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

116 this imaginative use of the centre spread would be abandoned in less than a year, the back cover retained this inspirational approach, and it was there that, within a few months, a third artist/ historian of equal calibre was introduced: the Italian, Ferdinando Tacconi. Tacconi’s unique skill was in depicting great events in world history in the form of gloriously epic pictures teeming with life. Despite their necessarily diminutive size, they manage convincingly to portray locations and events of gigantic proportions. Ferdinando Tacconi was born December 27, 1922 in Milan, where he continued to live throughout his life. Drawing was always for him a spontaneous thing, and so, after finishing school he enrolled in the School of Applied Arts at Castello di Milano, before being drafted into the Italian Air Force as a radio operator. With the allied invasion of Italy, when he was stationed in Corsica, he continued as a radio operator with the British FSS Special Force, volunteering for dangerous missions into the area of the Italian mainland south of the River Po, that was still occupied by the Germans. At the end of hostilities in 1945, he was awarded a decoration for valour. Discharged in 1946, he returned to Milan, where he attended evening classes in drawing from the nude. When he took a folder of work to show to the publisher Mondadori he was immediately commissioned to produce illustrations for the women’s romantic fiction magazines Confidenze di Liala , and Grazia . He also sought work with the publisher Pasquale Giurleo, for whom he drew his first comic strip,‘Morgan il Corsaro’, a story about ABOVE: A panel from 'Broken Wings', WPL No. 49, showing Tacconi's confident and energetic approach to figure drawing. FACING PAGE TOP LEFT: A page from 'Scramble' Air Ace No. 11. FACING PAGE TOP RIGHT: An action- packed page from 'Scramble'. FACING PAGE: BOTTOM: A scene from 'Bomber's Moon', WPL No. 72. Tacconi was an editorial favourite when it came to commissioning art with an aeronautical theme.