European Western Comic Books - Kinowa

Kinowa is an Italian comic book series created by Andrea Lavezzolo and EsseGesse (illustrators of Capitan Miki which was covered on September 21, 2015.)

This western comic series debuted in May 1950, with text by Andrea Lavezzolo (who signed the comics with the pen name A. Lawson) and artwork by the trio EsseGesse (Pietro Sartoris, Dario Guzzoni and Giovanni Sinchetto), at the debut issue. When Essegesse passed to draw other comics - as Blek Macigno and Captain Miki - the stories of Kinowa were then illustrated by Pietro Gamba. Main character of the series is Sam Boyle, a man that was scalped and left for dead after an attack on a convoy in which perished his wife and son. He builds a duck skin mask with the likeness of the devil and, turned into the avenging spirit Kinowa, persecutes the descendants of his attackers.

The comics had significant success in Turkey, where Kinowa became a protagonist, between 1971 and 1972, of three western-adventure films (Kinova - Demir Yumruk, Kara Seytan - Kinova 2 and Kamili Kadin - Kinova 3). It is considered as the initiator of the Italian western-gothic subgenre.

Andrea Lavezzolo was born in the French capital as the son of immigrants from Liguria father and a French mother, he returned to Italy in 1913 and settled with his family in Panesi (fraction of Cogorno , in Fontanabuona Valley ) and soon abandoned his studies to start a career. He began in the twenties to write for some specialized magazines, stories, poems and novels (The Broken Idol is the title of his first work).

Only since 1940 did he approach the world of comics writing his first script for Saladin and Dick Lightning , the character created and designed by the duo Vincenzo Boggioli-Carlo Cossio. The first successful character - Gim Toro (published until 1959 ) - was created by him in 1946 for the publisher Gino Casarotti along with designer Edgardo Dell'Acqua . The stories of the popular character were designed by Giuseppe Perego, Antonio Channel and Angelo Saccarello .

Among the other characters created by Lavezzolo from after World War II until the 1950s include, in addition to the Little Ranger - alter ego of Captain Miki - Geki Dor , Condor Gek , Tony Hawk , Kinowa (from 1950 ), White Mask (from 1946 ), Lightning masked (from 1947 ), up to cyclones and Calam, the panther of the West .

As a journalist and writer Lavezzolo has edited several collections of books, including that of ' Albogiornale while for the newspaper The Day oversaw the comics page and - from 1957 to 1966 - the weekly supplement The Day of Children. Writing of stories for comics closed his career, before retiring. He left a series of feature articles on characters from the world of comics which was published in the seventies by the magazines Sgt.  Kirk and The Comics.