The Walking Dead Italian Version(Saldapress)

James J · January 31, 2015

I don't know much about them but what the hell,I have time.

Saldapress publishes exclusively for Skybound in Italy and collects the series already published in the US. They have a multi-year contract with Skybound.Each comic contains 4 US issues........So you have an ideal on the size of the Saldapress comics, I took a picture of a newstand copy next to a WD 109 blank.

With all the Walking Dead Saldapress issues on eBay now, I thought it was time to do some research. How many number ones are there?

I will give it my best shot, here we go................

First print has the red logo.

Second print has the blue label.

Here it gets a little harder to understand.....Green label. Saldapress does not call this a third print but instead calls it a reprint. If I understand it correctly it's the first time the number one hit the newsstands. I'm thinking the other two prints were only sold on their website. I could be wrong and would love to have the correct answer.Saldapress has not responded to my email.

The 2012 Lucca Comics variant...........

The Walking Dead 1 (variant Verona)

"Special Zombie Walk Verona 2013" limited to 1,000.

This number 1 of The Walking Dead is a limited edition of 3,000 numbered copies. This was a free promotion from Saldapress. If I'm correct, with a order of x amount of books it is/or was sent free.

The color version of the number 1 of The Walking Dead . It was avalible for a limited time and in a limited number of copies. The book was translated into Italian. It was available for sale exclusively during the 4 days of Lucca Comics & Games . From the Saldapress website it was not distributed or sold elsewhere, only during Lucca Comic Show.

La Gazzetta dello Sport in partnership with SaldaPress are selling these DVD sets of the Walking Dead. Each set comes with a comic.

See more journals by Mr. James J

retrothecollector · January 31, 2015

Very good report, and very informative James. Thank you.

James J · February 1, 2015

Last week I kind of figured out how many Italian #1's from Saldapress there were. At that point the hunt started..........I was really surprised how fast my first order from Italy got here. They were bought on ebay....the price of the books were 5 euros each, not to bad. Its the shipping you have to try and keep in check.The shipping was 18 euros..... the books came well packed to my surprise

James J · February 4, 2015

I think while the US dollar is strong,I will try to blow through completing this foreign variant set. Time waits for no one,plus the fact I want to spend the year researching and collecting The Walking Dead in all the different countries. So really a year is not a lot of time Some might ask why am I going to do this.

I have spent the last two years collecting the US issues and I have completed a full cgc 9.8 set. I have a service with Dre and I'm on cruise control with the series. Before Dre I spent countless hours hunting for the best cgc copies I could find. Now since I'm complete I have more time to focus on the foreign variants.I have made a choice not to grade the Saldapress issues. The time and money would just be to much.Maybe at a later date,we will see. I find that the copies I have seen and have be getting are not for the most part 9.8 worthy.I think getting a high grade set would be tougher than the US issues.

IMO they are hard books to get in high grades.

So with that let me give you a break down of all the issues starting at #2...........

Issues 2-7 Newsstand Editions

Issues 8-12 Newsstand and the #10 Variant Falcomics(the fourth one)

Issue 12 Variant is the Lucca Comics & Games(classic48 cover) 13-17 are Newsstand Editions.

Issues 18-22 Newsstand Editions and the #18 Variant Napoli Comicon 2014(D.C cover ).

Issues 23 and 24 Newsstand Edition..................................

............ Do you know why I stopped? Because we are coming up to issue 25. Issue 25 you say.....no big deal right? Wait a minute every Italian issue is four U.S. issues, then issue 25 is the famous 100 U.S. version :ohnoez:

Hold on to your hats,let the variants begin :fear:

First up is the 4 regular Newsstand Editions(above )

From left to right you have the 100 Chromium,Adlard,Lucca Comic & Games(Adlard),Bloody Lucille,Negan black out face and the Hitch cover.

Here you got McFarlane,Ottley,Phillips,Quitely,Silvestri and the Zombie Walk Lucca C&G variant.

To many Issue 25's for you to hunt down? Don't worry you can cheat a little if you get this kick *ss box set. It comes with 15 of the variants. It is also a LE set of 1000.

Glad we got through that now back to the current newsstand issues...................

Newsstand Editions for issues 26 and 27 (thumbs u

That's it for now,there is a variant for issue 27 coming out in Feb.

