ITALY 1945 PART I
For Italy the war is effectively over and the Allied Power was in Command and Control. Here is were we come in as readers. Let us take a look at what is going on........................
# 2*
Asso Di Picchi (L'As de pique, Ace of Spades, 1945-1949)
Published on the pages of the magazine, Asso Di Picchi is a mysterious avenger who fights against the terrible first band of the Panthers, led by a cruel Eastern Fu Manchu. Following the address of Club 5, a sort of forerunner organization Spectre, will live an adventure in Venice and will face the Nazis. In the life of every day we find him in the role of journalist Gary Peters, and no one, including his girlfriend, Deanna Farrell, suspects that he and the masked hero are actually the same person. The Ace of Spades was created by Alberto Ongaro and Hugo Pratt and appeared in the comic strip "Asso di Piche" (Albi Uragano, 1945-1949). Asso di Picche ("Ace of Spades") is a masked vigilante who, assisted by his Chinese servant Wang, fights crime in the persons of the Nazis, the Yellow Peril Band of Panthers, and the Club of the Five. After capturing criminals the Ace of Spades leaves behind his namesake playing card. The Ace's civilian identity is journalist Gary Peters. GIMMY is Gary;s loyal sidekick,
Before the ANAF and then ANAFI: fans of the speech bubbles always have many opportunities to discover and original stories and characters, often live in the memory of readers, but absent for some time from newsstands or from libraries. The beautiful magazine " Comics "offers periodic revivals of the past that this is, in publications for members but sometimes can also be found in some comics, the size of real anthology. It 's the case, for example, of the Ace of Spades, perhaps the first adventurous hero of Italian comic risen about seventy years ago, after the war. They were authors Mario Faustinelli and Hugo Pratt, the great designer then novice, who had discovered the comics during his stay in Africa. The papers of the American soldiers were stories of Milton Caniff, Chester Gould or maybe Al Capp, whose designs captivated the young
Pratt. After the Liberation and the end of the problems of war, around the two authors gathered in Venice a group of young hopefuls and promising, the future writer Alberto Ongaro the future director Damiano Damiani, who with others created the Ace of Spades , a comic that was named after the protagonist of the
main story. In the events of this character mysterious and disguised as Superman was the atmosphere of the great American adventure. But for Italians these stories - that we can judge fairly predictable - they were a novelty, and were discovering new worlds. Behind the mask and the suit with the symbol of the
Ace of Spades, lies a mysterious and courageous journalist who fights crime clan of the Black Panthers and the Club of 5. Performs valiant companies and also manages to preserve the mystery of his identity, ignored even by his girlfriend. The magazine, as all the initiatives lack of funds, his life ended early.
But in the meantime had piqued the interest publisher Civita, a jew Italian refugee in Argentina after the racial laws. So it was that Pratt and many of his friends moved there, some for a short time, others, such as the father of Corto Maltese, for a dozen years. For Pratt was an extraordinary period, especially after meeting with Oesterheld. With writer, a victim of the Argentine dictatorship in 1972, has created unforgettable characters and stories, by Sergeant Kirk to Ernie Pike, Wheeling, etc.. But before he had made other stories of the Ace of Spades, remained unpublished in Italy. Four of these are now collected in the volume dell'ANAFI, curated by Gianni Brunora Gallinari and Paul, with historical and critical interventions that allow you to better frame those years in which the Italian comic became a little 'Argentine, and vice versa, given the durable good relations among the authors of the two countries. Hugo Eugenio Pratt (June 15, 1927