Saturday, October 13, 2012

Foreign Favorites: Mister No

In the spring of 1975, Italian writer Sergio Bonelli using his pseudonym Guido Nolitta, and artist Gallieno Ferri, created the regular monthly series, Mister No, which lasted  three hundred seventy five issues until December 2006, with a handful of special books ending in 2009. Our anti-hero,  Jerome Drake,  served as a soldier in the US Army before relocating to the Brazilian Amazon Forest after  World War II to forgot the horrors of war. Now working as a pilot and tour guide, he fights for peace and justice in the wild territories he calls home along with his German friend Otto Kruger, also known by the natives as Esse-Esse (S-S) from his prior Nazi days. Rounding out our hero's enduring cast of characters are  his airplane mechanic, Augustino,  bartender/owner Paulo Adolfo of the local Catina, and the lovely nightclub singer, Dana Williams. A lover of wine, women, and song,  Drake abhors violence, but  Mister No often has to resort to it to save himself and his companions on his many adventures around the world. Popular all across Europe, it was especially favored in Turkey and the countries of former Yugoslavia where it is still being published today.



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