Saturday, September 10, 2011

SHARK SCENE IN PRE-WAR COMICS


Above scan is from the no.1 (dated July 10th, 1939) of Turkey's 1001 Roman, featuring a shark scene from the first installement of 'Korkusuz Adam [The Fearless Man]', serialized in the first 22 issues of this weekly comics magazine. 'Korkusuz Adam' is the Turkish edition of 'Metropoli Distrutta' by the Italian artist Ferdinando Vichi (1901-1944), originally serialized in the Italian comics weekly L'Avventuroso in 1938. The original Italian version is said to be anti-communisy and fascistic (*), but these sentiments are not as evident in the Turkish edition. During the course of the Turkish translation, the protagonist has been given a Turkish name and nationality. He is an "engineer" (=inventor?) who has made a valuable invention and hence is being sought after by a band of "international spies", seen in the below scan from no. 3:
In order to evade capture by the spies, the hero seeks shelter in an exotic island inhabited by "savages". Towards the finale, an elderly white man who commands apes appears, as seen in this scan from no. 18:

(*) Claudio Carabba, Il fasciso a fumetti, p. 273.

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