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Dylan Dog

Dylan Dog is an Italian comics series featuring an eponymous character, created by Tiziano Sclavi for the publishing house Sergio Bonelli Editore.

Dark Horse Comics has published the English version of Dylan Dog. It is also published in Croatia and Serbia under Ludens, and in Denmark under Shadow Zone Media.

Dylan Dog's graphic representation was inspired by English actor Rupert Everett.

Dylan Dog is a penniless nightmare investigator who defies the whole preceding horror tradition with a vein of surrealism and an anti-bourgeois rhetoric. The true monsters in many of these stories are human beings.

The series is mainly set in London, where the protagonist lives, though he occasionally travels elsewhere. His clothes are one of his defining characteristics: he always dresses the same way, in a red shirt, black jacket, and blue jeans. He bought twelve identical outfits after the death of his wife Lillie Connolly on the advice of Inspector Bloch, who was his superior when he worked at Scotland Yard and remains his father figure (in fact he calls Dylan "Old boy") even after Dylan struck out on his own to become a private investigator specializing in the supernatural. Inspector Bloch is one of the principal supporting characters in the series, together with his assistant (or rather, comic relief), Groucho, a punning double of Groucho Marx.

Dylan lives with Groucho at 7 Craven Road in a cluttered apartment with a doorbell that screams. His hobbies include playing the clarinet and constructing model ship; he has many phobias, including claustrophobia, bats and heights. Dylan is also particularly susceptible to motion sickness, which is one of the reasons why he rarely travels. Once an alcoholic, he now almost never drinks, though many of the most entertaining moments in the comic occur when Groucho forces him to take shots. He is a vegetarian. He's also a hopeless romantic who loves and loses a new woman in nearly every issue.

Dylan Dog seems to have an Oedipus complex: many of the numerous women he pursues resemble his mother Morgana, and he dramatically collides with the shadow of his father — Xabaras — (Slight transformation of Abraxas) cut into two halves, which seems to allude to the ambivalence of this father figure and of Dylan's feelings for him.

Sclavi's progressive disinvolvement has left other authors the task of carrying forward character continuity. After being absent for several years, Xabaras returned in 2004.

San-Marino, 1997, Dylan Dog