Issue 1753 - Signature Series

Story :

This is a very special publication for us here at Frew.  I have been hoping that we might be able to get hold of a story as historic and unique as this for some time now. So courtesy of Romano Felmang we are proud to be publishing “I Ladri Della Tomba Del Gran Re,” or for the first time in English “Raiders of the Great King’s Tomb.”  Writers and Artists were not originally credited when stories were published in Italy but the writer was most probably Giovanni Fiorentini since he was the primary writer for Spada at the time. The story certainly has a confidence and strength about it that suggests an experienced hand on the pen. The stakes couldn’t be any higher than life and death! The Phantom and Diana work as a team to ensure that Diana’s friend Hamer Balton does not suffer an undeserved fate! Time, distance, climate and the greed of villainy works against them but this all serves to build the momentum and suspense.

Just feast your eyes on the gorgeous covers by not one but two Italian masters. The front cover was provided by Romano Felmang with the art for the story. This represents a world exclusive for Frew. I can’t resist saying a coup for the Frew Crew! Now there’s a tongue twister! Those of you who may be vacillating over the subscription to our Signature Series there will never be a better opportunity to have an original comic signed by Romano Felmang. The back cover on this was formerly adorning the front of the Spada publication which was by Mario Caria whose career produced hundreds of covers not just in Italy but in many other countries.

This was not Romano’s first story that was Kaniska which was never published in its original form. This art is the first he had published in Italy by Spada. He went on to have an international career published in Italy, France, Scandinavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Australia and the United States. You can see in this art the very germination of that gift, still not in the full flower of his artistic maturity. It is simple and slightly naive in appearance. Clean and youthful but without the flourish of expansive and luscious detail that we see in his later work. At this stage in his art we can witness an uncluttered, sparse and raw talent. What a pleasure and a privilege it is for us to be able to publish this in Australia!