Dylan Dog turns 40: history, landmark issues and how to spot fakes

There is an investigator who, for forty years, has lived at 7 Craven Road, London. He left Scotland Yard, plays the clarinet, has been building a model galleon he never finishes, and gets paid to investigate nightmares, monsters and things that should not exist. His assistant looks embarrassingly like Groucho Marx.

On 26 September 2026 Dylan Dog turned forty. As a reader I love him; as an investigator I have a soft spot for a colleague who calls himself the "Nightmare Investigator" (l'Indagatore dell'Incubo). And as a collecting enthusiast I know there is a lively market around this comic, with sometimes surprising prices and, unfortunately, fakes too.

Dylan Dog is one of Italy's best-selling comics, published by Sergio Bonelli Editore and less well known outside Italy. This article tells how it was born, which issues made history, which numbers are really worth something, and how to avoid buying a fake.

How the Nightmare Investigator was born

Tiziano Sclavi and the idea of "blending genres"

Dylan Dog was created by Tiziano Sclavi, who had previously worked as a writer and editor on other series from Sergio Bonelli's publishing house, such as Zagor and Mister No. Sclavi pitched a horror series to the publisher Sergio Bonelli and to editor-in-chief Decio Canzio.

The idea was unusual for Italian popular comics at the time: to mix mystery, the supernatural, horror and comedy. Sclavi has said he drew inspiration from, among others, the films of Ernst Lubitsch, Neil Simon's comedies and George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (L'Espresso). His dream, he said, was to make characters talk like Neil Simon's, but inside a horror story.

In early plans the character was to live in America as a lone detective with no sidekick. Then the setting moved to London, and Groucho arrived.

A poet's name, an actor's face

The name is a tribute to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, whom Sclavi admired. The face comes from cinema: Sclavi suggested the actor Rupert Everett, then known for Another Country, as a model, and the artist Claudio Villa built the character on that basis, hardening his features. Villa produced the character studies and the covers; Angelo Stano drew the pages of the first issue and also helped define the look.

The elements of a legend

A few details are enough to recognise Dylan Dog's world:

• 7 Craven Road, London: home and office, with the screaming doorbell;
• Groucho, the Groucho Marx lookalike assistant, with his ill-timed jokes and the gun he throws to Dylan at critical moments;
• Inspector Bloch of Scotland Yard, former boss and almost a father figure;
• Xabaras, the mad scientist and great antagonist;
• the clarinet and the unfinished galleon;
• the exclamation "Giuda ballerino!" (roughly, "Dancing Judas!").

Dylan is a fragile, modern character: vegetarian, teetotal after a past of alcoholism, a non-smoker, sensitive, forever falling in love and just as forever being left.

The debut and the success

Issue 1, "L'alba dei morti viventi", reached newsstands on 26 September 1986, with an October 1986 cover date. The format is the classic Bonelli one, 16 × 21 centimetres.

The start was not easy. Early sales were weak and feedback from newsstands discouraging; according to some accounts, the publisher feared the series would not survive (L'Espresso, Sky TG24). Then word of mouth did the rest.

In 1991, with issue 69 "Caccia alle streghe" ("Witch Hunt"), Dylan Dog outsold even Tex, the publisher's flagship title. By the mid-1990s the series reached about 500,000 copies a month. It had become a phenomenon beyond comics, discussed in newspapers and even in politics. Umberto Eco himself talked about it with Sclavi in a conversation later published in a book.

Since the 2000s sales have fallen, as across the whole newsstand sector, but the series has never stopped. In 2026 the numbering passed 480 issues.

The editors

After Sclavi, the series was edited by Mauro Marcheselli, Giovanni Gualdoni, Roberto Recchioni and, since 2023, Barbara Baraldi. Recchioni, from 2014, led a relaunch that changed many long-standing elements and divided longtime readers. Baraldi has chosen to revive themes closer to the spirit of the origins. Sclavi, who wrote his last story in 2017 (issue 375), keeps the final say on story proposals (Il Post).

The most celebrated issues

Every reader has their own list, and fans' arguments will never end. These are the issues that appear most often in critics' and readers' selections, with the reason they matter.

Sources for titles and content: Wikipedia, Studentville, Il Post. Many readers consider the first hundred issues, written largely by Sclavi and Claudio Chiaverotti, the heart of the series.

Dylan Dog on screen

Two films, very different from each other:

• Dellamorte Dellamore (1994, released in English as Cemetery Man), by Michele Soavi, based on a novel by Sclavi. It is not a Dylan Dog film, but the lead, Francesco Dellamorte, is played by Rupert Everett himself: the circle closes.
• Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010), by Kevin Munroe, an American production that fans largely disliked for straying from the spirit of the comic.

Collecting: which issues are really worth something

An honest premise: the vast majority of Dylan Dog issues are worth little more than their cover price. They were printed in hundreds of thousands of copies and are easy to find. Anyone who tells you the box of Dylan Dog in your cellar is worth a fortune is almost always wrong.

