Torpedo, or Torpedo 1936, is a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 comics

Comics

Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...

 series written by Enrique Sánchez Abulí

Enrique Sánchez Abulí

Enrique Sánchez Abulí is a Spanish comics author, well known for his participation in the Spanish comics industry. His most famous work is the darkly comical gangster comics saga Torpedo in collaboration with Jordi Bernet....

 and drawn by Jordi Bernet

Jordi Bernet

Jordi Bernet Cussó is a Spanish comics artist, best known for the gangster comics series Torpedo and Jonah Hex.-Career:He was born in Barcelona, the son of a Spanish comic book artist, Miguel Bernet....

, which depicts the adventures of the antagonist

Antagonist

An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...

ic character Luca Torelli, a heartless hitman

Hitman

A hitman is a person hired to kill another person.- Hitmen in organized crime :Hitmen are largely linked to the world of organized crime. Hitmen are hired people who kill people for money. Notable examples include Murder, Inc., Mafia hitmen and Richard Kuklinski.- Other cases involving hitmen...

, and his sidekick

Sidekick

A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...

 Rascal, in context of the violent organized crime

Organized crime

Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...

 culture of New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 era.

Publication history

The series was originally developed by Abulí and veteran artist Alex Toth

Alex Toth

Alexander Toth was an American professional cartoonist active from the 1940s through the 1980s. Toth's work began in the American comic book industry, but is known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His work included Super Friends, Space Ghost, The...

, who drew the first two stories in 1981. The collaboration ended when Toth decided he did not share Abulí's darkly humorous view of mankind, and withdrew from the project. He was then replaced by Jordi Bernet, whose gritty, if stylized

Aestheticization of violence

The aestheticization of violence in high culture art or mass media is the depiction of or references to violence in what Indiana University film studies professor Margaret Bruder calls a "stylistically excessive," "significant and sustained way." When violence is depicted in this fashion in films,...

, artistic style was well suited for the dark and violent subject matter.

Torpedo 1936 was first published in issue 32 of the Spanish horror comics magazine Creepy in February, 1982. The first two issues featured Toth's artwork, and starting issue 34, with the story De perro a perro, Bernet was responsible for the drawings. Torpedo went on to be featured in several Spanish comics magazines, such as Thriller, Comix International, Totem el comix, Co & Co and Viñetas, and albums were published, translated into several languages. The public response to the series became substantial, and it was awarded with the 1986 Angoulême

Angoulême International Comics Festival

The Angoulême International Comics Festival is the largest comics festival in Europe. It has occurred every year since 1974 in Angoulême, France, in the month of January.The four-day festival is notable for awarding several prestigious prizes in cartooning...

 Best Foreign Album Award. Eventually, a dedicated magazine named Luca Torelli es Torpedo started publication in May, 1991.

Character history

Luca Torelli is born in Sicily circa 1903, to a poor, broken home marked by spousal abuse. His parents are presumed to be Vittorio Torelli and Luciana Petrosino, although it appears that his older brother's real father was actually their grandfather (who raped his own daughter) and it is implied that Luca's own biological father was the local mafioso kingpin, who raped Luciana in exchange for mediating peacefully in the conflict between the Torellis and the Petrosinos. Luca loses his older brother due to a severe beating by their drunken father, orchestrates a vengeance against the latter by using a vindictive neighbour as an unwitting agent, and finally witnesses their mother dying of sorrow upon her son's and husband's consecutive deaths, thereupon being fostered by his uncle Vincenzo. Involved in a vendetta, he has to flee for America as a teenager where he works as a shoe shiner, thereby meeting an abusive senior police officer named MacDonald whom he finally shoots (this is implied to be his first direct murder), being involved in other law infringements, such as bank robberies, which also happen to end in murders, and soon becoming a hit man ("torpedo" is 1920s slang for a contract killer). Some time later, he gets a sidekick called Rascal.

From here onwards it is difficult to maintain a linear narrative since no dates are given (aside from incidental details such as the Volstead Act

Volstead Act

The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was the enabling legislation for the Eighteenth Amendment which established prohibition in the United States...

, the outburst of the Spanish civil war

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 and, later in the series, the Cuban revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

). Apart from Rascal and characters in flashback stories, there are few recurring characters and few dates are given for his present day stories. The only significant recurring character is a woman called Susan who consistently outwits Torelli. She appears in the first story by Bernet (De perro a perro), a second one still early on (La dama de los camelos), and one of the latest (El día de la mala baba). At least thirteen years are said to have passed between her second and third appearance; she is assumed to be a high-profile prostitute in the first two (whose services had been solicited by Torelli himself in the past), and a "reformed", recently widowed housewife and mother, who had presumably "fucked her [old and rich] husband to death", as Torelli puts it, in the third.

Sources

• Index of Torpedo publications in Creepy Tebeosfera
• Torpedo albums Ediciones Glénat
• Torpedo albums Bedetheque

Footnotes

External links

• Torpedo article on fandecomix
• Index in English of French series