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| Giacomo Gianniotti as Diabolik in Ginko all'attacco (2022) |
How Diabolik anticipates both 007 and Mission: Impossible
In his very first comics issue, november 1962, Diabolik is a merciless, cold-blooded criminal who wouldn’t stop at anything to get what he wants. Unlike Maurice Leblanc's Arséne Lupin, he’s not a ‘gentleman thief’. His weapon of choice is a knife, more silent and effective than any gun: he never carries nor uses firearms. Nobody knows his real identity, so he might be anyone, anywhere, anytime. In fear, people whisper his nickname: the King of Terror. When he’s in action, he wears a black superhero-style bodysuit with a ninja-like mask which only leaves his steel-colored eyes visible. But in fact he’s a master of disguise: he employs masks of his own creation to assume different identities or replace other persons: this allows him to collect informations or create disinformation, in order to get close to the loot and grab it.
Diabolik’s masks predate the ones used by the actors in John Huston’s film The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), the mask left by the Terrible Tinkerer at the end of The Amazing Spiderman #2 (1963), the ones worn by Fantômas in the film versions by André Hunebelle (1964-1967) and the ones used in the series Mission: Impossible (since 1966 till now). As far as I know, Diabolik #1 marks the first appearance in fiction of this kind of flesh-like masks looking like real faces, replacing theatrical make-up for disguises.
Diabolik doesn’t wear masks all the time. His real face in issue #1 might have been somehow a self-portrait of Angelo Zarcone, the missing artist, but soon the character will grow a strong resemblance to actor Robert Taylor. In the first three issues he uses the (stolen, we'll learn years later) identity of a man called Walter Dorian, in order to lead an apparent normal life in Clerville; he has a relationship with an innocent girl he met in #1, nurse Elisabeth Gay; but in #3, when she discovers his secret lair and calls the police, Diabolik is arrested and his real face appears on every newspaper. As you can also see in the first Diabolik movie by Manetti bros., based on the story of issue #3, he escapes thanks to the woman he had just met while trying to rob her, Eva Kant. She saves his life, but it will take awhile for him to trust her completely. In time – since Eva keeps suggesting not to kill innocent people, at least when it’s not strictly necessary – he becomes a little more ‘human’, but remains extremely pragmatic: any obstacle to his plans must be removed, even if it requires killing.
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| Diabolik's Jaguar used in the films (Photo: A. C. Cappi) |
You might notice, masks apart, some similarities with James Bond in the movies. Ian Fleming’s original 007 has a ‘licence to kill’ issued by his government, but never takes advantage of it, while in the film Doctor No (1962) Sean Connery’s 007 does not hesitate to kill the unarmed professor Dent, a character who does not even appear in the original book (1958). Another example: at the beginning of the novel Goldfinger (1959) Bond is haunted by the recent killing of a Mexican drug smuggler, while in the film version (1964) we actually see him doing it: after electrocuting the man in a bathtub, he justs mutters sarcastically «Shocking. Positively shocking.»
It feels like in 1962 audiences world-wide start expecting the hero to kill people just for the sake of it. In Italy more than everywhere else, since the concept is stressed in the Italian title of Doctor No: Licenza di uccidere (‘Licence to Kill’, hence the need twenty-five years later to release in Italy the Bond movie actually called Licence to Kill under the title Vendetta privata).
What’s happening? Perhaps in the early Sixties people is getting tired of following rules. In real life we’re supposed to let someone else decide what we have to do, but in fiction we love to see characters removing every living obstacle.
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| Inside Diabolik's Jaguar (photo: A. C. Cappi) |
The big difference is that James Bond has a licence to kill granted by a higher authority – Her Majesty’s Secret Service – and only eliminates bad guys, while Diabolik has just a self-appointed licence to kill and he is the bad guy. But most of his victims are usually rich and selfish people, which gives him some pre-1968 revolutionary aura (of course, all Clerville policemen who die trying to catch him are just... collateral damage). We’ll have to wait for the Eighties to reach the next level, when we start sympahizing with guys like Hannibal Lecter or Freddy Krueger.
There’s one more connection between Diabolik and the film version of James Bond: they both use technological gadgets and drive top British sports car, which become their equivalent of Batman’s Batmobile. Like Batman, Diabolik makes his gadget all by himself and, long before cell phones, he and Eva can communicate through radio-watches, which might have been inspired by the wrist-radio used by Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy since 1946.
In 1963 Diabolik is at the wheel of a 1961 Jaguar E-Type which soon turns out to be full of tricks, even before the first appearance of Bond’s 1964 ultra-accessorized Aston Martin DB5 provided by the Q Section in the movie adaptation of Goldfinger. But, while James Bond has at least two or three different lovers in each movie, since march 1963 there’s only one woman in Diabolik’s life...
To be continued...
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Andrea Carlo Cappi, born in Milan in 1964 and living between Italy and Spain since 1973, is an Italian writer, translator and editor. Author of over seventy titles - most of which set in his noir/spy story universe "Kverse" - and member of IAMTW, he also writes tie-in novels for "Diabolik" and "Martin Mystère". Also a member of World SF Italia for his work in speculative fiction, in 2018 he won Italcon's Premio Italia for best Italian fantasy novel. He also works for the Torre Crawford festival and literary award, in memory of F. M. Crawford.
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