The exceptions exist, and they are these.

Issue 1, first edition

This is the piece everyone wants. The initial print run is thought to have been small, precisely because the series was an experiment, but the exact figure is not known. The cover price given by Italian collector sites for the first edition is 1,300 lire (Fumettirari).

Published valuations vary widely over the years:

The message is clear: condition matters more than anything, and prices change over time. A price read online is a pointer, not an appraisal.

Reprints of issue 1

Issue 1 has been reprinted many times: first reprint (July 1990), second reprint (June 1991), Collezione Book (1996), Grande Ristampa (2006), Collezione storica a colori (2013), colour editions for the 35th anniversary (2021) and more. All are worth much less than the first edition. And this is exactly where the problem of fakes begins.

Other sought-after issues

• Issues 2 to 10 in first edition have their own market, with indicative values of a few tens of euros, higher for issues 2 and 3 (Thriller Cafe).
• Issue 13, "Vivono tra noi", is considered rarer by some collectors because of a supposedly smaller print run. This is a rumour that circulates, not a verified fact.
• Issue 100, the first in colour, and anniversary issues in general.
• Stories published outside the series, in magazines or in promotional and limited-run publications, sought by completists.

A complete run of the regular series in excellent condition does have value, but estimates there too should be treated with caution.

The 40th-anniversary variants

For the anniversary, issue 481 came out with four covers: the regular one, a Claudio Villa variant (about one copy in 4), one by Corrado Roi (about one in 40) and one by Angelo Stano (about one in 400). The issue is sold in a sealed pack that hides the cover (Sky TG24).

It is a mechanism designed for collectors, and limited print runs always bring resales at inflated prices. A piece of advice: buy the variants because you like them, not as an investment. Nobody knows what they will be worth in ten years.

How to spot a fake Dylan Dog issue 1

This is where my profession comes in. During the boom of the 1990s, when issue 1 was already highly sought after, fake copies appeared. The most common method was simple: take the interior of a reprint, remove the cover that showed it was a reprint, and replace it with a reprinted cover imitating the original.

The signs sources agree on

• No reprint marking. The first edition must not carry reprint wording or stickers on the cover.
• A heavier, stiffer cover. Fakes often use a different, thicker card.
• Darker, more saturated cover colours than the original.
• Overall weight. According to one of the most cited guides, the original weighs about 105–108 grams, while fakes often exceed 120 grams (Studentville). An accurate kitchen scale is a surprisingly useful tool.
• The page-number typeface differs between the first edition and the reprints used for fakes, with differences most visible in the digits 1, 6 and 9.
• Faded interiors, with weak blacks, typical of copies made by means other than the publisher's.

Where sources contradict each other

Honesty is needed here. On two details, collectors' guides say opposite things:

• The inside of the covers. One source describes the original with rough, greyish inside covers and the fakes as white and glossy. Another says exactly the opposite.
• The shape of the digits. One source says the original has rounder digits and the reprints squarer ones; another describes the stem of the 6 and 9 as straight in the original and rounded in the fake.

I cannot establish which description is right without examining certified copies, and I do not want to give you a rule that could lead you astray. The practical conclusion is different: do not rely on a single identifying sign read online. The best fakes are made precisely to pass the best-known checks.

The method that works

1. Direct comparison. Place the issue next to a certain original, or a known reprint, and compare paper, colours, page numbers and weight. Differences that seem subtle on paper are visible in person.
2. Ask for specific photos before buying remotely: front and back cover, inside covers, some pages with clearly legible page numbers, the spine. And ask for the weight: someone selling an original has no reason to refuse.
3. Be wary of prices that are too low. An issue 1 "in excellent condition" at a fraction of its market value is not a bargain: it is a warning sign.
4. Buy from verifiable sellers: comic shops, dealers with a track record and reviews, specialist fairs. On online platforms, check the seller's history and pay only through official channels.
5. For significant purchases, ask for an appraisal from a recognised expert or specialist shop before paying.

Anyone who sells collectibles knows this: the same logic applies to antique stamps, vintage cameras and any object whose value depends on authenticity. The most dangerous fake is not the badly made one: it is the one that passes the checks everyone knows.

Why we still love Dylan Dog

Forty years on, Dylan Dog remains more than a horror comic. Its monsters are often not the real danger: the true monster is whoever lacks empathy, judges, excludes. That is why a teenager of the 1990s and a reader today can find themselves in the same story.

And there is a detail that, as an investigator, I find irresistible: Dylan never promises to solve everything. Often a case closes leaving questions open. It is the kind of honesty I would like to see more often, outside comics too.

If you enjoy mysteries, the archive also covers the unsolved cases that changed investigative method and the history of the Enigma machine. And if you need to verify the authenticity or provenance of an object before a major purchase, due diligence is not just for companies.