Dylan Dog, the nightmare investigator of 7 Craven Road, London, is 40, and Italy threw him a party. Publisher Sergio Bonelli Editore used Lucca Comics & Games to lay out its plans for the character’s anniversary year and beyond, capped by a public zombie parade through the streets of Lucca, according to Bleeding Cool.
Created by writer Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, Dylan Dog is one of Italy’s longest-running and most popular comics: a British private investigator who takes the cases nobody else will, from ghosts and vampires to werewolves and demons. Sclavi still reads every script, series curator Barbara Baraldi told the panel, and he even changed the ending of the anniversary issue, Dylan Dog #481.
That issue, Before the Dawn, came out at the end of September in full color at the regular price, sealed in blind bags with four covers and a print run of 100,000. Written by Baraldi and drawn by Davide Furnò, it finds Dylan reading a diary he does not remember writing. A larger black-and-white hardcover for bookstores adds eight extra pages. Bonelli also launched a deluxe 208-page hardcover of the original 1986 story, L’alba dei morti viventi by Sclavi and Angelo Stano, with Sclavi’s complete script in an appendix. It reaches bookstores and comic shops on Nov. 3.
Next up is a Colour Special dedicated to the late Carlo Ambrosini, built from the last story he wrote. His former students expanded and redrew the unfinished script into a 94-page tale. Beyond that, the slate includes a story timed to the anniversary of Agatha Christie’s death, a lighthouse-set “What If” with Inspector Bloch, a Battle Royale-inspired office horror called Taglia il personale by Claudio Chiaverotti and Silvia Califano, the long-awaited Old Boy 2, a six-artist anniversary ColorFest and two more Horror Stories specials a year with Angelo Stano covers.
Dylan has also gone to the theater. The Dylan Dog Horror Show, Bonelli’s first stage production, written by Sclavi and Nicola Russo, opened at Rome’s Teatro Eliseo on Oct. 28 to a sold-out first night and has been extended through Dec. 6. Bonelli also repeated that more multimedia projects, television included, are in development.
There is even a stamp. Poste Italiane issued a Dylan Dog stamp on Oct. 28 in its Excellence of Italian Cultural Heritage series, with art by longtime cover artist Angelo Stano and a print run of 536,000. First-day cancellations were offered at Lucca during the show.
Lucca has been the center of Italian comics news all week, from its awards to a new agreement for a comics museum at the Manifattura Tabacchi. For Dylan Dog, the 40th is shaping up to run well into 2027.
