"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 weekly magazine for boys called «Il Vittorioso», intended mainly for those Italian adolescents who didn’t read other magazines which were openly in favour of fascism such as «Il Balilla» nor the debatable comics of American origin such as «L’Avventuroso», «L’Audace» or «Topolino» («Mickey Mouse») accused of inciting violence. «Il Vittorioso» found a place in the press of the fascist period with a certain continuity comparable with the best tradition of Italian children’s magazines such as «Corriere dei Piccoli», but also contained aspects which broke with tradition. The choice to publish many comics by exclusively Italian authors was farsighted because «Il Vittorioso» gave birth to an experimental laboratory for comics with young writers such as Gian Luigi Bonelli, Benito Jacovitti and Lino Landolfi who could write and draw in an original way for young people and were able to interpret their basic cultural needs. The language used could appeal to a fascist mentality by playing on the different meanings of certain terms. «Il Vittorioso» was well able to interpret the changes taking place in communication and these were more and more influenced by and modeled on the widespread popularity of the cinema, but they were also affected by the brief and direct structures of speech of the futurist movement. While these changes in communication were accepted as being useful for propaganda by fascism, they also found a place in an educational project grounded in the Catholic tradition of good press as an aspect of the social teaching of the Church.