Piero Mancini, Comics Artist

Mino, Lia, and Piero
Piero Mancini was an Italian illustrator/comic artist with an appealing minimalist style.

[For the following details I'm indebted to a biographical entry at the Fondazione Franco Fossati, a fabulous resource on Italian comics history.]

Piero Mancini was born in Adria in 1927.  His family moved to Milan while he was still a child. It was there he studied art, at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.

In the early 1950s Mancini moved to Padua to work in advertising and illustration. He began a collaboration with the Catholic kids' weekly Sant'Antonio e i fanciulli (St. Anthony and the Children), which was later retitled Il messaggero dei ragazzi (The Kids' Messenger). Though he mostly produced illustrations, Mancini also wrote and drew a police-themed story/quiz in comics form.

One of a series of Bob Star (Red Barry) covers for Club Anni Trenta

Up until the mid-1960s Mancini created numerous illustrations for a series of literary adaptations. Among the most noteworthy were a dozen plates illustrating The Divine Comedy. In 1966 Mancini started drawing comics for the Messaggero, beginning with a story about Giotto. During the next decade he provided artwork for many comics features. His best-known work was on the series Mino e Lia, written by Claudio Nizzi. Mino and Lia were ordinary modern kids who stumbled into various adventures. The series ran from 1972 to 1975.

Collection of Mino & Lia from Mera-Fumetti

In 1977 Piero Mancini illustrated an adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank which appeared in Sgt Kirk. It was his last major project, for the artist passed away in 1979 at the age of 51.

Mancini's impressionistic style bears a certain resemblance to the work of Dino Battaglia. He went even further than Battaglia in experimenting with unusual textures. His toolkit included pen, brush, sponges, razor blades, and toothbrush splatter. The result was a very personal and attractive style which admittedly sometimes sacrificed detail for effect.

Following is one of Mancini's Mino and Lia adventures. Though only 9 pages long it was split across two issues of Il Messaggero. In fact I think it was originally intended to run in three parts. In the Italian original the last panel on page 3 seemed to set up a cliffhanger and the first row of panels on page 4 look like they were extended upward to cover a gap left for the series logo.

It's a very simple, very low-key story. A hallmark of the series was the way Mino and Lia spoke directly to the reader. Personally I find the schtick annoying, though it does help hurry the story along. To my eyes the coloring is also reminiscent of Battaglia. I have no idea whether Mancini did it himself.

All in all this is a nice job by a lesser-known star in the Italian comic universe.


 
English version by Ron Harris

Dino Battaglia

Death and the Gambler

"Death and the Gambler" is one of my favorite short stories illustrated by Dino Battaglia, a giant of Italian comic art. It appeared in Corriere dei Piccoli in the late 1960s, and was the first of a series of short-story adaptations Battaglia illustrated. Battagtlia's unique style, with scratchboard textures cloaking his lovingly-detailed world in mist, perfectly complements Prosper Merimee's enjoyable fable set in a world in which the old pagan gods coexist with Catholic Christianity. I love the story as much as I do the art.

By the way, this series also offered Battaglia the opportunity to show his very personal and very effective color technique. I scanned these pages from tearsheets of the original CdP printing. After experimentation I decided not to attempt to "whiten the pages" because all my efforts spoiled Battaglia's color. So here it is yellowed pages and all.

Just in case you wonder as I did the first time I read the story, the bearded guy on the second page is Saint Peter.


What I like about the story is that Federigo, not a bad man at heart, manages to live both the good life and the good afterlife. He's one of those merry tricksters you read about in analyses of myths...not many people can con the Big Man himself!

I don't know if Merimee was first to use the Death-up-a-tree gimmick, but the idea's reappeared several times since. For example in the 1939 movie On Borrowed Time, Lionel Barrymore traps Death in the backyard apple tree using the same subterfuge Federigo uses.

Corriere dei Piccoli

A window onto a past window onto the past
This weekend I was excited to receive a gift of 38 tearsheets from Corriere dei Piccoli, the legendary children's supplement to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. A friend had owned them forever, forgetting just where they came from; having no idea what to do with them, he gave them to me! From hints in the articles I gather they were originally published in late 1933 and perhaps early 1934.

The pages were from two series of educational color pages illustrated by an artist whose signature I can't make out. The first series, "Come vestivano" ("How They Dressed"), pictured costumes from different regions and historical periods. Most of the subjects were Italian, though topics included things like "Costumes of the French Revolution" and "Costumes of Characters in The Three Musketeers." The example below presents Italian dress in the late 1300s. The text characterizes the "trecento" as having planted the seeds of modern united Italy. The drawings are rather nice and are given plenty of space.
The other series, closely related to the first, was "L'oriente favoloso" ("The Fabulous East"). Like the first series the pictures concentrated on costuming. The text presented general information about various Asian countries and their culture. This example discusses India, with an emphasis on how the caste system creates strife between classes and ethnic groups.The reverse sides of these pages provide an interesting glimpse into Italy of the 1930s. The pages are divided between a long article on some kid-related subject (this one is about "The World of Toys") and display ads. The ads are a mixed bag: many are directed at the kids themselves, but most seem to be aimed at their parents. In the sample below we find ads for a meat extract, a salt solution for soaking tired feet, a dentifrice (available as liquid, paste or powder), and a supplier of uniforms for the several Fascist youth organizations (flags and badges, too!).I have a particular fondness for Corriere dei Piccoli (roughly, The Children's Courier), because through it I was introduced to the world of European comics. In the late 1960s an Italian deli near my university stocked a handful of Italian magazines, among them CdP. Though I didn't know it, by that time CdP was in its final decline after running over half a century (the supplement began in 1908). It had long ago transformed from a newspaper supplement into a glossy weekly magazine of some 60 pages. Most of its comics were translations of Belgian Tintin features: Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Michel Vaillant, etc. Being ignorant, I assumed at first these were Italian series. Only later did I discover the Belgian connection. 48-page adventures were serialized several pages per week. Occasionally a special issue would run a long story in its entirety; for example an adaptation of The Great Locomotive Chase by Argentinian cartoonist Arturo del Castillo.

Though a minority, original Italian material appeared, too. It was in CdP that I first encountered Aldo di Gennaro, Giorgio Trevisan, irrepressible Benito Jacovitti, and above all the incredible Dino Battaglia. Even Hugo Pratt popped up from time to time, though I didn't appreciate him until later when I discovered Corto Maltese.

During the time I was reading Corriere dei Piccoli signs of change appeared. The biggest change came in 1972 following a reader referendum. The venerable magazine's title was changed to Corriere dei Ragazzi. In 1908, piccoli, like its English equivalent children, was commonly applied to all pre-teens. But by the 1970s youths found the term demeaning. Ragazzi carried a connotation similar to kids in English. (Interestingly, children/kids went through a similar process in America about the same time.) Interior pages began appearing in black plus one color rather than full color. Going through a succession of editors, cost-cutting, and format changes, CdR finally limped to a conclusion in 1985. By that time I'd lost track of it.

Here's to dear old Corriere dei Piccoli, to which I owe a great debt...if only for introducing me to Battaglia and Jacovitti. As for also introducing me to I Puffi... well, we can't win 'em all.