Diabolik Gets New TV Series, Already Looks Better Than The Movie

Most Americans only know the Italian anti-hero Diabolik from the 1968 Mario Bava movie Danger: Diabolik, and most of us who have seen that have only seen it because it was the last episode, ever, of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you see it without the ‘bots, suffice to say it is not improved.

That’s a bit unfortunate because the Diabolik comics, while hard to find in an English translation (partially due to their specialized digest format), are popular in Italy… and they’re actually pretty good. Created by Angela and Luciana Giussani, Diabolik is essentially a ruthless, amoral supervillain, basically Westlake’s Parker with a 200 IQ and a bit more bloodthirsty. Although his personification was softened quite a bit from the early books, he’s still a more realistic criminal genius.

So the Italians are taking another shot at it, with a new TV series.

Here’s the trailer:

Will this come to the States? Most likely, actually. While there’s no deal in place yet, it’s a lot easier to bring foreign TV to the US now that we have companies like Netflix eager to cram as much content as they possibly can into their streaming maws.

We’ll keep an eye out for it, and when it comes here, offer a review.