Speciale Dylan Dog #3
Speciale Dylan Dog #3 — titled 'Orrore Nero' (Black Horror) and published in July 1989 — marks the comic-book debut of Francesco Dellamorte, cemetery guardian of Buffalora and Tiziano Sclavi's most celebrated literary alter-ego, who here meets Dylan Dog for the first and only time in a single extended story. The encounter between these two surrealist horror protagonists is unique in Italian sequential art: it brings together a character born in prose fiction — Sclavi had written the novel 'Dellamorte Dellamore' before the series launched — and the nightmare detective who shares his creator's existential melancholy, staging their meeting as a meditation on love, death, and the thin boundary between the two. That meeting would ripple outward: Sclavi's novel directly inspired director Michele Soavi's 1994 film 'Dellamorte Dellamore' (released internationally as 'Cemetery Man'), cementing this issue's place at the creative origin of one of Italian horror cinema's most discussed works. For the Dylan Dog franchise specifically, 'Orrore Nero' established the full-length Speciale format — longer than the monthly album, darker in register — as a space for Sclavi's most ambitious thematic experiments.
In "Orrore nero," Dylan Dog plunges into the shadows of 1989 London, hunting the remnants of "Cosa Nostra" to avenge his fallen friend, Joey. Meanwhile, in the quiet town of Buffalora, Francesco Dellamorte faces the terrifying return of the dead. Written by Tiziano Sclavi and Luigi Mignacco, with art by Giovanni Freghieri and lettering by Carmen Bioletto, this chilling tale unites the detective and the becchino in a battle against a spreading evil. The cover, by Claudio Villa, captures the dread of the unseen.
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The story was plotted by Tiziano Sclavi and scripted in collaboration with Luigi Mignacco, with interior art by Giovanni Freghieri and a cover painted by Claudio Villa — the same Claudio Villa who had earlier attempted an aborted comics adaptation of Sclavi's 'Dellamorte Dellamore' novel for the now-defunct Orient Express magazine published by Bonelli's L'Isola Trovata imprint. That unfinished graphic adaptation, and the novel itself written in the early 1980s before Dylan Dog was conceived, gave Sclavi and Mignacco a fully developed character to import directly into the Dylan Dog universe for this special. The issue also shipped with a supplementary booklet titled 'Il cinema horror dalla A alla Z' (Horror Cinema from A to Z), curated by Michele Medda, Antonio Serra, and Bepi Vigna — three writers who would soon become central architects of the Bonelli universe.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published July 1989 by Sergio Bonelli Editore as the third entry in the annual Speciale Dylan Dog series; the title is 'Orrore Nero' (Black Horror), running 130 story pages within a 132-page album.
- First comic-book appearance of Francesco Dellamorte, cemetery guardian of the fictional Italian village of Buffalora, and his near-mute assistant Gnaghi — both characters originated in Sclavi's earlier prose novel 'Dellamorte Dellamore', which predates the Dylan Dog comic series.
- Script by Tiziano Sclavi and Luigi Mignacco; interior art by Giovanni Freghieri; cover art by Claudio Villa.
- The issue shipped with a bound supplementary booklet, 'Il cinema horror dalla A alla Z', edited by Michele Medda, Antonio Serra, and Bepi Vigna.
- Francesco Dellamorte is described across multiple sources as a spiritual alter ego of Dylan Dog — same creator, same visual model (actor Rupert Everett), parallel assistant dynamic — making this issue a rare within-universe mirror of the series' own origins.
- The 1994 Italian horror film 'Dellamorte Dellamore' (internationally: 'Cemetery Man'), directed by Michele Soavi and starring Rupert Everett as Dellamorte, draws on the same Sclavi source novel that underlies this special issue; Everett notably played Dellamorte while also being the real-world visual inspiration for Dylan Dog himself.
- A short comic sequel to this issue, 'Stelle Cadenti' (Falling Stars), later reunited Dylan, Groucho, Dellamorte, and Gnaghi in a quieter, reflective story about life and death.
- The story has been reprinted multiple times: in the Mondadori 'Dylan Dog Libri' collection (#5, September 1993), in the Sergio Bonelli 'Dylan Dog Super Book' (#5, February 1998), and in the 'Libri Dylan Dog' brossurati format (issues #8 and #15, 2023 and 2026).
Cast · 12 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Dylan Dog Super Book #5 (1998), Dylan Dog #[29] (2019)
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