Antonio Rubino: The Forgotten Italian Comic Pioneer

Antonio Rubino (1880-1964), a pioneer of Italian comics, began his career in 1907 drawing covers for the children's weekly Il giornalino della Domenica, after training in symbolism and art nouveau while earning a law degree. In 1908, Silvio Spaventa Filippi hired him at the new Corriere dei piccoli, the Sunday supplement of Corriere della Sera, where Rubino worked until 1940. He created characters like Quadratino, Nonna Geometria, Pino e Pina, Viperetta, Nicoletta, Italino, and Kartoffel Otto, and adapted American comic series such as Fortunello, La Checca, and Arcibaldo e Petronilla, replacing speech balloons with rhyming captions. During World War I, he contributed to La Tradotta, a trench newspaper. In the 1930s, he published science fiction stories Le cronache del futuro in Corriere dei Piccoli (1932-34) and directed Topolino for Mondadori. He also wrote the ambitious poem Il mistero del tempo (1943-45) in 24 cantos of 60 verses each. In 1941, he directed the short film Il paese dei ranocchi, winning a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1942. In 1955, he invented a "sinalloscopic" camera for animation and made the documentary I sette colori. He also designed toys and La cameretta del bambino (1924), a decò-style children's room now at the Wolfsoniana in Genoa. In 1962, he wrote Curriculum ridiculum, ending with "sequor naturam meam."