Gruppo di fumetti

[Comics]. Collection of nearly 500 fumetti vietati ai minori (Italian adults-only comics). Milan: Ediperiodici, Furio Viano and others, circa 1960s-1980s. Original publications (presumably first editions) of periodic issues of several adults-only fumetti titles, including Gangster Story Bonnie (147 issues), Jolanka (35 issues), Jungla (38 issues), Isabella (18 issues), Goldrake (23 issues), Jacula (27 issues), Messalina (69 issues), Vartan (14 issues), Hessa (39 issues), as well as smaller runs (10 issues or fewer) of Walalla, Zip, I Demoni, Justine and others. Together, 498 volumes. Octavo (approximately 7 x 5 inches; 175 x 130 mm.). Various paginations. Fully illustrated in black and white. Publisher's perfect bindings in the original full-color illustrated wrappers. Individual issues suffer a myriad of faults (sometimes independently, sometimes all at once), including: torn covers, occasionally with extensive paper loss, sometimes taped, typically at the spine; many wrappers are rubbed or creased, a few have ink writing; some corners (wrappers and entire text block) are clipped. Interiors similarly worn; a small handful with title-leaves (or other material) ripped out; some writing; text blocks tanned, but generally still supple, some separated from the wrappers. Typically very good or just good, but several issues are about as nice as one could reasonably expect. Text in Italian. From Larry McMurtry's comic collection, by way of Heritage Auctions.

McMurtry's collection of fumetti was mentioned in his memoir, Books: "One day, near the railroad station [in Rome], I stumbled on some book stalls where they sold used Italian comic books... What arrested me, at first glance, were the many similarities in the violent comics to the Fiction House comics of the forties and fifties. I bought a lot of the fumetti and sent them home. Later, reflecting on how rare the trivial publications would become over time, I commissioned two friends, poets both, to journey from Venice to Naples just to buy me fumetti" (New York: 2002, p. 22).

"From 1966 forward... more than a hundred publications appeared with content ranging from the suggestively erotic to the blatantly pornographic. Among the most popular, and least amateurish, were Jacula, Isabella, Vartan, Lucifera... and Hessa. For the most part, the fumetti vietati [ai minori] (adults only comics) dabbled in gothic and horror genres, serving in equal parts gore and sexual situations, making them the comic book counterpart of the gothic and erotic movie phenomenon that developed in Italy in the early '60s" (Simone Castaldi, Drawn and Dangerous, Jackson: 2010, p. 18).

Full issue (series and number) list available upon request. Shipped at cost. (#10007).