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Comic Book / Zannablù

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"Hello. My name is Zannablù (thatso is me)."

Zannablù is an Italian comic talking about a boar with blue tusks ("Zannablù" actually means "Blue tusk") and his crazy adventures. Really crazy.

While the series is mostly made of original stories, also some volumes are parodies of various movies or other things. In 2010, a subline called Zannini ("Li'l Tusks") is created, completely composed by parodies and in a smaller format than normal issues.

The list of the volumes so far:

    List of classic volumes 

    Zannini 

The comic series provides examples of:

  • Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Giotto wears only a cloak, Onion a bowtie and Crazy Pig a tie.
  • All There in the Manual: Giotto's full name was shown only in his fictional (and now closed) Facebook profile.
  • Art Shift: In Moron Fairytales, inside the fairytale world everything is drawn in a more cartoony design than usual, also lacking drawn borders around the characters, and the dialogue is rendered in rhyming narration akin to Dr. Seuss books.
  • The Bus Came Back: Zannengers: Hamgame, as a parody of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, features the return of Spider-Mad and Iron Pork from their respective stories.
  • Butt-Monkey: Geppetto in Moron Fairytales. Zannablù's actions in the first four tales keep bringing him in the exact place where he is building Pinocchio, that keeps being destroyed. When Zannablù properly arrives in the story of Pinocchio, he gets a job as a fisherman, accidentally catches a whale, and throws it away... squishing Geppetto under it and so ending the story prematurely.
  • Carnivore Confusion: Amazingly never lampshaded in A Game of Cooks, a comic that often involves pigs eating pig meat.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: The Giant Spider in Eat actually speaks with a strings of swearwords masked with the usage of the syllabe "Gn" in the middle.
  • Compilation Re-release: Starting from 2013, the authors began to rerelease the older issues in recolored 2-in-1 reprints. The first one was The Secret of the Béchamel and Harry Porker (in the latter they also slightly changed the single line of dialogue of Phyton (see Shout-Out below) to make the reference joke more clear - it originally was a line from one of Renato Zero's songs, now it's the first line of the most known one, so everyone can get it), the second one features Zannablù Must not Die and the redrawn version of The Lord of the Pigs that was made some years before but never released since, the third contains Star Porks and The Thing that came from Outer Space, the fourth features Ghostwurstels and The Werevampire Graveyard and the fifth features Pigsty of the Caribbean and High Noon.
  • Composite Character: Zannablù, of all people, in The Lord of the Pigs turns into a fusion of Frodo and Aragorn.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • Zannablù gets involved with the Rampant Crocodile cult only because circumstances get him to say the right password each time. Those passwords are "The parrot has spoken", "Come on, Crazy Pig... just forget it" and "ahum... well... thanks".
    • Another one in Kill Pig, where Zannablù manages to Kill Pig (actually Giotto) not with his strength, but because, in the same moment, a burly pig discovers that he's the one his wife cheats him with, a sniper shoots at him thinking he's a terrorist, the cook accidentally replaced salt with cyanide on his pizza, his pacemaker fails, an alien spaceship hits only him while trying to destroy the world and the authors of the comic just wanted do kill a character.
  • Cultural Translation: Since Renato Zero is not known in the US, the English translation of Harry Porker changes Renato Python's single line to make him a generic glam rock wizard.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: In Fatassin's Pig, when the evil scientists explain how the Animus works, Zannablù points out that memories aren't transmitted through DNA. After an embarassed pause, the doctor tells him to shut up and keeps explaining.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Before the actual story, the Ghostwurstels appeared in Star Porks's ending, where Zannablù calls them to get rid of the Force Ghosts.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The original version of The Secret of the Béchamel was actually a serious story with some lame jokes that transforms into a Star Wars parody with a random A Clockwork Orange reference in the middle. The remake is more like the other stories, and includes the original story in a shrunk format, with a disclaimer from the authors stating that it sucks compared to the other stories and you shouldn't read it.
