Roberto Lemmi

Roberto Lemmi
Biographical information
Born:	1901 in Firenze, Italy
Died:	1971
Nationality:	Italian
Occupation:	Cover artist and Artist,
Website:	N/A

Roberto Lemmi is an Italian comics artist.

Biography

In the twenties, Lemmi attends the L’Accademica d’Art in Florence and after graduation began to work with Florentine publishers. From 1936 (and up to 1971) he started to make covers for a hunting magazine, Diana.

Casa Editrice Nerbini printed a popular weekly magazine L'Avventuroso which in mid-1937 touched the 500,000 copies weekly. L’Avventuroso run several newspaper stips from US, among others also collecting 6 strips on a page every week of Mandrake and L'Uomo Mascherato and one sunday page of Flash Gordon. Nerbini collected the publicated strips from L’Avventuroso into albums and they were constantly exhaused, so Nerbini had to reprint the albums periodically.

One day in 1938 Nerbini received a circular from Ministero della Cultura Popolare; all publishers had to stop the import of US comics and publicationes. It was the years of the Italian facists. When the various stories run out of US strips and ended, the popular characters started to disapair from L’Avventuroso.

Nerbini was in lack of material to print and hired several Italian artists, among them Roberto Lemmi. He illustrated several titles for L’Avventuroso such as Il Segno di Roma, Nel Paese dei Pigmei and La Nave Corsara. In issue 249 of July 1939 one find a story by R Lemmi with a new character, Il Giustizier Mascherato dressed in green tights and a red mask. And yes, it was L'Uomo Mascherato (the Phantom), in desguise !

Next L’Avventuroso printed a US adventure and then 4 more stories of Il Giustizier Mascherato by Lemmi. During the last one Lemmi changed the color of the tights, altered the design, replaced the template, changed the name of the character ... After a few months, Phantom was almost back to sneak in Florence, but redesigned with the original. From issue 333 (23 February 1941) L’Avventuroso re-started the original US publication of the Phantom.

Mandrake work by Roberto Lemmi

Collana Albi Grandi Avventure (Serie 2) - Mandrake

#	Original title	Pages	Year
0	"Falco, cavallo da corsa"	several strips	1948

Note: This is the last part of the daily story Mandrake in America by Phil Davis. This story starting with the Davis strip from 26 Nov 1937 and end with the strip of 6 Jan 1938. Some panels are a bit edited to fit the pages of the comic book format. In between the Davis strips of the 17th and 18th of December one find seven new strips made by Lemmi. Two new strips by Lemmi ends the story.

Albi Grandi Avventure, serie Economicia

#	Original title	Pages	Year
1	"La tragedia del Gnat"	15	1949
2	"La banda del malese Hamat"	15	1949

Mistero, serie nouva

#	Original title	Pages	Year
3a	"Fra uomino monstri di un monde scomparso"	8	1949
3b	"Nel regno di Astera"	8	1949
3c	"La fin dell'Atlantide"	8	1949