The Italians got a little pissed off with issue 27. You see all the issues up to this point had black spines.Issue 27 was a tribute to Adlard with the 105 U.S. cover that was a wrap around.A lot of people didn't like the fact that the spine was not black like every issue up to this point.Some said it looked like sh*t to have them on their book shelves.All black spines until issue 27 :insane:

One more quick note, there is one issue that had been misprinted and quality control did not pick it up. It was release at a show and it was brought to their attention by the people buying them :makepoint:

It was a LE numbered variant and Saldapress made an offer to replace the books with new ones with the same LE number they had.The books were destroyed as per Saldapress on their return. I wonder how many error prints are in the wild? Anyway I will update this with the issue # later.

Now really thats it for tonight.

SW3D · February 4, 2015

I'm not a WD fan (and I apologize to all fans for admitting that), but nonetheless, your passion and devotion to the title is simply amazing and inspiring... and now I'm a fan of your on-going journals.

I love how you clearly and thoroughly presented the Italian counterparts.

Well done sir! Well done!

SW3D

Ogami · February 4, 2015

I'm not a WD fan (and I apologize to all fans for admitting that), but nonetheless, your passion and devotion to the title is simply amazing and inspiring... and now I'm a fan of your on-going journals.

I love how you clearly and thoroughly presented the Italian counterparts.

Well done sir! Well done!

SW3D

I would like to ditto every word of this post!

Jking3437 · February 5, 2015

They are cool, esp the mini lucille

ZombieDealer · February 7, 2015

Hey! Nice thread here!

I'm Italian, and a Walking Dead fan too! If you allow me, I can help you out with this. I have all the italian issues ( the ones with 4 US issues), variants and reprints included. I have at least at least 100 american issues ( my real "full" collection is 127-onwards, including variants and reprints, but I have a lot of other issues and variants, my holy grail being #100 Red Foil CGC 9.6.)

The italian issues with 4 american issues each are called "Bonelli" issues and are sold each months from newstands and comic shops. They are the issues that can be compared with the american ones, so they are the ones that should be collected. The ones that come out with Gazetta dello Sport aren't for collectors.

Unluckily, starting from #28, the italian issues will contain only 2 american issues. That's because we're getting "too near" to american releases. Moreover, starting from 2016 the issues will come out once every two months, as opposed to once a month like now.

First, I can tell you that the Green Label #1 is a second printing, while the Blue Label #1 is a third printing, which, when released, disappeared from stores after just some days. It then became available more than a week later, like a 4th printing, but there is no evidence it is a 4th printing, so it's still a 3rd.

The Green label one is a "Prima Ristampa" ( First reprint).

The Blue label one is a "Seconda Ristampa" ( Second Reprint).

The Red label is the "real" number one, which went sold out in a matter of days. In fact the Green Label was released just a month after the Red Label. People sell the Red labeled at insane price, but the truth is that it's still available in the Saldapress year one full package, which includes 1-12 issues with all the #1s.

We have a few variants available, I can provide some links:

ZombieWalk Verona #1 2012 Variant 1000 Print Run

Falconara Comics #10 2013 Variant 1000 Print Run

Lucca Comics & Games #12 2013 Variant 2000 Print Run

Napoli Comicon 2014 #18 Variant 3000 Print Run

Then there is the #1 Lucca Comics 2012 Variant you've already listed ( unknown print run, probably under 500. That's the rarest variant) and the #25 Variants you've listed as well, which have a 3000 print run, apart from Lucille and Negan B&W which have a 1000 print run each.

There is a cool story about the #12 Variant. When it was sold in Lucca in 2013 there was a misprint: page 31 and 32 are missing, in fact there 2 blank pages at the end. When Saldapress understood there was an error they said they would substitute the misprinted variant with a good one if the misprinted was mailed to them between the 9th of December 2013 and the 31st of March 2014, with the mail cost being refunded with a coupon that could be spent on their site. All the mailed misprited issues and the non-mailed good issues were destroyed after the 31st of March. A good collector has them both. I do It was harder to find a good one than the misprinted...

There is a #27 Variant that will be released on the 9th of February on their online store. It was supposed to be distributed during the ZombieWalk in Venice during the Carnival, but Saldapress said they unluckily won't be there so they decided to sell it on their site instead. It will have a 2000 print run.

There are some "specials" too. For example:

They are all like the american ones, but the Chromium is a little bit different. It has all the #100 covers in the last pages, with some descriptions near them.

