Ironheart 90's

In 1985 Casablanca, an amateur magazine created by a group of friends born (as Graziano Giovenzana wrote) timidly appeared on newsstands in the city of Modena
in the introduction to number 1) “with comics in his blood”.

Its aim was to publish works by debut authors, kids, enthusiasts, or people who, Giovenzana continued, “for reasons of life have not been able to make a profession out of comics”.

Ten years later, during which the magazine hosted the efforts of eager amateurs, semi-professionals, but also established professionals or those who had become such, in comics or in related contexts (such as Clod, Andrea Chiesi, Roberto Ghiddi, Massimo Bonfatti), a project was born by the will of its "founding father" (aka Franco Tralli) that channeled the same enthusiasm in a professional way.

Taking up the legacy of Casablanca, a new comic series was born, IRONHEART, a monthly magazine that also had a zero issue that came out as a supplement to the magazines KAOS and FUMO DI CHINA and debuted on newsstands throughout Italy in November 1995.

The stories were written and scripted by Stefano Lusardi and many were the illustrators, not only from Casablanca, who participated in the creation of the albums: Marco Bertulu, Andrea Bulgarelli, Giuliano Bulgarelli, Fabio Govoni, Andrea Materia, Mauro Padovani, Davide Romanini, Luca Rossi, Matteo Stanzani.

We also mention Lucio Aloisi for the colors of the covers and Claudio Piccinini who created the original logo and the graphic design.

Unfortunately, even though many stories were already ready, only 5 issues were released on newsstands. The crisis in the comics industry at that time made life difficult for large publishers and forced smaller ones to count every single copy sold to try to make ends meet.

The very high costs of printing and the undeniable and enormous difficulties of distribution forced us reluctantly to close the series before having printed all the albums produced.

The copies sold in the specialized bookstore circuit alone, which continues to grow every month, would have allowed us to continue peacefully today, but unfortunately, at the time they were not sufficient.

Download Ironheart 1995 Issue Zero