EXTRACTS: British War Comics Illustrators Special © 2018 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

93 All Images © IPC Media In 1967 he began working again for the Italian market, first with a series he wrote and illustrated called 'I Cavalieri dell’Aria' (The Air Knights), an adventure series appearing in the magazine Sgt. Kirk (itself based on a Hugo Pratt western character). Afterwards he collaborated with artist/writer Gino D’Antonio on the epic Storia del West. This was a western saga (created by D’Antonio, who wrote all the stories), which had many different artists illustrating the various episodes concerning the fictitious MacDonald/ Adams family, who arrived in America in 1804. The series followed the family’s many descendants who meet some of the actual living characters that made western history). However, in 1969, after drawing the episode ‘L’ultimo duello’ for Storia del West , Calegari abandoned his illustrative career, and joined the political movement Sessantotto (a communist group formed after the civil unrest of May 1968 in France). Fortunately, by the late 1970s, he returned to comic books with the series 'Welcome to Springville', created by Giancarlo Berardi. Berardi, who had begun working on some stories for the popular Diabolik comics, had since been creating his own work, and had this idea for a series taking place in a western town and centred around its many inhabitants. Having been a fan of western comics and the work of Renzo Calegari (whose artwork he had also seen in the western-saga Storia del West ), Berardi got in contact with Calegari and offered him a script for a story called ‘Brian Walker’, about ABOVE: A panel from WPL No. 4 'The Gallant Few'. On this occasion Calegari's rendition of a British 'Bobby' failed to convince his editor and Reg Bunn was tasked with the job of providing a paste-over. FACING PAGE: Some six years later and Calegari was well and truly on top of his game, in terms of accuracy and characterisation as this page from WPL 251, 'Red Devils Don't Die', July 1964, amply demonstrates.