    • In the English release of Pigsty of the Caribbean, Zannablù's name is translated into Bluetusk. The other three issues instead keep the Italian name.
  • Egopolis: The Time Killers ends with Giotto getting in the time machine and rewriting history, so Pig City is changed into Giottopolis.
  • Embarrassing Last Name: Giotto's full name is Giotto R. Giraffotto (the last name literaly means "Fat baby giraffe").
  • The End of the World as We Know It: A major plot point in the Pigworld Chronicles saga is about stopping it from happening.
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Discussed in Indiana Porks.
    Zannablù: Ah ah ah! ...but why we are laughing?
    Indiana Porks: Because this is the last scene.
    Zannablù: Ah ah ah! ...Me don't get the joke.
  • Fantastic Racism: Boars are discriminated from pigs in the first stories. They get equal opportunities at the end of the third volume.
    • As of The Time Killers, you can remove the "Fantastic", since it's implied that in the 50's boars were treated exactly like black people in real life.
  • Floating Limbs: A distinctive tract of the series.
  • Former Child Star: The Cripple from The Time Killers is one.
  • Fractured Fairy Tale: Moron Fairytales is a whole compilation of those.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: Zannablù was this for the Boars in The secret of Bechamel, which kickstarts the plot when he feels so rejected by the other boars he shaves himself and tries to befriend the pigs instead, initially winning them over thanks to his better, rural cuisine.
  • Funetik Aksent: Boars speak Wild-Boarish language, a mix of Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe and Hulk Speak.
  • Fusion Dance: Taken to the extreme in Dragon Pork, where Zannablù and the bad guy take four pages doing it with everything and everyone, until they're turned into enormous blobs unable to fight.
  • Gainax Ending: Played in Maialost, where Zannablù discovers that the whole story was actually a TV show and he couldn't run away from the island because more seasons of the series were planned. So he arrives in the writer's studio and knocks out the writer to rewrite the story in order to make it end. Than he finds himself inside a Soap Opera.
  • Gasshole: In the Game of Thrones parody, Melarossa (the Melisandre parody) gives birth to a smoke monster to kill the protagonist... by eating several cans of beans and farting the creature in existance.
  • God Guise: In Mayaswines of the Aporkalypse, Zannablù is mistaken from Mayaswines as the Holy Blue-Tusked Boar™. And then Giotto is mistaken as the Holy Pig with a Volcano in his Mouth™.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Giotto always has a cigarette in his mouth, whatever his role is. Even as Joffrey.
  • Medium Awareness: This is a second-rate comic, do you know? That's what everyone keeps saying.
  • Mix-and-Match Creatures: Asians are represented as hedgehogs. And with hedgehogs, we mean "hogs with quills".
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Beck from The Werevampire Graveyard is a zombie-vampire-werewolf-pig.
  • No Animals Were Harmed: Played in some volumes.
    Disclaimer: No boars were harmed while this page was drawn. Actually we hurted a human.
    • In Dawn of The Porks:
    Disclaimer: While drawing this scene no zombies were hurted. But we committed many other crimes we can't tell at you.
    • In Zannablù Must Not Die, Zannablù is forced to kill a tiger after an accident, but he fears that animalists will hunt him down. God solves the whole issue by giving him an actual sign saying "No animals were harmed to draw this panel" to stick in the right moment.
  • Nonstandard Character Design: In the Game of Thrones parody, Arya Stark is drawn as a pig version of Dora the Explorer.
    • Also, the people of Iron Arm Island are all looking like Popeye. As in, kinda normal human beings in a world of anthropomorphic swines where every mammal has Floating Limbs.
  • No Swastikas: On Indiana Porks's cover, the swastika on Giotto's Nazi uniform is changed to a pretzel. Inside the comic there are still swastikas.
  • Parodies for Dummies: In Star Porks, Zannabl&ugrave boasts that he is "an expert at driving spaceships", but he's seen reading Spaceship piloting for dummies in the pilot's seat just before takeoff. Later yet we see him with a copy of Spaceship piloting for dummies vol. 2: Starting the ship.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In Indiana Porks, Nazis disguise as Mexicans wearing sombreros and fake moustaches, still showing the swastikas on their uniforms. And their "tacos" are clearly pretzels.
    • Also, earlier in the same story, Zannablù and the Crazy Pig pass through Nazi security disguising as Hitler. Both of them.
