Diabolik 160 Brivido mortale

[esercito sconfitto]

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca88777 ... _-8aHGHl7c

[paveldr]

At the beginning Eva is disguised as Lisa, a maid who have been killed 3 days before....

[simon4242]

i take it Diabolik murdered lisa

[paveldr]

Yes, but Eva totally knows about it. She's wearing the uniform of a dead woman and she's just happy to have stolen the jewlery

[knobarius]

Despite his reputation as a Super-Criminal, Diabolik seems a bit careless in this story. Judging from the other panels I saw, it seems as though he murders the maid at least three days before Eva is ready to make her getaway and then simply leaves her body near her employers' estate, out in the open, where the dead girl might easily have been found during the time that Eva was still impersonating her. In order to prevent discovery, he could instead have carried her dead (or unconscious) body off to his hideout and kept her hidden away until Eva can nab the loot and exit the premises without risk of discovery following her (no doubt flawless) impersonation of the maid.

Perhaps the fact that Diabolik and Eva are both basically evil explains why the characters never really became successful in the U.S., since Americans prefer that even law-breaking heroes have some sort of justification for their actions, or at least aren't totally amoral and go around murdering poor maids, etc. (They do look glamorous, though.)

[Disguisedagent]

Lupin III is probably a close comparison but thankfully there whenever Lupin and Fujiko need to impersonate someone, the victim is simply tied up and gagged and hidden away.

[knobarius]

On the old "Mission: Impossible!" TV series they would routinely KO some person and then simply spray the material for the mask onto his face, which of course was silly, but they did it often anyway. Diabolik's mask-making was a little more involved, I think.

I think that this story made Diabolik out to be VERY careless because they wanted a big "reveal" scene in which the people who find the maid's body realize that a thief has been impersonating her for days -- and of course they couldn't realize this on the spot if Diabolik had sensibly carried the dead girl away after killing her It would have made more sense to have Diabolik kill the maid and then store her body in some refrigerated storeroom actually on the premises. (Only Eva has the keys, insuring that the body won't be discovered while the door remains locked, and so when she abandons them before going off with Diabolik staff members pick them up and soon use them to open the room, which they know hasn't been entered for three days or more...)

[knobarius]

Is there any place we can find the WHOLE story online?

[esercito sconfitto]

yes, here

https://www.bestan.net/Diabolik/

[knobarius]

Thanks! The story makes clear Diabolik's early carelessness, as instead of killing the maid and just leaving her dead (but apparently unstripped) body to be found (possibly while Eva was still inside trying to secure the prize) he could have carried her off (dead or KO'd) and stashed her limp form in the nice room he later uses in putting the sexy KO'd countess to bed.