Friday, December 21, 2007

OBSCURE FUMETTI ABOUT ITALIAN MIGRANTS

Between 1940-46, Türkiye Yayınevi, Turkey's leading comics publisher in the war era, published 75 monthly "special issues" of 1001 Roman alongside the weekly comics magazine of the same title. While several different comics titles were simultanously serialized in the weekly magazine, each "special" issue headlined a complete episode of a single comics. While popular titles such as Mandrake the Magician, Phantom, Tim Tyler's Luck and Secret Agent X-9 dominated the series, several issues were devoted to obscure one-shot titles such as no. 17 (May 1941) whose covers is shown above.
The Turkish title translates as "Beyond the Ocean". It is 20 pages long (with 4 rows in each page) and recounts the plight of the Italian migrants in America. The story begins in 1902. Poor Italians sign up to migrate to America to work there. The heroes' names are Bruno, Marco and Cigli (sp?). Hardships begin on the ship voyage. They are taken to Argentina rather than the USA and begin a very hard life there as farmers. In the story's end, years have passed and the young and healthy new generation sign up to return home as volunteers when the news of "great war" break out.
If anyone knows any info, such as the original title, creators, etc, about the original source of this historical curiosity, please let us know.

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