Production in Italy (Mondadori, Disney)

General information

The first Italian comic book stories were a series of one-pagers with Mickey Mouse in 1931-32, first drawn by Gugliemo Guastaveglia, and later by "Buriko". They usually paired Mickey with Kat Nipp, the 1931 Gottfredson character.
Then there was a break until 1937, with `Paperino e il mistero di Marte', `Paperino inviato speciale' and `Paperino e il mistero del vaso cinese' (writer Federico Pedrocchi, artist Pinochi).

Mondadori started to produce them regularly in 1948. Most of the more important writers/artists (Scarpa, Bottaro...) were freelancers, doing a lot of work for different publishers.

A few years ago, Disney took over the Italian Disney publishing. The artists that worked for Mondadori are still working for Disney. Regarding comics books, the things are quite the same, even if there is now the attempt to create a real studio (with also a Disney University for training), where the style preferred by young authors seems to follow the most successful Disney artist of the 80s in Italy, Giorgio Cavazzano.

Story codes

The stories are mostly coded I + issue number of "Topolino" + story letter. E.g. code I-1425-B refers to the second original story of the issue 1425 of the weekly Topolino: it has two long Italian stories (more than 20 pages) per issue. There were many other comic books (either regular or digest, but very thick) publishing original material, and they had a different code, as for Almanacco Topolino (a monthly) that used AT + the issue number.

Story codes in the INDUCKS

For the INDUCKS we use "normalised" story codes, that have more of a system than the original printed codes.

An Italian story code has the following syntax:

"I" + space + letters + (spaces) + digits + "-" + sequence

letters = indication for the comic series
the length of "letters + (space) + digits" is always exactly 7.
sequence = one or 2 characters (digits or letters)

Example: "I TL 1425-B"

At the moment, the following letter combinations have been defined (by Marco Barlotti) for Italian comic series.

AT      Almanacco Topolino (1957-1984)
PM      Paperino Mese
PY      Paper Fantasy
SA      Super Almanacco Paperino (first series)
SAP     Super Almanacco Paperino (second series)
TL      Topolino (Libretto)
TM      TopoMistery
TG      Topolino Giornale
MG      Mega Almanacco - Mega 2000
PG      Paperino (1937-1942; PG means "Paperino Giornale")
PC      Paperino & C. (then Paperino)
PM      Paperino Mese - Paperino (monthly, currently on sale)
ZP      Zio Paperone
GM      Giovani Marmotte
PK      Paperinik
PKNA    Paperinik New Adventures
RT      Ridi Topolino
M       Minni
DMR     Disney Megazine
A       Amici di Zampa
CWD     Classici di Walt Disney (first series)
CD      Classici di Walt Disney (now Classici Disney)
GCD     I Grandi Classici Disney
DT      Disney Time
AR      Albi della Rosa, then Albi di Topolino
ATM     Albi di Topolino (a monthly now on sale, started again from issue #1)
EZP     L'Economia di Zio Paperone #n year 19yy: EZP yyn
PLE     Paperino nel labirinto dell'Economia #n: PLE n
PRT     Paperino alla scoperta delle ricchezze del mondo #n: PRT n

The coding system for Albi d'Oro is a bit different. Because of the length of the code, there is no space between "AO" and the number:

AO      Albi d'Oro (first series 1946-1952) #n: AO46nnn-A - AO52nnn-A
AO      Albi d'Oro (second series, 1953) #n: AO53nnn-A
AO      Albi d'Oro (second series, 1954) #n: AO54nnn-A
AO      Albi d'Oro (second series, 1955) #n: AO55nnn-A
AO      Albi d'Oro (second series, 1956) #n: AO56nnn-A

About the final characters behind the '-', Marco wrote the following:

In fact my idea is that
-for "old" series we use the -A, -B, -C like in old "Topolino" issues
-for "new" series we use the -1, -2, -3 like in new "Topolino" issues

Thus Albi d'oro and Almanacco and Super Almanacco Paperino and Mega Almanacco (which DOESN'T print original stories nowadays) get -A, -B, -C while Ridi Topolino and Topo Mistery (which only recently started printing original stories) get -1, -2, -3...

For Paperino Mese I use the following: up to issue #111 (where the stories have 4-tier format) I use -A, -B, -C. From issue #114 onwards (where the stories have 3-tier format) I use -1, -2, -3.
Of course there are NO original stories in issues #112 and #113...

Note from Harry: if you want to know exactly when to use which code, you'll have to look in the Italian story indexes at Marco Barlotti's website.

contributions: Fabio Gadducci, David Gerstein, Marco Barlotti

This page was generated on 2008-04-18 by DVEGEN 4.8d © Harry Fluks 2003.
For more information contact Harry Fluks (hfl at inducks.org - replace the at)