanity and her need to be saved by the hero, thus showing the contradictions inherent in women’s emancipation in the United States (see Chapter 1) by portraying an independent woman who ultimately needs to be saved by a man. Dale Arden is a classic example of the (sensual) damsel in distress in comics from the 1930s: she is a supporting character whose main role is to add sensuality and romance to the plotline. Other female characters such as Princess Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless in ‘Flash Gordon’, or Princess Narda in ‘Mandrake the Magician’, not to mention the policewoman Molli Dal from ‘Radio Patrol’ and Diana Palmesi in ‘The Phantom’, have stronger personalities and offer a model of femininity which could not be further from the exemplary Fascist mother and wife. Princess Aura, for example, tries to seduce Flash Gordon and goes against her father to help the hero. However, all these female characters, no matter how relevant to the storyline, still operate in the shadow of the male protagonists. Although often at the centre of the action and an essential part of the adventure, female characters in American comics were, then, still dependent on the hero, whose virility was ultimately at the core of the storyline. Looking at the publication timeline, one can note some changes in the publication of female characters in L’Avventuroso, from the alteration of the original strips to a faithful reproduction of women’s original features and clothing.

In the early years of L’Avventuroso (1934–36) American comics were republished in Italy with little or no alteration; and the model of women disseminated throughout the magazine was characterised by an explicit eroticism that contrasted with the Fascist ideal image of the mother (Figs. 16 and 17). More importantly, the eroticism of female characters, especially in a magazine read by adolescents, went against the common sense of decency in Italy, conditioned by both the Fascist conservative ideals surrounding womanhood and the Roman Catholic Church. To avoid any reaction against L’Avventuroso, Mario Nerbini intervened to alter some panels, especially those showing too much female nudity – a form of self-protective censorship that shielded the magazine from Fascist State censorship. The eroticism of female characters in American strips was hidden by covering their bodies with layers of clothing (Figs. 18–19).⁸⁸

From 1938 onwards a shift in the portrayal of female characters in Italian comics can be noticed. In Ferdinando Vichi’s ‘La metropoli distrutta’ [The Destroyed Metropolis] (January 1938) and ‘Le avventure di Petrosino’ [Petrosino’s Adventures] (December 1938), for example, women had a clearly subordinate role. In ‘La metropoli distrutta’ in particular the female protagonist, Marisa, embodies the Fascist ideal woman: she is a reliable companion who supports the hero, serves the Motherland and is focused on her role as a mother even in adverse conditions. Apart from being a mother and wife, she is also a ‘studentessa di medicina e praticante nelle sale chirurgiche della sua città’ [medical student and intern in her city’s operating theatres],⁸⁹ reflecting the Fascist emphasis on the role of women in nursing. Mario Tempesti’s ‘Agli ordini di Franco’ (October–November 1938) offers another example of a Fascist woman with a subordinate role: Gianna, the only female character, is portrayed as a faithful companion to the hero and the Motherland; she is in love with Mario because of his Fascist courage and italianità. Finally, in Toppi’s ‘I tre di Maccallè’ all the characters are men, leaving women completely out of the action. Overall, from 1938 onwards female characters no longer play a leading role, with the exception of the American comics reintroduced briefly between 1940 and 1941.

In general, female characters in L’Avventuroso are portrayed as sensual and adventurous women, revolutionising the image of women in comics, although they are ultimately subordinated to the heroes. After the intervention by the Fascist regime in the field of comics, women figures reflect Fascist rhetoric and its inner contradictions, portraying submissive women whose main role is that of mothers, wives, or good Fascists, but who are nonetheless active in the action, even using weapons and leading when needed. This offers further proof of the profound impact of American adventure comics, which gave women active roles outside the household, contrary to the predominant Fascist model of femininity that was disseminated in early comics magazines. At the same time, the portrayal of female characters joining the fight of the hero and embracing arms, while it may at first appear opposed to Fascist precepts, can be seen as a reflection of the mobilisation by the dictatorship for war, which required women to do their part to support the (Fascist) Motherland.