The Michonne Special went sold out very soon, so they made a "different" reprint: when the second issue of the Official The Walking Dead Magazine came out in Italian there were two versions of it, the normal version and the variant one. The normal has attached a cover colored Michonne reprint which has the same dimensions of the italian issues that include 4 american issues ( so it's not like the normal michonne special), and it had just the "bonus" pages of the Michonne special, which means it didn't have all the other pages you could find in the normal issues and that were included in the original michonne special. The variant magazine had a really nice B&W michonne special which has the same characteristics of the michonne special attached to the normal magazine. Here is a pic of both of them: Michonne "Bonelli" Variants

There are also the #1 Colored and the #1 very similar to the american #1. The colored one was available in 2013 at Lucca Comics, which is where was sold the #12 Variant. The #1 limited to 3000 copies was and still is available on saldapress.com shop if you buy stuff with a value higher than 10€. You can't get it if you buy "Newstands's stuff", like the Bonelli.

It's very hard to find a 9.8 of these ones, since they are almost always sold by newstands, and they don't use the best manners with them. A collector would probably collapse if he saw some of the copies I was sold as new from them... Just saying ahah

Well, that's it... I think! I'll write something more if I find anything else worth to say!

James J · February 7, 2015

Thanks ZombieDealer............. I will look back and update the first post with the information you gave me. I had to use Google translate to get all my information and sometimes it was not clear

I see the #27 variant is going on sale Monday..... are you in Italy?

Saldapress will not sell outside of Italy,I asked and they said no.

Always willing to trade with a fellow collector :baiting:

I have most of the books heading to me from Italy as we speak... I think I will be current in a few weeks But like you said the books get damage easily. I will be on the hunt for the error variant too.

I will be doing a collectors check list soon for people to use if they like.

Any information on the post cards that were given out....how many are there?

Is there any web site that reports print runs or sales numbers for the Saldapress Books?

I also picked up the limited edition Compendium hard cover limited to 500.

Hope to get it soon. I will be posting about that when I get it.The release of the hardcover book one in Italy is about to start .I hope to pick that up this year.

ZombieDealer · February 7, 2015

Check your PMs :grin:

I have tons of postcards, but I have never counted them. I'll let you have some info in a few hours.

There is no site that says anything about print runs and sales, not that I'm aware of at least.

All I can say is that the monthly comic is very difficult to find at newstands because each seller has something like 2 copies and they are always sold out in less than a week or two.

Also, as you can see, all the non-variant books are available from Saldapress.com.

About the Hardcover #1... I know lots of people try to get the #1 Hardcover first print ( from like 2005). I saw some auctions on eBay in the past at around 200€.

James J · February 7, 2015

I'm not a WD fan (and I apologize to all fans for admitting that), but nonetheless, your passion and devotion to the title is simply amazing and inspiring... and now I'm a fan of your on-going journals.

I love how you clearly and thoroughly presented the Italian counterparts.

Well done sir! Well done!

SW3D

I would like to ditto every word of this post!

They are cool, esp the mini lucille

Thanks..........Its fun to collect outside the box sometimes.I know I can't read them but really not to much different then the CGC US issues I can't read lol .

I have the series digitally and have the Compendiums to look back at.

ZombieDealer · February 7, 2015

I've created a winrar archive with a lot of pics of postcards and some .txt files with some information about them, like when and where they were distributed and the number of sets in existence.

You can download it from here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/352f77zydqlp4ua/TWD%20Postcards.rar?dl=0

James J · February 14, 2015

So I'm a little behind with my Journal.....life sometime gets us spinning in all kinds of directions lol .....

I got my 2nd package from Italy about a 7-10 days ago. The cost for shipping was 55 euros. Sounds like a lot but it was pretty heavy.

It never gets old coming home and finding some packages at the door

Lucky for me the two big boxes were not from overseas. Its just this one.....

I find it interesting how packing is done over seas.Here the box is reused but seems to be cut up custom and reversed inside out. I'm thinking, no free boxes like we get at our local post office.

The package for the most part protected the comics....but with so many books tightly packed one became a victim :cry: As I have said before even if its a bomb proof package, the way the books are handled its hard to get high grades.

Here is what I got...........

Issues 1-26 newsstand, promo #1 LE of 3000 and a issue 25 collectors box set LE to 1000.

That's it for tonight but before I go I wanted to say I was happy to get the red logo first print with this shipment.

James J · February 23, 2015

I got in three boxes last week from a seller in Italy.......

