"Italian soft porn"? What-- never seen the HARDCORE stuff? (heehee) A friend loaned me some digest-sized comics from Italy, once. They were clearly, blatently, MAGNUM P.I. in all but name (then again it's hard to tell without a translattor). The only difference was, all the X-RATED "extra" scenes added in (probably during the commercial breaks).
The guy who "sold" HM on me was RICHARD CORBEN. I'd been following his work in the Warren magazines since 1971 (EERIE, etc.) but when I saw the painted full-color work he was doing on DEN, my jaw dropped!!! Not only had his work taken several steps ahead, but he was no longer concerned about censorship (unlike, say, the version of the story that turned up in the movie, when John Candy's voice-over explains "There was NO WAY I was gonna walk around with my DORK hanging out!"). To this day, I wish somebody would do a full-length animated adaptation of the 1st DEN story, so all the details and nuances could be included intact. (And the NUDITY as well-- let's not forget about the NUDITY!)
