There have been a number of videos on Yabla that refer to fumetti, but what are they? Fumetti are comic books and comic strips. A graphic novel is called un romanzo a fumetti or un romanzo grafico and sometimes the English term "graphic novel" is used for these. They consist of a complete story, not a continuing story as we often have in comic books. 

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Why do we call comics fumetti? Fumo is smoke, and the speech bubbles or word balloons you find in comics are kind of like puffs of smoke. The suffix -etto means "small" and the puffs of smoke, or speech bubbles, are relatively small. These speech bubbles are sometimes called nuvolette (little clouds).

Senti, tu vedi di fargli leggere almeno un fumetto quest'estate eh.

Listen, you see to it that he at least reads a comic book this summer, huh.

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Comic books are very popular in Italy. There is an entire convention dedicated to comics, Lucca Comics, the largest in Europe.

Che stai facendo? -Sto leggendo un fumetto. -Com'è? -Fichissimo.

What are you doing? -I am reading a comic book. -How is it? -Super cool.

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On an Italian quiz show this question was asked about the fumetto Diabolik:

In quale luogo Angela Giussani trovò l'ispirazione per creare il fumetto "Diabolik"?

In which place did Angela Giussani find inspiration for creating the cartoon, “Diabolik”?

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Subscribers can find the true answers to this question in this video!

There are two different documentaries on Yabla about fumetti:

Guido Crepax, Cercando Valentina and Fumettology.

Guido Crepax is the pen name of Guido Crepas, whose best-known character was Valentina. She was created in 1965 and her last appearance was in 1996. In the documentary, we discover where the author's ideas came from and what his techniques were in designing the panels and thinking up the stories. 

Nel Sessantadue, mettono in piedi una casa editrice che, che si mette a pubblicare Diabolik, il fumetto più scandaloso di quegli anni.

In nineteen sixty-two, they set up a publishing house that, that set to publishing Diabolik, the most scandalous comic book of those years.

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"Fumettology" is a documentary about various popular Italian fumetti.

The first episode is about Diabolik. Read about this fumetto here on Wikipedia. You'll also find the answer to the quiz show question above. 

All'inizio, quando loro partirono, non ci fu un distributore che volle distribuire il fumetto.

In the beginning, when they started out, there was no distributor who wanted to distribute the comic book.

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Both Valentina and Diabolik were created for adults, but the second fumetto featured in "Fumettology" is aimed at a general audience, and is an Italian take on the American Wild West. Read about Tex Willer here. 

Tex è un eroe capace di modificare il mondo attorno a sé con la sola sua presenza.

Tex is a hero capable of changing the world around him solely by means of his presence.

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In an episode of Imma Tataranni, we even see her husband, Pietro, on the couch, reading Tex. Whoever watched the episode knowing about Tex probably let out a chuckle. Pietro might have been in "don't bother me" mode. 

Italians got some of their ideas from American comics, and had them translated, but during the Fascist period, there were bans, except for Topolino (the Italian version of Mickey Mouse). Italian comics were allowed, but there were restrictions as to content. Once World War II was over, fumetti became very popular once again and that is when Tex was created. 

Reading fumetti can be an enjoyable way to learn some Italian! Take it from someone who did that and whose daughter did, too!

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