Isabella (Italian: Isabella Duchessa dei Diavoli—“Isabella, Duchess of the Devils”) is an Italian comic series created by writer Giorgio Cavedon and artist Sandro Angiolini. It began in 1966 and is widely treated as a progenitor of Italian adult fumetti, especially for its then-shocking sado-masochistic content.
Angélique Inspiration and Plot
The series took cues in plot and title from the novel Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels and its film adaptations, which had been major hits at the Italian box office. Set in seventeenth-century France, it follows Isabella de Frissac, an uninhibited noblewoman serving as a secret agent for Cardinal Richelieu. On mission she faces every sort of vexation and torture the creators could stage—period intrigue fused to erotic peril.
SM Shock and Grotesque Extremes
Within the mid-1960s comics market, Isabella’s sadomasochistic elements were an absolute innovation. Storylines also chased grotesque extremes; episode 8 depicts the protagonist being raped by a bear. That willingness to push past soft erotic adventure into outright SM and shock material cleared space for later Italian adult pocket strips.
Artists, Run, and Adaptations
From July 1969, Gaspare De Fiore and Umberto Sammarini replaced Angiolini as artists. Publication ceased in October 1976 after 263 issues. A collection series, Isabella Gigante, ran between 1969 and 1971. Bruno Corbucci directed the 1969 film Isabella, Duchess of the Devils, starring Brigitte Skay; the comic also inspired novels under the title Le memorie di Isabella.
For adult readers tracking European SM comics history, Isabella sits where mainstream historical-romance fashion met pulp torture and sex. It is not a consent manual—it is mid-century erotic adventure that sold power, pain, and a duchess repeatedly thrown into sadomasochistic danger across more than two hundred issues, a feature film, and prose spin-offs.