Italian and American Comics in L’Avventuroso

During its nine years of publication L’Avventuroso published more than a hundred comic stories. The overall number of the Italian-created comics was higher than that of American comics, highlighting one of the main differences between the two styles: American comics were long-running series which lasted years, divided into instalments characterised by a specific event or adventure featuring the same protagonists, whereas Italian comics were shorter, self-contained and featured different characters. For example, a series like ‘Flash Gordon’ was published over 205 issues, while an Italian story such as Toppi’s ‘I naufragatori misteriosi’ lasted only seven issues (67–73, from 19 January 1936 to 1 March 1936). It would not be possible to analyse here all the stories that appeared in the 439 issues of L’Avventuroso published by Nerbini. However, four stories – the American ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Mandrake’; and the Italian ‘Il dramma del sottomarino H-47’ and ‘La regina d’Atalanta’ – can be taken as key examples in the analysis of form, content and the impact and influence of American models on the Italian production of the time, which later influenced the development of post-war Italian comics.

Flash Gordon (Alex Raymond – Don Moore)

Flash Gordon was created by illustrator Alex Raymond and writer Don Moore and first appeared in the United States in January 1934 as a Sunday comic strip, which became a daily in 1940. ‘Flash Gordon’ appeared alongside ‘Jungle Jim’ and was created to compete against the popular science-fiction hero ‘Buck Rogers’ by Philip Francis Nowlan (1929). The hero, Flash Gordon, fights against his arch-enemy Ming the Merciless, dictator of the planet Mongo, with the help of Dr. Zarkov and Gordon’s partner Dale Arden. In spite of a potentially controversial story for an Italian readership – a hero fighting against a dictatorship – Flash Gordon soon became the most successful and recognisable feature of L’Avventuroso. Set in a non-identifiable future, Flash Gordon’s adventure begins with a mysterious planet colliding with the Earth, threatening its very existence. In these circumstances Gordon meets Dale Arden and Dr Zarkov. In an attempt to save Earth, the three protagonists find themselves on planet Mongo. From the very first strip, Gordon begins a series of adventures on Mongo, first to save Dale, whom Ming decides to marry against her will, and finally to overthrow the evil dictator. His adventures are a mixture of science-fiction and fantasy settings, as well as more traditional combat, and always see the hero almost defeated before finally succeeding thanks to the help of ‘good’ characters, including Ming’s own daughter Aura.

According to Becciu, Flash Gordon’s success in Italy was due to the fact that Italians could find in the undefeatable hero the kind of virile man exalted by Fascist rhetoric, while the Fascists did not like him only because he was an American.⁹⁰ This thesis is supported by the hero’s main characteristics: he is a charismatic leader, fighting for the greater good, successful with women and invincible. Other views, like those of Carlo Della Corte, explain Flash Gordon’s success in his fight for freedom and democracy: what attracted the young readers was a set of values that stood in contrast to those imposed by the Fascist regime.⁹¹ Although this interpretation offers an interesting reflection and adds political value to the reading of American comics in the Fascist era, L’Avventuroso was read mainly by adolescents who were too young to be politically aware: ‘Gli amici di Gordon in Italia sono tutti del 1923 e del 1924’ [The friends of Gordon in Italy are all born in 1923 and 1924], Oreste Del Buono recalls.⁹² It is undeniable that for the generation born in the mid-1920s L’Avventuroso and American comics represented a form of split from the generations that preceded them. Del Buono again offers a useful insight into what the magazine meant for young adolescents: ‘Quel foglio di carta colorata li divise non solo dai genitori e gli educatori [che non ne autorizzavano la lettura], ma anche dai ragazzi che avevano pochi anni più di loro’ [That coloured sheet of paper separated them not only from their parents and teachers [who did not allow them to read it], but also from the boys who were a few years older than them].⁹³ Only after 1943 and the start of the Resistance did American comics became an explicit symbol of anti-Fascist resistance, identifiable in the names chosen by many partisans that were inspired by or directly taken from American heroes, such as the nom de guerre ‘Tarzan’ adopted by the partisan Dario Scaglione.⁹⁴