30 comics in all. There were 5 copies of issue 2,3,4,5 and 6. Also a special issue of the art of Charlie Adlard,this is not part of the series.Looks to be something to introduce Adlard to the fans.

The cost for the books were 2.90 EUR (3.30 USD) each for issues 2-6.

The Adlard special was 7.00 EUR (7.96 USD) each.

Shipping total was $67.91USD.

Here is a picture of the them,some were double packed in plastic....

These 5 copies are the Adlard special, which it talks about Charlie and shows off some of his art for the series.

Why so many copies of each issue? I think a part of me wants to put together a nice CGC graded set. I would have to pick out the best and keep my . It may be just a dream that never come to light. You know if you are a collector we have this vision of how the collection ends, a goal of sorts.

If you were to ask me how do I see this ending I would tell you with a complete raw set followed with a full SS graded set . In a perfact world I would love to have Kirkman and Tony Moore sign the first few issues followed up with Kirkman and Charlie Adlard on the rest. Its a nice goal but most likely I will move on to the next mission with out fully completing my goals.

vaillant · February 27, 2015

It appears yesterday my package was in New York… you should have it in short.

Hopefully they were enough protected… I did my best to keep them under the maximum weight.

Were the other shipments you got shipped Priority or did they use a courrier (being dealers they might have a deal)?

ZombieDealer · April 4, 2015

Hey James, in case you didn't know there is going to be a TWD #31 Saldapress variant this year at Naples Comicon ( the city I live in!). It'll come with a box ( like the one for the #25 variant) meant to contain all the issues of the "All Out War" arc. Moreover, every issue of the AOW arc, so starting with #31, will have two covers ( they contain 2 american issues), so all the AOW covers will be available! That means we'll have 12 regular covers ( 31-36, 2 covers each) + 1 variant cover for #31 and all of them are meant to be put in the box.

Here is a pic of the box: http://i1.wp.com/c4comic.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/cofanetto-walking-dead.jpg

James J · April 6, 2015

Awesome.....looks great! Thanks for keeping me updated

Work started up and I need to find the time to update what I got.

Two more boxes had come in from Italy...When I get some time I will post them.

Thanks buddy............If anyone gets a Walking Dead Saldapress book and feels like posting it here,please do. Or a picture of a collection would be cool too.

Ogami · April 7, 2015

Still reading and enjoying!

Quick question. What are your contacts? Have you found

Italian websites, sellers, or are you using Italian ebay?

vaillant · April 7, 2015

I assume mine arrived safely…

@Ogami: Both, he bought some from dealers, some on eBay and I sent him some.

James J · April 27, 2015

The paving season has started and I’m in full swing. Now the hard part is keeping up with the things I loving doing…..collecting!!! Don’t get me wrong, I have a great wife and awesome kids. I will say without a doubt they come first. But I do love the me time I get to spend collecting. It gives me a chance to step away from the hustle and bustle of life.

Anyway where was I……………………..

I got this package some time ago and have been trying to find the time to post.

82 euros……….not cheap but it was an oversize box and she had some weight to her.

Was it worth it? Hell Yeah!!!

The package was well packed; love it when you have to dig for the items.

Let’s get started, first is the red label #1

Moving along I picked up issue 18 variant. By the way the easiest way to spot a WD Italian variant is on the cover.

The title is printed in red……….unless of course you read Italian, then disregard this.

On the back of each variant is the print number….sometimes I wish they did that on the US copies.

If they say it’s a print run of 3000, they back it up by putting a number on each one. I think thats pretty cool….wait a minute come to think about it everyone would fight for the low numbers or the last number. Or worse yet, some people would want to get the same matching number for each new variant. Maybe we should just let that system stay in Italy.

Out of order but here is issue 10 variant……..

The color reprint of number 1

Can’t say I’m a diehard collector without the LE compendium. Only 500 copies made……

I picked up few other issues that you can only get if you buy the DVD series in Italy.

You can buy them two ways (I think)……….

1. In this cool @ss package. I’m thinking it’s kind of a built in display for the retail stores.

This is one reason shipping cost a little bit more.The seller said he could save me money by just sending the comic and DVD. Told him I didn’t care how he sent it but I wanted the whole original package.

2. A compact version with a comic on one side and the DVD on the other.

That’s it and to finish it off here are two group shoots.

Until the next time :foryou:

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The Walking Dead Italian Version(Saldapress)

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