Stories by Massimo De Vita

[Frank Stajano]

> It nice to get to know the names of some of the best Italian Disney artists.
> The "Star Wars spoof drawn by Massimo De Vita" is one of my
> favourite stories, and the stories from Argaar are also really good.

I'm glad to hear that! 

> I'll try to write an introduction to some of my favourite D-coded stories 
> sometime soon.

I look forward to it.

> URL's: "mailto:sparre at cats.nbi.dk", "http://fys.ku.dk/(J~(Bsparre/Comics".

I just paid a visit and I added a pointer to your page on mine. Good
stuff! I saw the complete version of Artur's list (I had not realised
it was online -- well done!) and I thought I might contribute a few
more data points on Italy.

I'm not at home right now so I can't fill in all the details exactly
(like what is the size of the albums, on what issue and year
this-and-that happened...) but I think I can give you a reasonable
amount of information from memory, probably more than you want to put
in your file anyway :-)

I shall also give you the codes that are normally used to identify the
various publications in books about comics (and which I use whenever I
quote a bibliographical reference to a story).

The most important Italian Disney comic is, as you say, "Topolino",
with a circulation of the order of 1 million copies per week (usually
less than that, say 600-800 thousand, but it has passed the 1M mark a
few times e.g. during the summer and with special gadgets being
distributed with the comic). It has been around in this format, which
we call "Topolino Libretto" (TL), meaning "booklet", since 1949 and
has recently passed the "issue 2000" mark. Before that it existed in
newspaper form (TG for Topolino Giornale, although the official title
of the publication always remained "Topolino") and also ran comics
stories with humans, not only mice and ducks.

Another important comic is "I Classici di Walt Disney" (CWD), which is
made entirely of reprints of stories from Topolino, which restarted
from number 1 somewhere in the late '70s / early '80s. From then on we
referred to it as CWDNS, the NS standing for "Nuova Serie" (new
series). The reprinted stories were almost exclusively Italian until
the mid '80s. For a while the odd issues of CWDNS were exact reprints
of issues of the CWD, which were already collectors' items sold at
next to extortionate prices at comics conventions. The CWD / CWDNS are
translated and redistributed in many European countries, as we
discussed in September.

Almanacco Topolino (can't remember what the approved abbreviation is,
because there was another one called Albi di Topolino) was larger in
format and so it could take 4 rows of 2 pictures; this made it more
suitable for foreign material which started in that format. Some
Italian stories were written in that format as well. Earlier on, the
same series was called "Albi della Rosa" but I don't have any of these
(too expensive... :-)). Another series with the same page format but
thicker, "Super Almanacco Paperino" (SAP), consisted mostly of
reprints, both from Almanacco and (Wow!) from Barks stories. After a
while (17 issues I think) it restarted from issue 1 (SAPNS). If I am
not mistaken it then became "Paperino Mese" (different cover logo but
kept the numbering sequence), which later shrunk in size to become
just slightly larger than TL/CWD/CWDNS.

Currently there are lots and lots of series, mostly reprints, in the
CWD format: Topomistery (TM) which has Mickey detective stories,
Paperinik (PK) which has Paperinik and Super Goofy stories, Grandi
Classici Disney (GCD) which is a thicker version of CWD. New ones seem
to come out constantly: I find new comic series almost every year when
I go back to Italy: there is one on the Junior Woodchucks (all new
Italian stories, very nice colouring and gifted young artists), one
called Minni "for girls", one called "Topolino Adventure", another one
called "Paper Fantasy"... these are of a slightly larger format than
the CWD.

There is also a "Mega 2000" (I think it used to be called "Mega
Almanacco", or vice versa) which contains only new stories, mostly D-
and B-coded. I don't have many of these comics so I can't say much.

Then there is a large-format (greater than A4), very thin comic called
"Le grandi parodie" which reprints all those spoofs of classic
literature. Unfortunately the series suffered from a 3x price increase
and is now monumentally overpriced -- I consider it a real rip-off,
although I haven't yet found the strength to stop buying it... ;-)

Last but certainly not least there is "Zio Paperone" which has just
finished reprinting all of Carl Barks stories and is currently
printing Don's Life of $crooge. If one bought only one comic from
Italian newsagents, it would have to be this one.

    Frank   (Filologo Disneyano)