EXTRACTS: AIR WAR STORIES Fleetway Picture Library Classics © 2019 Book Palace Books (272 PAGES in Full edition)

FLEETWAY PICTURE LIBRARY ™ CLA SS IC S 4 Tacconi was also one of the Italian artists asked to work on two stories for the Cepim series ‘Un uomo un’avventura’ with scripts by his friend Gino D’Antonio. The first, ‘The Man of the Desert’, appeared in 1977, and the second, ‘The Man of Rangoon’, in 1980. The publication on this prestigious series had Tacconi become known to the general public and opened up new job opportunities. For the Giornalino (often in collaboration with Gino D’Antonio) he worked on series such ‘Susanna’, and stories for educational purposes such as ‘Men Without Glory’ and ‘Il Sogno di Icaro’ (‘The Dream of Icarus’); the first focusing on the events of the Second World War, and the second focusing on the history of aviation and flight (a theme that greatly fascinated the artist). For the comics magazine Orient Express he co-created the early 1900s adventure series ‘Mac lo Straniero’ (‘Mac the Stranger’) along with Gino D’Antonio. He would also draw some episodes of some of the most popular recent series in Italy such as Mister No , Nick Raider and Dylan Dog , all published by Sergio Bonelli. Tacconi’s style is immediately recognisable, with a very clear linework and some interesting curly cues done in pen and ink. He wisely used an uncluttered linework that, with the passage of time, became more and more limited to the essential. The care he applied to the environment and details of each panel he drew, especially in his way of presenting vehicles or his beloved aircrafts, made him one of the top artists around the world. In fact, Tacconi would never hide his deep love for flying machines, which accompanied him throughout his career, both inside and outside the comic pages he drew. His active life was spent drawing (“since I began drawing I never had an hour left, or a gap in my work, that permitted me to devote myself to any subject, or even able to think of making up one”) and only with advancing age, and due to health problems, did he begin to draw less and devote his time to only writing scripts for other artists. In 2001 he was given the Yellow Kid award for ‘A Lifetime in Comics’. He died at the age of 84 on May 11th, 2006. Diego Cordoba July 2019