Origins European beginnings, 1837–1959
Saturno contro la Terra
Cesare Zavattini, Federico Pedrocchi, Giovanni Scolari · I Tre Porcellini, then Topolino and Paperino, Italy, 1936–1946
The people of Saturn invade the Earth, and a band of human heroes fights back. It's Italy's answer to Flash Gordon, and it ran through the years when fascist Italy was squeezing imported American strips off its newsstands, which gave home-grown space opera a sudden gap in the market.
The story idea came from Cesare Zavattini, who went on to write Bicycle Thieves and become one of the great screenwriters of Italian cinema. Somewhere between the ray guns and neorealism there's a PhD waiting to be written.
