The fast, exuberant rise of comics in Italy

Rome: Ivano Bariani sees the pandemic experience as having provided a serious inflection point in the progress of comics in Italy’s market. And while there has been much talk about brisk sales in recent years on the Italian market in comics, Bariani maintains that illustrated literature “has always struggled to gain the industrial and literary recognition it deserves, something familiar from other parts of the world, too.”

Bariani’s PromoComix is an agenzia di promozione, a marketing agency for publishers, and his company is specialized in comics, manga, and other graphic narratives. Formerly a bookseller, and one who had a small chain of stores at one point, he likes his role today in which, “We promote upcoming books, collect orders, work with buyers in every retail chain or independent bookstore. We also help publishers build a calendar and a strategy for their new releases.”

This also means that Bariani has a strong sense for the shape of the comics sector, using data, he says, from GfK, NielsenIQ, and from his clients to build his own picture of the very quick rise of comics and a sometimes confused view of where they are now.

“Until 2019,” he says, “the Italian comic book market was really behind its potential. In 2020-2021, with the pandemic, we saw an unnatural level of growth. Now, we’re on a plateau: huge numbers compared to just five years ago, and the quickness of high-intensity media phenomena, which can spike those numbers. I think the real challenge for retailers and publishers in this scenario, is not the dimension or growth of the market, but the speed of those phenomena.”

The kind of phenomena that Bariani is pointing to includes the prominance of the Tuscan-born artist Michele Rech, who works under the name Zerocalcare. His work in comics and graphic novels has led to a number of film successes, establishing a presence on Netflix. Bariani also points to the success of Pera Toons for children and of Lyon Gamer’s work, an outgrowth of social gaming.

Graphic novels, Bariani says, in the Italian market are “an underworld of undervalued authors” dominated by Zerocalcare. “But other sub-catetories of the comics market,” prior to the pandemic, “weren’t doing much better. In 2018, manga represented just over 1 percent of the market,” he says, “and that was only in terms of copies. In euros, it was around 0.5 percent. The leadership of a few popular artists and publishers seems central to the quickening movements of the sector in this decade.

“The Italian book market was really behind its potential. Now, huge numbers compared to just five years ago.”

Jump to 2022, and comic book titles in Italy’s Top 100 included a Zerocalcare release ranked at No. 33, four Pera Toons works for kids, and two manga titles. And by 2024, Bariani says, he has seen a Zerocalcare release go to No. 8 and seven Pera Toons titles in the first eight months of this year.

Bariani dates the frequently mentioned “explosion” of comics in Italy at 2021: “Comic book sales nearly reached 100 million,” he says, “with manga doubling the sales of graphic fiction, reaching almost 57 million. Eighty percent of the comics sold that year were manga. Considering sales of all books, one in every 11 books sold in Italy that year was manga.

“And in 2022, the perfect storm occurred,” he says. “Manga entered bookstores at full throttle, a new Zerocalcare was released, and four titles from Pera Toons hit the shelves. Comic book sales shattered the 100-million ceiling, and manga unit sales surpassed 60 million.

“A segment that just a few years earlier had been worth 3 million,” he says, “namely fumetti primaria—comic books for primary school readers—thanks to Pera Toons nearly reached 10 million.”

Commentary suggesting that the market had softened in 2023, he says, overlooked the fact that the general comics market “still remained three times larger than it was in 2018 and 2019.”

And today, Bariani says, manga alone accounts for some 7 to 8 percent of books sold in Italy per year, “closely followed by the mystery/thriller segment. Despite the absence of a new Zerocalcare title in 2023,” he says, “the graphic fiction segment maintained a position worth €22 million, while the boom in the ‘primary comics’ segment for children exceeded €15 million for the first time, and still seems driven by Pera Toons.”

Retailers Pablo Marchitto and Ambra Pallanca are in Bologna, and their Libreria Sette Volpi (Seven Foxes Bookstore) parallels Bariani’s outline of the fast rise and fluctuations of comics in Italy.

Their store was opened two years ago during that “explosion” of interest, and they agree with Boriani’s opinion: “We have come through a few flourishing years because the pandemic brought lots of new readers, as Marchitto puts it.

He and Pallanca report, “We are noticing that comics/manga readers are getting younger and younger.” They also say that boys are not the only fans of comics, as is sometimes assumed. Their consumers are “males and females equally.”

As Marchitto puts it, “I often find myself talking to primary-school and middle-school kids about comics I read when I was in high school.”

They agree that Zerocalcare’s popularity has been a helpful part of comics’ and graphic narratives’ gains. “He sells a lot and is always a guarantee if we’re talking about mainstream titles,” Marchitto says.

He also points out, however, that “Little bookshops like Sette Volpi exist to promote little or tiny publishing houses such as Canicola and Renape.”

As is the formula for so many physical-bookstore successes, Libreria Sette Volpi is “the only independent bookshop in our neighborhood. People know us very well, families love us, the schools in the area want to work with us. The shop is quite small but we try to offer as much of a variety of books as we can: fiction and nonfiction for adults, picture books for children, and of course lots of comics.”

In the first eight months of this year, Bariani says, he sees few signals of changes in the comics market in Italy.

Manga, he says, “continues to account for almost 54 percent of total comic book sales. Their average price has risen to €7.2, which has allayed some concerns of booksellers about a potential softness in revenue. This, he says, is “a price increase driven not so much by publishers’ interests as by the fact that hardcover, deluxe, and collectors’ editions are increasingly climbing in the sales rankings.”

It’s also worth noting, he adds, that this is a market dominated primarily by three publishers, a condition partly created by consolidation in Italy. Those companies are Edizione BD in which Messaggerie Italiane SpA has a major stake; Panini Comics, a multinational company heavily engaged in stickers; and Star Comics, recently acquired by the Mondadori Group.

Representatives from 10 countries will exchange ideas about the international comics market in the center.

Other important players are in the immediate vicinity, including KOCCA (Korea Creative Content Agency) and the Philippines, the guest country of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025. The center is expected to offer a wide range of genres, from manga to classic comics, with a focus on B2B business and licensing rights.