Foreign ‘Contamination’: American Comics in Fascist Italy L’Avventuroso (1934-43) ❖ In 1934 publisher Mario Nerbini launched L’Avventuroso, a magazine based on American adventure comics. ❖ It introduced heroes such as Flash Gordon, Mandrake, The Phantom, and Jungle Jim, changing the taste of its young readers. ❖ For the first time, Nerbini published the original American strips without adding any captions or eliminating speech bubbles. ❖ The success of the American formula revolutionised Italian comics: Italian artists had to adapt their style to the new model to attract readers. Fascism and American comics ❖ The Italian Fascist regime considered children the future of the nation. It began using magazines to educate the children to the Fascist ideology. ❖ American comics were being published since 1904 but were altered in their appearance: speech bubbles were substituted with captions. ❖ In 1932, adventure comics were published for the first time, but still adapted to the Italian traditional predominance of words over images. Censorship ❖ After 1936 the Fascist regime launched a campaign for the cultural ‘autarchy’: no foreign influence. ❖ 1938: American comics were considered as contaminating Italian children’s education and were thus forbidden. ❖ Nerbini Italianised American heroes to keep publishing them but after the declaration of war on the US (1941) any American imitation had to disappear. The number of copies sold of L’Avventuroso drastically fell. ❖ After 1945, post-war Italian comics clearly show the influence of the American model, demonstrating it had been incorporated into Italian culture.