"Il Vittorioso": a magazine for youth education beyond italian fascist propaganda

At the beginning of 1937 the Italian Youth of Catholic Action created a new\r\nweekly magazine for boys called «Il Vittorioso», intended mainly for those Italian adolescents\r\nwho didn’t read other magazines which were openly in favour of fascism such as «Il Balilla»\r\nnor the debatable comics of American origin such as «L’Avventuroso», «L’Audace» or\r\n«Topolino» («Mickey Mouse») accused of inciting violence. «Il Vittorioso» found a place in\r\nthe press of the fascist period with a certain continuity comparable with the best tradition of\r\nItalian children’s magazines such as «Corriere dei Piccoli», but also contained aspects which\r\nbroke with tradition. The choice to publish many comics by exclusively Italian authors was\r\nfarsighted because «Il Vittorioso» gave birth to an experimental laboratory for comics with\r\nyoung writers such as Gian Luigi Bonelli, Benito Jacovitti and Lino Landolfi who could\r\nwrite and draw in an original way for young people and were able to interpret their basic\r\ncultural needs. The language used could appeal to a fascist mentality by playing on the\r\ndifferent meanings of certain terms. «Il Vittorioso» was well able to interpret the changes\r\ntaking place in communication and these were more and more influenced by and modeled\r\non the widespread popularity of the cinema, but they were also affected by the brief and\r\ndirect structures of speech of the futurist movement. While these changes in communication\r\nwere accepted as being useful for propaganda by fascism, they also found a place in an\r\neducational project grounded in the Catholic tradition of good press as an aspect of the\r\nsocial teaching of the Church.