European Western Comic Books ~ Collana Rodeo

Collana Rodeo  is a comic book series of adventures  totaling 162 issues, each containing 100-pages. It published from June 1967 by Editions Herald (later Sergio Bonelli Editore) until December 1980. The series contained a detailed and well-documented historical account of the American frontier narrated from the point of view of a family of Irish immigrants, the MacDonalds, the series featured mythical figures such as Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, George Armstrong Custer, Wyatt Earp, Kit Carson.

The series presented reprints of numerous comics and within the same were published, among other things, 73 episodes of the History of the West, created by Gino D'Antonio and Renzo Calegari, 39 issues of A Boy in Far West and 5 issues of Judge Bean, created by Guido Nolitta; number 121, Cursed Earth, and tnumber 131, Wyatt Doyle, were written by Giancarlo Berardi.

 

 

Gino D’Antonio was born in Milan, Italy on March 16, 1927. He made his professional debut in 1947, with the comic book series Jesse James published by Edizioni Della Casa, and from 1951 he started collaborating with the magazine Il Vittorioso. In 1956 he began a proficous collaboration with Fleetway Publications, for which he specialized in creating war comics. His stories were published in British publications including Tell Me Why, Junior Mirror, Junior Express and Eagle.

In 1967 D'Antonio co-created with Renzo Calegari his best known work, the long lasting comic book series Storia del West, which ran until 1980. In the early 1970s, he started collaborating with the magazine Il Giornalino, for which he created numerous comic series, notably Susanna, Il soldato Cascella and Uomini senza gloria. In 1987, he eventually became the head of the comics section of the magazine.

He died of a stroke in his house in Milan on December 24, 2006.

Renzo Calegari was born in Genoa, Italy on September 5,1933. After his studies in accounting, he dropped out to move to Milan, following his interest in drawing.

Since 1955 he began working and studying with Rinaldo Dami, for which designs the Sergio Bonelli series El Kid and the Three Bills. He then lent his artistic talent to Gianluigi Bonelli to create Big Davy by Edizioni Herald.

Since 1964, in collaboration with Gino D'Antonio, Renato Polese and other authors he contributed to The History of the West, a long saga about MacDonald family during the time of the American western expansion.

In 1969 he temporarily abandons the comics to follow the movement of the sixty-eight, and then returns in the seventies to his first activities, drawing - for the group Eura Editoriale Skorpio as the head of the miniseries Welcome to Springville, written by Giancarlo Berardi (later republished in three volumes from L'Isle by the book publisher Ligurian Hands).

He also worked in Orient Express and The Newspaper, a weekly of San Paolo for which he made the series Boone and Frontier People.

For Bonelli Editore, he also designs Tex, for a story titled The Ballad of Zeke Colter (texts by Claudio Nizzi), appearing in the West Almanac in 1994. Finally he is - paired again with screenwriter D'Antonio  for the  Bandidos!, a onetime publication, published in the summer of 2007.

In 2012 he published It Happened on the Orient Express, a job started years before that was partially published as a serial in a magazine about comics.