Comune of Lucca, through the limited company "Lucca Crea Srl",[3] in which flew the previous Srl " Lucca Comics & Games" and "Lucca Polo Fiere e Congressi" [4]
The Salone Internazionale del Comics ("International Congress of Comics") was launched by a Franco-Italian partnership, consisting of Italians Rinaldo Traini and Romano Calisi and Frenchman
Claude Moliterni [
fr] (forming the International Congress of Cartoonists and Animators) in 1965 in
Bordighera.[5][6]
In 1966, it moved to a small
piazza in the center of Lucca, and grew in size and importance over the years.
Funding issues reduced the frequency of the festival to every two years, beginning in 1977. In the 1980s, the festival was moved to a sports center outside the city walls, where it remained until 1992, when it was moved to another city (funding issues also forced the cancellation of the 1988 festival).
After the Salone internazionale del Comics ended in Lucca, city leaders launched a new convention called simply Lucca Comics that was a reprise of the old one. In 1996, it changed its name to Lucca Comics & Games. The festival attracted 50,000 attendees in 2002.
Meanwhile, the Salone internazionale del Comics was held in Rome from 1995 to 2005. In 2006, for the festival's 40th anniversary, the Salone merged with Lucca Comics & Games and moved back to Lucca's city center, with numerous tents and pavilions arranged in different squares within and outside the walls of the medieval city.
In 2022 the festival sold 319,926 tickets, beating the record established in 2016, when it had attracted 270,000 attendees.
Awards
Comics awards
From 1970 to 2005, the festival presented the
Yellow Kid Award [
de] — named in honor of
Richard F. Outcault's seminal comic strip character
The Yellow Kid — in such categories as Best Cartoonist, Best Illustrator, Best Newcomer, Best Foreign Artist, and Lifetime Achievement. Yellow Kid Awards were also presented to publishers, both domestic and foreign.
In 2020, as the festival redubbed itself Lucca Changes amidst a shift to virtual programming during the
COVID-19 pandemic,[7] the awards shifted to a new system under the umbrella term Lucca Comics Awards, consisting of 9 categories (3 Yellow Kids, 5 Gran Guinigis, and one Stefano Beani Award named for a former festival director), "regardless of nationality, editorial format or distribution method".[8]
Yellow Kid Award recipients
1970:
Johnny Hart, for Best Cartoonist of the Year — first time this award was given to an American cartoonist[9]
1971:
Mauricio de Sousa, for Best Cartoonist of the Year. His work, the first edition of Monica's Gang, also won Best Publication.
1972:
Hergé, for "una vita per il cartooning" (lifetime award)[10]
^
abcdOriga, Graziano. "Lucca Exhibition is Un Grande Successo: Yellow Kid Awards for John Byrne, François Boucq, Frank Thomas, and Ollie Johnston", The Comics Journal #156 (Feb. 1993), p. 41.
^Duncan, Randy, and Matthew J. Smith. Icons of the American Comic Book: From Captain America to Wonder Woman, vol. 1, (ABC-CLIO, 2013), p. 98