Dick Fulmine

Dick Fulmine is the title character of a crime-action comic book series.

Dick Fulmine
Publication information
Genre
  • Action/adventure
Publication date1938-1955

Background

The comic character, an Italo-American bully and punch-ready undercover agent of the Chicago police, was created in 1938 by the sports journalist Vincenzo Baggioli as writer and by Carlo Cossio as artist.

It was clearly inspired in his traits by the boxer Primo Carnera.[1][2] However, his protruding and strong-willed jaw was a recognizable reference to the popular and propagandistic physiognomic iconography of Benito Mussolini.[3]

He achieved a great popularity in the Fascist era, and in reason of its success the comic underwent several interventions by the MinCulPop (the Fascist Ministry of Popular Culture) to make its stories more openly nationalistic and moralistic.[1]

In 1942 MinCulPop even forced authors to change the facial traits of the title character to make him more handsome, an event that was justified in the comics telling that Dick Fulmine had been subjected to an intervention of facial plastic surgery.[1]

With the outbreak of World War II, Dick Fulmine underwent an even more marked evolution to respond to changing political demands, turning from being a detective into a belligerent Italian soldier.[1][2]

After the war, the success start to decline, and the series was interrupted in the second half of the 1940s.[1] In 1955 it was terminated.

References
  1. Franco Fossati, I grandi eroi del fumetto, Gramese, 1990, pp. 90–91
  2. Claudio Carabba, Il fascismo a fumetti, Editore Guaraldi, 1973, p. 54
  3. Pietro Favari, Le nuvole parlanti: un secolo di fumetti tra arte e mass media, 1996, p. 214
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