February 20, 2006
Giovanni Gandini, 1929-2006

Giovanni Gandini, founder of the seminal comics magazine
Linus, died on the 17th and was buried in his hometown of Milan yesterday,
according to afNews.info. He was 77 years old.
Linus debuted in 1965 and according to
this remembrance by Ferruccio Alessandri, the enterprise took up various rooms of Gandini's apartment and no one thought it would last.
Linus may have been the first comics anthology for discriminating, medium-of-comics-fan grown-ups, the first assembled from various sources that showed a guiding hand dedicated to comics as an art form. The early issues featured a mix of then-modern strips like
Peanuts and
Wizard of Id, but also older strips like
Barnaby and
Krazy Kat, and offbeat but decidedly sophisticated work like
Feiffer. Among its wide-ranging offerings,
Linus would embrace the work of Ralph Steadman, Robert Crumb's
Fritz the Cat and
Mr. Natural, Jean-Claude Forest's
Barbarella, Hugo Pratt's major series, Claire Bretecher's vital satires, on down through the years to
Doonesbury,
Calvin and Hobbes and
Mutts.
posted 10:50 pm PST |
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