Significance of Study.
Dylan Dog is an Italian horror comics series created by Tiziano Sclavi and published by Sergio Bonelli Editore since 1986.
The series features the eponymous character, a paranormal investigator who takes on cases involving supernatural elements such as ghosts, demons, vampires, undeads, werewolves and other creatures, but also horrifying sociopathic criminals and serial killers. It defies the whole preceding horror tradition with a vein of surrealism and an anti-bourgeois rhetoric. Dylan is supported mainly by his trusty sidekick Groucho (a Groucho Marx lookalike) who adds humour to this grisly genre and Dylan’s sombre temperament. The series is mainly set in London, where the protagonist lives, though he occasionally travels elsewhere.
Tiziano Sclavi is an Italian comic book author, journalist and writer of several novels. Sclavi is most famous as creator of the comic Dylan Dog in 1986. More than 400 issues have appeared in the series, which has sold millions of copies
Dylan Dog
The comic book series Dylan Dog, created by Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, is one of the staples of Sergio Bonelli Editore, a major Italian comic book publishing house. The eponymous character is a self-proclaimed “investigator of nightmares,” a private detective whose cases consist mostly of supernatural occurrences, and is accompanied by a barrage of other supporting characters, most notably his sidekick Groucho Marx, who shares an uncanny resemblance to the well-known comedy ac[1]tor from the golden era of Hollywood. As is the case with comic books and their subsequent treatment in the realm of cinematography, Dylan Dog received two celluloid adaptations: The Cemetery Man or Dellamorte Dellamore in 1994, and Dylan Dog: Dead of Night in 2011, both with varying degrees of success in the translation of the visual and thematic characteristics of the comic to the big screen. In dealing with various clients and intriguing cases, Dylan Dog frequently encounters Death in several guises. The two conduct conversations about the nature point to the location of domains in combined modalities (for more on multimodality, see Forceville, Urios-Aparisi 2009). 258 Ilhana Škrgić: Figurative representation of death in the Italian comic book Dylan Dog of life and human fate, and sometimes Death takes away Dylan’s current love interest (in almost each episode he meets a new woman and falls in love, with mostly tragic consequences). The visual feel of Death, itself a personification of man’s ultimate fear of dying and the unknown, is highly evocative of the canonical representation of death as “The Grim Reaper,” a skeleton-like creature dressed in a monk’s robe and holding a scythe, although the issues presented in the analysis contain several variations of this form. The scope of the influence of Dylan Dog in the three decades since its inception in 1986 cannot be underestimated: not only is it one of the most-selling creations of its publishing house (Castaldi 2010: 134), but it frequently offers references to significant literary giants of the past, depicts important cultural issues of the present, and points to often negatively perceived strivings of the world at large (e.g. man[1]kind’s unhealthy relationship with technology). The fantastic elements for which the comic is known are often used as a backdrop for a more serious conversations—as it is stated in the depiction on the official web presence of Sergio Bonelli Editore: “But often the fantasy stories constitute a pretext for focusing more closely on the protagonist, to address burning social issues of the day, many of them unfortunately very real such as the presence of an underclass, vivisection, drugs, racism, violence and the tyrannical power of the mighty.”3 Dylan Dog also served as a bridge between the fumetti neri (black comics) of the 1970s and the early ‘80s in Italy and the present day, as noted by Castaldi (2010: 134–135), who points to its inception as a pulp horror publication aimed at young adults, the narratives of which “were imbedded with intertextual references (pulp and B-movies specifical[1]ly), and it configured itself as a sort of soft late-post-modern meta-narrative.”4 The cult status of this comic was cemented by Umberto Eco, who said: “I can read the Bible, Homer and Dylan Dog for days and days…,” with Sclavi often paying homage to the famous Italian writer and semiotician with citations and a character depicting Eco in one of the more recent issues.
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