La Mia Altra Insegnante: Dylan Dog

Last night as Erin and I were returning from our evening passeggiata, we passed a libreria that sold old/used books. I had seen this shop many times and had been meaning to stop by and have a look around. As we were passing I noticed a box just outside the door full of comics, and most of them were Dylan Dog originals from the mid 90s.

We had just come from what could be compared to a thrift store in the states, at which we had bought a couple of books at a reading level of 10 years or younger. For some time now we've been wanting some reading material that we could actually digest, and were happy to find a couple of children's books at a cheap price. However when we saw a box full of Italian fumetti outside such a quaint store, we had to stop. After looking through a handful of Dylan Dog editions (each costing € 1), I decided on issue 99, "SINFONIA MORTALE":



This is an original print from 1994 and I was excited to have bought it. I didn't know much at all about the series, but looking through the covers I realized that Dylan Dog was of genres near my heart: sci-fi, cult, and horror! After buying it I did some research and found that, much to my surprise, it was born in Italy! I find it odd that a comic with such a name would have been of Italian origin, but indeed it is.

The series has an international presence as well (in the states under Dark Horse), so perhaps some of you are already aware of it. I remember one of my teachers mentioning the series two months or so ago, but at the time I had no idea what it was. A different teacher also suggested that students invest in fumetti as learning materials, because they are cohesive stories with graphical contexts. I thought this was a good idea but had yet taken any action.

So now I am a happy reader of Dylan Dog, and I can't think of a better combination for my learning than a sci-fi/horror comic in Italian :-).