Bilbolbul

Bilbolbul is an Italian comic strip series created by Attilio Mussino.

Background
Bilbolbul was published in the weekly magazine Corriere dei Piccoli, from 1908 to 1933., which is commonly considered to be Italy's first comic series. The main character, Bilbolbul, was an African boy who lives surreal adventures in his African village. The boy's main characteristic is the ability to physically change according to the metaphors that accompanied his adventures: he therefore many times changed colour, becoming red out of shame, or green out of rage, to sharpen his wit he would use a lathe, and he was also able, better than any illusionist, to split himself into four separate beings (as in Italian farsi in quattro, literally to "split oneself into four," means to do everything possible in order to achieve something), and so on. These metaphors appeared as comments in rhyme below the panels: comics at the time, in fact, did not yet have the typical balloons that contained dialogue. The stories were instead told by an external narrator, usually in rhyme.