    Nazi Officer: It looked like we found them, but actually they were the Furher with...ahem...another Furher.
  • Political Overcorrectness:
    • In A Games of Cooks, when Zannablu's mother mentions that she was resurrected by a necromancer (in italian, "negromante"), the first half of the word is visibly censored under a quick series of black lines.
    • Parodied in Eat: when one of the boys starts saying that the actions of the local skinheads are intollerant and can't be tollerated, his companions promptly points out that such an intollerance make him intollerant himself and such behaviour cannot be tollerated.... cue to the paradox giving birth to a devastating "Radical Chiclone".
  • Refuge in Audacity: In Dragonpork, Zannablù collects the Dragon Balls... and with Dragon Balls, he means the testicles of seven different dragons. (At least we just see Zannablù holding scissors and a bag, walking away from the dragon holding his groin in pain.)
  • Running Gag:
    • Bureaucrats can't get Zannablù's name right.
    • "Fool who reads" is hidden into some panels.
    • "Weren't ye dead?" "Me is back from ye now, as thy tide changes." Introduced in The Lord of the Pigs and now usual line exchange when a character comes Back from the Dead (or, at least, when the aforemented character disappears and Zannablù thinks he's dead)
    • And also most of the stories have their own running gags.
  • Self-Deprecation: The authors (under the name "Dentiblu") often take potshots at themselves. In Lord of the Pigs, for example, the gate to the Mines of Muoria they finally choose to cross forces the user to say that the Dentiblu comics are high quality comic books, with Zannablu vocally protesting.
  • Shout-Out: Lots of them.
    • In Harry Porker, the Snape parody is called "Renato Python". This is a reference to the common joke between Italian fans about how much Alan Rickman as Snape looks like Italian singer Renato Zero in his later years. Also, Renato Python dresses like Renato Zero in his early years as a singer.
    • Awater takes the "Na'vi=Giant Smurfs" gag to the extreme, calling the Neytiri parody "Na'pette", putting the classic Smurf hat on the Na'pigs and also showing Papa Na'pig, Brainy Na'pig, Hefty Na'pig and Grouchy Na'pig.
    • The cover of Menace from the Menacing Planet shows Zannablù stuck in a Space Invaders screen.
    • In Stranger Pigs, the kids are shown playing not Dungeons & Dragons but Deficients and Dragons, a reference to a parody fantasy comic published by the same editor as Zannablù.
  • Slave Liberation: Parodied in Games of Cooks, after the Daenerys expy frees the massive army of slave warriors upon buying them and offer them the chance to either follow her or go home, the entire army leaves, except for a very old deaf guy.
  • Start of Darkness: The remake of The Secret of the Béchamel is Giotto's one, showing how he turned from the calm and pacific prime minister of Pig City to the chain smoking, cape wearing, boar hating maniac he's now.
  • Sudden Anatomy: Inverted; when having shocked/terrified expressions, characters are missing their noses.
  • Take That!: In most works, the italian singer Gigi d'Alessio is often mocked and his songs are considered so horrible they're used for both Cold-Blooded Torture and a public execution (of course, with Gigi and the victims under a soundproof dome).
  • Translation: "Yes": Played a lot in A Game of Cooks with his own version of the Dothraki language (actually Florence dialect with a weird spelling).
  • Universal-Adaptor Cast: Played around. In the parody comics Giotto often takes the role of the original story's villain, while Zannablù sometimes takes the role of the main character (such as Luke in Star Porks, both Frodo and Aragorn in Lord of the Pigs, the Bride in Kill Pig or Desmond in Fatassin's Pig), but most of the time he is just himself in the middle of the story. Sometimes other characters also join in as in-story characters (an old boar called Ben was cast as Obi-Wan, Gandalf and Dumbledore, while the little pig Giacomino, who first appeared in Moron Fairytales, reappears in Stranger Pigs in the role of Will)
  • Was Once A Boar: Crazy Pig. Or so he says.
  • Who Writes This Crap?!?: This is a second-rate comic, the characters think that too and so every cheap plot explanation is lampshaded out loud.
    Zannablù (coming out from an air vent): Whew! Luckily in second-rate comics ye can always escape passing through thy air vent.
  • You Don't Look Like You: Happens in Star Porks when Zannablù meets again Crew-Whaka after a long time and he, rather than the Chewbacca expy he was before, is now a human.
    Zannablù: What happened? Did you get a new haircut?
    Crew-Whaka: They changed the actor who interpretates my role in the new trilogy.

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