Aside from any political meaning which can be inferred from the impact of ‘Flash Gordon’ on Italian society, and particularly on the young people who fought in the Resistance, the impact of the American comic on Italian popular culture is undeniable. What is more, the publication of ‘Flash Gordon’ provides insights into early practices in the publication of American comics. When it first appeared in L’Avventuroso in 1934, Nerbini reproduced the Flash Gordon comic strips faithfully, so much so that their reproduction can be considered a translated reprinting, as the strips even maintained the small ‘to be continued’ caption on what originally constituted the last panel of the Sunday strip (Fig. 20).

In the process of translation the original dialogues were also Italianised, reflecting specific features of the Italian language, such as the use of the polite form of address. Both Gordon and ‘L’uomo mascherato’ use the polite form ‘voi’ (second person plural) when talking to their partners, reflecting an Italian habit and the Fascist campaign against lei (third person singular), officially abolished by the Fascist government in 1938. Interestingly, in some cases the polite form is not used, as in the interaction between Princess Aura and Flash Gordon. Unlike Dale, Aura uses the informal ‘tu’ (second person singular) (Fig. 21), a form of address conventionally reserved for intimacy.

Until the ban on American comics, ‘Flash Gordon’ consistently remained the comic strip on the cover of L’Avventuroso, always in colour and a guarantee of sales that demonstrate a faithful readership. The success of ‘Flash Gordon’ shows the younger generation’s attraction to a new exotic, fantasy world, introducing science fiction into Italian comics magazines and the dynamic action of the adventure that Italian comics authors soon emulated.

La regina d’Atalanta (Paolo Lorenzini – Giove Toppi)

Toppi was among the most prolific illustrators of L’Avventuroso. His style shows the strong influence of American comics artists, especially Alex Raymond’s combination of realistic style and fantasy. Toppi’s stories are, in a way, a perfect combination of the Italian tradition of the feuilleton with the adventures and themes introduced by American comics. This can be seen especially in the exotic settings, the disdainful heroes and the sensuality of the women, as well as in the drawing style and visual dynamism. An excellent example of this mixture is ‘La regina d’Atalanta’, published in 1936. The story begins aboard a cruise ship, on which the American Arabel French ‘con venti anni e altrattanti milioni di dollari’ [with twenty years and just as many millions of dollars], accompanied by a French waitress called Betty and the ‘fedele negro’ [faithful negro] Mango, meets billionaire Teddy Fulton during a voyage circumnavigating the globe. She also meets a Chinese man and a Brahman, who engage in an intense conversation about metempsychosis with Teddy. Attracted by her wealth, the Chinese man and the Brahman convince Arabel to stop in Calcutta, where the adventure begins. After a few days in Calcutta, Arabel and Teddy meet Detective Bob Haller, who informs them that the Chinese man they met on the cruise ship is in fact the ‘infamous Fo–Ki’, who uses opium to rob people of anything they possess. Detective Haller reveals Fo–Ki’s plan to rob Teddy and Arabel and, with the assistance of Betty and Sergeant Smith, Haller’s partner, helps the American couple. All seems to end for the best, but Fo–Ki tricks the Americans and stuns them using opium. Alarmed by the disappearance of her lady, Betty alerts Detective Haller, who begins to investigate the couple’s kidnapping. Two parallel stories then develop: a detective story that follows Haller’s investigation and a fantasy story that sees Teddy travelling into the deep ocean to save Arabel, turned into a statue in a forgotten city under the sea, Atalanta. The rhythm of the narration speeds up and within five instalments the two stories draw to an end: Teddy saves Arabel, and they are both saved by detective Haller. It is only at the end of the comic that the readers realise that the story of the Queen of Atalanta, Arabel, saved by Teddy, was a dream induced by Fo–Ki’s opium. The ending is a classic happy ending: Arabel and Teddy marry and start travelling together, followed by the faithful Mango, while Betty and Bob Haller fall in love.

