Whereas, for a long time, comics have been viewed as a middlebrow art and later as identifying specific subcultures such as nerds and otakus, little attention has been paid to how comic stories represent popular culture and specific subcultures. The comic series “Paninaro”, published in Italy from 1986 to 1990, can be considered an astonishing — as well as peculiar — example. This comic played a pivotal role in popularizing the subculture of the paninari, turning it into a mainstream phenomenon.

The paninaro subculture took root in Milan a decade earlier among a group of youngsters who gathered at the bar “Il panino” and adopted the sandwich [panino] as an icon of collective identity. Still in the early 1980s, paninari represented a circumscribed phenomenon. As a cultural product and medium, “Paninaro” was designed to mould the lifestyle of the youth by defining the paninaro as the “typical (Italian) teenager”, not only through comic stories, but also thanks to sections devoted to a variety of topics, such as specific clothing brands, music bands, gadgets, motorcycles, pop stars, quizzes to promote self-awareness as a paninaro, reportages describing the various groups of paninari living in different Italian cities, and — acting as a sort of social media ante litteram — the readers’ column, where young people talked about their everyday experiences and struggles as paninari.

 Despite its popularity among the teenagers of that period, “Paninaro” has quickly been forgotten in the history of Italian comics, as it does not represent a “noble past”. In this regard, it is important to remember that, in the 1980s, just before the era of graphic novels, the Italian comics field was marked by the emergence of the “comic artists” — since the 1960s with Manara, Magnus, and Pratt — who were connected to the established field of visual arts, and, since the late 1970s, of the “avant-garde comic artists” — such as Filippo Scozzari, Igort, and Andrea Pazienza — who grounded many comic magazines driven by intellectual intent and bound to a (radical) left-oriented political culture.

 By contrast, “Paninaro” was neither conceived with artistic ambition nor politically engaged. It was produced by a well-known comic publisher (Edifumetto) specialized in erotic comics oriented toward pure hedonistic pleasure.

 During our research, we interviewed the cartoonist Sauro Pennacchioli, editorial director for two years of the comic “Cucador”. According to his experience as a deeply rooted figure in the contemporary comic industry, many comic artists who worked for a period for “Paninaro” or concurrent magazines — such as “Cucador”, “Jeans”, “Yuppies”, “Wild boys”, “Zippo panino”, “Preppy”, and “Sfitty” — are still embarrassed about this part of their career path, feeling that these “mediocre” editorial projects were unworthy of relevance.

 Furthermore, as the founder of the fandom “Bircide Il paninaro” explained to us, the readers were more interested in the fashion reportages than in the comic stories per se. The “Paninaro” aficionados were not comic lovers at all. For instance, they were attracted to Peanuts and Walt Disney characters more as images printed on T-shirts and sweaters — which the paninari wore to distinguish themselves from “unauthentic” paninari — rather than as comic characters.

 It is not by chance that the decision to close the magazine was mainly due to taste and generational changes. In 1990, as the former magazine director told us, new looks became popular with the next generation of teenagers, and sales rapidly decreased. Pretty soon, “Paninaro” — as well as “Wild Boys”, “Cucador”, etc. — ended up falling into oblivion. Thus, why should “Paninaro” matter for the history of Italian comics and, more generally, for Italian culture? In other words, what is its legacy, if there is any?

 The protagonists of “Paninaro” were depicted not only as ignorant, but also as culturally disinterested in everything that did not concern their appearance. Fashion was the main means by which paninari could distinguish themselves through conspicuous and creative consumption, despite relying on mainstream products and labels. In their everyday lives, they not only fought against members of other 1980s subcultures — especially punks — but they also struggled not to look like “ginos”, that is, people who were either too intellectual or too poor to pull off the right look. Paninari mostly belonged to the lower-middle class, mirroring its common sense and value system: they were racist, macho, and extremely conservative in their worldviews.

 However, while the protagonists of “Paninaro” identified as apolitical in their habits and thoughts, they iconized the politics of reflux and individualism of the 1980s, fostered (not least) by the entertainment programs of the newly established private television networks launched by Silvio Berlusconi. In this respect, their (a)political vision also anticipated the political culture that followed the crisis of the First Italian Republic in the 1990s.