El Gringo was a classic cowboy character whose adventures
were heavily based on the success of the Spaghetti western craze of the 1960s. El
Gringo is not a superman, not even close, but he has some skill with his gun, a
quality necessary for survival. The basis of the story, which was then very
unusual, was current with the times and for the language and the pace of story.
It was the first comic book in which the reader was transposed to the real
West, with its royal costumes, tattered, graphically rendering perfectly the
atmosphere hovering in that precise historical period.
El Gringo was a comic book with an Italian Western
setting, created in 1965 by the author Max Bunker (Luciano Secchi) and artist
Paul Piffarerio, this was their third collaboration together after Black Mask and Atomik and before Milord,
Fouche and Alan Ford, after the departure of Magnus. The covers were drawn
by Louis Woo. The series was edited from Editorial Corno and published on a
monthly basis, the series began in October 1965 and stopped in August 1968,
after 35 numbers. Between 1977 and 1978
the series’ first 18 numbers were reprinted with new covers by Palo Piffarerio.
Max Bunker was a pseudonym of Luciano Secchi who was born
in Milan, Italy on August 24, 1939. He is an Italian comic book writer, best
known as author of Alan Ford in 1969.
His career started with a western style comic book Maschera Nera (Black Mask), in 1962. He
created such successful comics such as Kriminal
and Satanik in collaboration with
Magnus (Roberto Raviola). Also with Magnus, the series Maxmagnus proved very successful, though arguably Bunker's most
famous comics series is Alan Ford
(published in May 1969), for which he wrote the scenarios, with Magnus
responsible for the artwork in the first 75 issues.
Paolo Piffarerio is not one of the best-known names to
the general public: he did not create any successful character, he did not give
rise to magazines or publishing houses, but his work has spanned comics postwar
thanks to a long career and polyhedral which begun in 1943 and was completed in
the new millennium. His drawings have
accompanied comics for generations of readers, especially Alan Ford and The Newspaper,
but also on many other projects that he has graced with his light touch and
full of details.
Paolo was born in Milan on August 27, 1924, made his
debut at just 16 years of age for the New Aurora Alberto Traini. While still she is studying at the Academy of
Brera ink pencils's Gino Gavioli created the character of Captain Falco. During
the forties he worked for various publishing houses, alternating the humorous
style of Larry Semon to that adventures of Albi dell'intrepido and series for
the Bold Bonelli, even illustrating a series devoted to the footballer Giuseppe
Meazza.
In 1953 together with the Gavioli brothers founded the
film range, a production company that specializes in carousels. While Roberto Gavioli had been producing and
directing Gino realized the various characters (Cimabue, the Policeman, Dick
Gregory, Trinchetto ...), Piffarerio is the technical director of most of the
spots, if not the writer or director. Not in counsel to come to life on the
screen, then, but his is a constant presence within the range. He takes care of
photography, installation, and supervises the work for a vast production of
animated short films and from daily newspapers that enter Italian homes.
His goal was to produce quality animation, even if for
television, without making a bad copy of cartoons coming from the United
States, especially Disney, or those of Pagot brothers. The Gamma-style, under the guidance of Gino
and Paul, is so much more concise, stylized, modern, quite similar to that of
the UPA.
Paolo Piffarerio died in Milan on June 29, 2015.
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