What is most evident in the story are the dynamism of the action and the complexity of the plot. The comic strip mixes different genres: a detective, an adventure and a fantasy story. It can also be divided into two different parts: the first introducing characters and plot, set aboard the cruise ship; the second following the adventures in Calcutta. In the second part the plot becomes more complicated, and the comic strip is transformed from a pure detective story into an adventure and fantasy story. Many similarities with American comics can be noted, particularly with ‘Flash Gordon’. One is the undersea adventure when, by trying to save Arabel, Teddy discovers an underwater city, a plot twist which recalls Flash Gordon’s first adventure on the planet Mongo and a scene from the second instalment of ‘Mandrake the Magician’, ‘The Hawk’, as Figs. 22–24 show. Moreover, Arabel’s features and sensuality resemble those of the American-style illustrations (Fig. 25).

Finally, the dynamism of the action also resembles that in American adventure comics, with specific scenes which share many similarities. One particular panel, that showing Arabel’s kidnapping, is similar to one from ‘The Phantom’ in which the hero saves his girlfriend (Fig. 26). In both images, the couples are intertwined in a dramatic landscape and the female is presented as a damsel in distress saved by the male protagonist. However, in the American comic Diana is sexualised, not only by her wearing of a red dress but also in the way the hero holds onto her. Although clearly in a passive role, Diana is the focus of the scene. By contrast, in Toppi’s illustration the male figure is in the centre and catches the reader’s eye, whereas Arabel, fully clothed, is only half visible. Toppi’s story was published in 1936, while the instalment of ‘The Phantom’ came out one year later, in 1937. This shows the extent of the impact of the American model on Toppi’s style, which had fully adopted the visual model coming from the United States.

‘La regina di Atalanta’ offers a clear example of the presence of American models from the perspective of form and content: his protagonists are American and his style is inspired by American comics. At the same time, the choice of an exotic setting such as Calcutta recalls the traditional Italian adventure novel, such those by Salgari. In ‘La regina d’Atalanta’ the pre-existent exotic imaginary merges with the new one brought by American adventure comics, creating a modern Italian comic that is the result of the Americanisation of Italian comics and of the Italianisation of American models.

Mandrake the Magician (Lee Falk – Phil Davis)

Among all the heroes whose adventures were published in L’Avventuroso, Mandrake is arguably the only one with superhuman powers. His characteristic feature is not his extraordinary physical strength, like Flash Gordon, but instead his ability to use illusion and hypnotism to defeat his enemies. Mandrake’s lack of a particular physical strength is balanced by the constant presence of Lothar, his giant Nubian servant. Mandrake is an elegant white man who always wears a tuxedo and who, like Flash Gordon, fascinates women. Princess Narda – who appears in the second instalment of the saga, ‘The Hawk’, published in L’Avventuroso in 1935 – starts off as the antagonist, a primary character with her own storyline independent of the hero. In agreement with the villain, Hawk, she had planned to seduce Mandrake and then poison him. However, she soon falls in love with Mandrake and, rather than carrying out her plan, convinces Hawk to throw him, chained, into the sea. Thanks to his powers, Mandrake is able to communicate with Lothar, who rescues him. Mandrake, who has realised that Princess Narda is being blackmailed by Hawk, decides to rescue her. From this point on Narda loses her independence and becomes a subordinate character at the mercy of events, a pretty woman to be saved by the hero. Until then she had represented a strong character with her own personality, a woman who misled both the hero and the villain. In the fourth instalment, ‘Il cammello d’argilla’ [The Clay Camel], published in L’Avventuroso in 1937, Narda reappears as an independent character with her own storyline and mission, joining Mandrake to fight against the same enemy. Despite the evolution of their relationship in this instalment, Narda is not a regular presence in the comic and in the following two instalments, ‘Il fenomeno del circo’ [The Circus Phenomenon] (1937) and ‘L’enigmatico Davos’ [The Enigmatic Davos] (1938), two other female characters appear, both fragile women whom Mandrake saves.

