Dylan Dog #10

History

The script is by series creator Tiziano Sclavi, writing all the early issues himself in what collaborators and critics have described as his most inspired period. Giampiero Casertano, a Milanese artist new to the series, made his Dylan Dog debut here; he had already demonstrated a distinctive visual language in his first pages, deploying wide-angle distortions to suggest reality tearing at its seams and visually quoting René Magritte paintings ('La riproduzione vietata' and 'Il tempo trafitto') in a key mirror-shop sequence. A noted Easter egg: Casertano drew the anonymous man who dances with Death in the opening pages with the physical likeness of Sclavi himself—a wry authorial self-insertion that fans and scholars have cited repeatedly. The design of Death's face and bearing was, by Casertano's own admission, inspired by actor Bengt Ekerot's portrayal in Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal.'

Trivia · 9 facts

• Title: 'Attraverso lo specchio' (Through the Looking Glass). Published July 1987 by Sergio Bonelli Editore as issue #10 of the main Dylan Dog series. Script: Tiziano Sclavi. Art: Giampiero Casertano. Cover: Claudio Villa. 96 pages, black and white.
• FIRST APPEARANCE — La Morte: This is the debut of Death as a named, personified, recurring character in the Dylan Dog universe, depicted as a cloaked skeleton wielding a scythe in the tradition of medieval 'danse macabre' iconography. She goes on to appear in pivotal issues including #66 ('Partita con la Morte') and #88, and becomes one of Dylan's most unusual recurring contacts.
• FIRST APPEARANCE (artist) — Giampiero Casertano: Issue #10 is Casertano's debut on the series. He later drew celebrated issues such as 'Memorie dall'Invisibile' and 'Dopo Mezzanotte,' and his visual style—emotionally expressive faces, theatrical body language—became one of the defining aesthetics of Sclavi-era Dylan Dog.
• Story premise: Dylan is hired by his ex-girlfriend Rowena to investigate a cursed antique mirror purchased from the shop 'Bentler & Son.' One by one, guests who attended her masquerade ball begin dying; the common thread is a mirror present at each scene. Death herself, revealed to be living behind mirrors, is responsible.
• Literary and cultural references densely woven into the script: the title directly invokes Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking-Glass' (1871); the opening masquerade is modeled on Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death'; Rowena's name comes from Poe's 'Ligeia'; two Magritte paintings are recreated in the mirror-shop scene; and the issue references the medieval 'danse macabre' tradition and a Cesare Pavese poem.
• The character who dances with Death in the opening sequence—described in the text as 'un uomo da niente' (a man who is nothing)—was drawn by Casertano with the physical features of writer Tiziano Sclavi, a self-portrait camouflage confirmed by multiple sources.
• Death's visual design in this issue—face, posture, demeanor—was acknowledged by Casertano to be inspired by actor Bengt Ekerot's portrayal in Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' (1957).
• Reprint history: The story has been reprinted at least nine times in Italian across multiple formats: Prima ristampa (Nov 1990), Seconda ristampa (Mar 1992), Mondadori book collection (Jun 1994), Collezione Book (Mar 1997), I Classici del Fumetto di Repubblica #5 via Panini (Mar 2003), Grande Ristampa #4 (Apr 2007), Collezione storica a colori #4 (Mar 2013), Il Dylan Dog di Tiziano Sclavi #1 (May 2017), and Viaggio nell'incubo #21 (Dec 2019).
• Video game adaptation: Simulmondo released 'Dylan Dog: Attraverso lo Specchio' in 1992 for PC MS-DOS and Commodore Amiga as a point-and-click graphic adventure. The game borrowed the issue's title and cover imagery but featured an almost entirely original plot—centering on the death of anthropologist Geoffrey Foulkes—rather than adapting the comic's storyline. It was distributed in specialized game shops and exported internationally with multilingual text.

Cast · 4 characters

Full credits

Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers