European Western Comic Books ~ I protaganisti (Toro Seduto-Il profeta dei Sioux)

I protagonisti was a western comic series created by Rino Albertarelli and published monthly from 1974 to 1975 by Daim Press. The series presented documented and meticulous biographies of the heroes of the West and was only interrupted by the death of the author.

Each issue contained a monograph of a Western epic character with a comic strip story accompanied by a bibliography containing books consulted by the author in his documentation work. The series ran from September 1974 until June 1975.

The series was commissioned by Sergio Bonelli and Rino Albertarelli who wrote and designed the series for Daim Press in 1973. When Albertarelli died, on September 21, 1974, he was working on the tenth issue and only the first issue had been released on newsstands. The publishing house decided to end the series with the tenth volume, of which Albertarelli had completed only the first 42 tables, so Sergio Toppi was hired to finish the series.

In 1994 the series was reprinted in the series The Protagonists of the West, edited by Hobby & Work. A second reprint was published in 2007 in the series of History of the West by If Editions with the headline “History of the West Presents the Protagonists”. In each issue there are two stories in the chronological order of the original publication.

Issue #5 was about the life and legend of Sitting Bull-The Sioux Prophet

Destiny wanted Toro Seduto (Tatanka Iyotanka) to experience the most difficult era of the white conquest: the last. And that his name shone in the same constellation of legendary characters, such as George Armstrong Custer, Buffalo BIll, Phlltp Sherldan, Nelson A. Miles, George Crook, Red Cloud (Makhpiya-Luta), Crazy Horse (Tashunka Witko) and others maybe less suggestive, but equally important in the warp of the so-called American Epic. Perhaps this is why he is the most universally known Indian chief.

There is no American who ignores what Sitting Bull combined to the 7th Cavalry in 1876, and this explains the popularity of the inflexible head of the Sioux Unkpapa.

The people who consider themselves the least militaristic in the world, paradoxically, are extremely sensitive to military defeats. That the Sioux of Montana were assaulted without provocation by the armed forces of the Union, while they were peacefully enjoying a right recognized to them solemnly by the treaty of 1868, ceases to have relevance to the average American since they blatantly beat patent generals as Crook and Custer.

This issue contains 108 pages.