Another significant element is Lothar’s role in the story. Lothar is introduced as an African-born prince who nonetheless decides to serve the hero: though a nobleman, he becomes a servant who refers to Mandrake as his master. Lothar’s role is that of a loyal aid whose remarkable strength saves Mandrake in many critical situations. Although there is no explicit racism, in his clothing and language Lothar is a clear representation of the subordination of the black population. In the Italian translation, the few times he speaks he uses short, simple sentences, without articles or the conjugation of verbs. His subordination is emphasised by the use of ‘voi’, the polite form of address, when speaking to Mandrake, who in turn uses the informal ‘tu’ when talking to him (Fig. 27). Such representation matches the Fascist rhetoric against Ethiopians that increased from 1935 onwards, reaching its peak in 1938 with the approval of the racial laws that enhanced discrimination against the native populations in Italian East Africa.⁹⁶ Mandrake The Magician is, among the American comics published regularly in L’Avventuroso, the one which most closely adheres to Fascist ideals: a dark-haired hero, who is highly successful with women, the majority of whom are in a passive and subordinate role, and in a dominant position with respect to his black servant.

The four stories show how both Italian and American comics followed an established, and very successful, pattern: there is the fight of the hero, affected by the presence of a woman with whom the hero falls in love (or vice versa), and the hero is helped by subordinate, less brilliant characters. Only one story among those analysed here goes against this pattern: Toppi’s ‘Il dramma del sottomarino H-47’, in which the Fascist myth of the man sacrificing himself for the Motherland prevails, although it is counterbalanced by a very modern, emancipated depiction of the role of women which is probably a direct result of American examples like Dale Arden, Princess Aura and Princess Narda.

The publication of ‘Flash Gordon’, ‘Mandrake’, ‘Radio Patrol’, ‘The Phantom’ and other American comics changed the course of Italian comics and L’Avventuroso had a key role in modernising them – in all their aspects. While L’Avventuroso was not the only Italian comics magazine in the 1930s to publish American comics or Italian interpretations of them, it certainly was the only one to base its success overwhelmingly on its American heroes. This was the reason for both its popularity and its demise. Of all the comics magazines it was the one that more than any other suffered from the interdiction on foreign material in 1938. Its evolution demonstrates the extent of the influence and creative impact of the American model on Italian comics, evident in the comics illustrated by Toppi, Vichi and Lemmi, who adapted their style to American models and began to produce modern Italian comics shaped by the example set by American adventure comics. This impact emerges clearly in the analysis of L’Avventuroso, particularly of its issues from 1934 to 1938, which reveals how Italian comics started to emulate American dynamism of action, style of drawing, narrative and settings. The presence of traditionally Italian exotic settings, reflected in stories such as ‘Il cacciatore di Serpenti’ (1934) or ‘Il Negriero’ (1935) and even the Americanised ‘La regina d’Atalanta’ (1936), shows that the two cultures merged to create hybrid forms, highly Americanised but at the same time specifically Italian.⁹⁷

The translation of names is a particularly revealing example of this: Italian comics tended to use mostly foreign names and often reflected the American origins of the protagonists, as shown in the analysis of Toppi’s stories, whereas in the American comics names were Italianised. The use of the language is thus another element that demonstrates the dual process of the Italianisation of American comics and Americanisation of Italian comics – a process which characterises both the history of Italian comics and their modernisation in the Fascist era. Therefore, L’Avventuroso represents a crucial case study not only for the spreading of American culture, but also for the development of modern Italian comics, a development which deeply changed their production and creation.

