1 post tagged “bonelli”

I was born and raised in Italy, and I started reading comics in 1990, when a classmate lent me an issue of Dylan Dog, a very popular italian comic. Before then I would read the occasional Disney comics: Topolino (Mickey Mouse), Paperino (Donald Duck) etc...

 

But Dylan Dog was the first adult comic I ever read. It is a horror series, where the star is a private detective/ex-cop who finds himself involved in paranormal events.

As the majority of italian comics, each issue is a self-contained story, so anyone can pick up a random issue and enjoy the 98 pages long black & white story. Some characters appear more than once, but you don't need to read previous stories at all. Writers and Artists vary for each issue,.

I started buying DD by myself, and I also looked for the back issues. Once I was all caught up, I started looking for other series to buy. Naturally I first looked at comics published by the same company, Bonelli Editore. This is the most popular comics publisher after Disney Italia, and they have almost 20 monthly series.

 

After DD, I started buying the following series:

 

Zagor: an adventure story in the old American frontier in the first half of the last century. Zagor fights to maintain peace, protect the Indian tribes and hunt down criminals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martin Mystere: before the Da Vinci Code, there was MM. A great blend of history, adventure, mistery. I really enjoyed this comic, even though I do not like history in general. But these stories really bring out the most fascinating aspect of history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tex: the longest running series, a classic western. I enjoyed these stories, they felt really like an epic western. I remeber when my brother and I decided to start buying this series, he went out with his bike to the newstand to get whatevet he could find about Tex. When he came back, he had a huge stack of comics with him, enough to last us a few weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nathan Never: probably the favorite of mine, this is a sci-fi series which my brother collected from the start. Great sci-fi stories, great art, and most importantly there was an overall story. The overall timeline of this future world had been mapped out from the beginning, and the misterious past of the star was also conceived from the start. These back stories were revealed little by little throughout the single stories, and sometimes there was an entire issue dedicated to the overall myth.

 

 

 

 

 

I stopped buying italian comics after a few years, not because I lost interest, but because there were new comics to explore (superheroes, manga etc...). The good thing about these comics is that if I felt like reading them, I could buy a new issue off the rack and ejoy it (which cannot be done with superhero comics). The bad is that after a while you keep reading the same type of story every month, and it gets a little bit boring.