Episode 13: Corriere dei Piccoli #1

In this episode I describe the history of the Italian comics industry up until 1937. I begin with Cesare Lombroso, the famous criminologist, because of course I begin there. Why wouldn't I? I discuss his daughter Paola and her various contributions to society and good works, which happens to include being the person most responsible for the first Italian comic book, Il Corriere dei Piccoli. I discuss the contents of that issue, the fraught question of word balloons vs bottom captions, the various comic strips which appeared in Il Corriere dei Piccoli over the next several years and the creators of the strips, Il Corriere dei PIccoli's competitors in the 1920s and 1930s, including L'Avventuroso, the history of Mickey Mouse in Italy, the Italian version of Vincent Price if Price did a comic strip for fifty years, and how the fascists ruined everything.