It is worth highlighting that the Italianisation of American comics survived the war and became, if anything, even more visible in post-war Italy. A clear example of this is Carl Bark’s character Scrooge McDuck, translated into Italian as ‘Paperon de’ Paperoni’, completely changing the meaning of the original name and its subtle criticism of capitalism. Paperon de’ Paperoni first appeared in Italy in 1947 and demonstrates that the process of Italianisation had become common practice, one which later led to the creation of such Italian Disney characters as Brigitta (1960), Paperinik (1969) and Indiana Pipps (1988). The popularity of Topolino in Italy offers a unique case study of the nationalisation of a foreign culture, exemplified by the establishment of an Italian branch of Disney as early as 1938, which created original stories and characters and also developed existing personae which are widely familiar in Italy and barely known in other countries, including the United States. Disney’s Italian production also offers an example of how modern American culture merged with Italian traditions to create a unique, culturally hybrid product, the epitome of which are the parodies of Italian literary classics such as ‘I promessi paperi’ [The Betrothed Ducks], the Disney version of Alessandro Manzoni’s famous novel I promessi sposi (1840) [The Betrothed].⁹⁸

Another clear illustration of the Italianisation of American models is the series ‘Tex Willer’, created by Sergio Bonelli in 1948, the longest running of all Italian comic book series. In its setting and storyline ‘Tex Willer’ shows how Italian comics (fumetti) developed following the American example: Tex is a ranger in the American West, conveying the American myth and engaging the reader in the typically American genre-story featuring Indians, cowboys and the frontier. The long-lasting success of ‘Tex’ demonstrates the impact of American adventure comics on Italian popular culture, a genre brought to popularity in Italy by Nerbini and his Avventuroso. The many other Italian comics launched in post-war Italy, from Pantera Bionda [Blond Panther] (Milan: A.R.C., 1948–50) to Zagor (Milan: Bonelli, 1961–) show that adventure comics based on the American model had become part of Italian culture and had influenced the readers’ preferences (and demands). L’Avventuroso marks the first steps in this process of cultural reinterpretation and assimilation, which was embedded in the complexities of the Fascist period but nevertheless worked deeply to transform both Italian comics and the tastes of Italian readers.

***

The analysis of popular comics in the Italy of the 1930s, their evolution and the changes imposed by the Fascist State demonstrates that American comics exercised a profound influence on the newly expanding and widely popular field of Italian comics, in many respects comparable in depth and scope to the influence of Hollywood on Italian film production. At the same time, the case of L’Avventuroso also clearly illustrates the peculiarity of comics magazines and their development compared to other fields of popular print media. Popular magazines in Europe and the United States developed in dialogue, sharing features such as layout, the organisation of content and the content itself, but also creating their own localised styles and models. The comics of the interwar years represent a unique field, one in which American models were heavily prevalent, unlike in other fields such as women’s periodicals and weeklies, which focused on current events and were strongly influenced by European models.

The study of the development of modern comics offers insights not only into how comics transformed our consumption of and engagement with entertainment, but also into their role as a significant element in contemporary society. The Italian experience illustrates the profound integration of comics into national popular culture, as documented by the everyday use of names of characters from comics. For instance, ‘Mandrake’ (pronounced the Italian way) refers to someone with superpowers, while ‘Paperone’ is used to describe someone who is stingy. Today, comics continue to serve as a powerful tool for critiquing societies, governments, national habits and cultures, placing them at the heart of political and cultural discourse – much as they did in the 1930s. Like the interwar period, the new millennium has witnessed a shift in cultural consumption, now fuelled by the rise of social media and the pervasive use of the internet. Despite these changes comics have preserved their role as an immediate form of communication and remain an effective medium for commenting on current events.⁹⁹

_____