Guido De Maria, who passed away at 93 years old, television writer and copywriter, was a seasoned prankster, who even last year humbly claimed to have given Italy serenity and smiles right at the height of the Years of Lead, with the fixed segment of the show “SuperGulp! – Comics on TV” and his mascot Giumbolo (which you see above). The cultural penetration of comics into mass culture in our country peaked in those years, just before anime took their place on TV, for the next generation.
Guido De Maria: “I’ve been lucky, I did what I wanted and I had fun”
In an interview with Corriere della Sera in December 2025, Guido De Maria stated more precisely: “I did everything I wanted, had fun and even earned a bit of money to survive. What more could one ask of life?” The simple philosophy of a professional entertainer. Perhaps you can’t quite picture him even if you belong to a generation aligned with his golden era, but some slogans that he crafted as a copywriter should make you sit up straight, ready to utter the first syllables as if answering the opening lines of a respected poem by Leopardi or Ungaretti: “E se va bene a me. Buona camicia a tutti” (uttered by Maurizio Costanzo), “Veniamo giù dai monti, dai monti del Tirolo“, “Baleno e lavoro meno“, “Col Nelsen i piatti li vuol lavare lui“. De Maria was a war machine of catchphrases, the focal point of one of his most famous cartoon creations, Nick Carter, which he created together with Bonvi: “Ebbene sì, maledetto Carter!“, “E l’ultimo chiuda la porta!“.
Nick Carter began as an original proposal within a truly legendary RAI umbrella program from 1972 called “Gulp!“, then relaunched between 1977 and 1981, with greater success and a roster of characters enriched, such as “SuperGulp! – Comics on TV“. The idea of De Maria, to meet a request from Giancarlo Governi, then head of the network’s special programs, was simply to revive the comics, with off-screen dubbing. In fact, among the many contents, there was no shortage of true animation, so that important names from the waning Carosello era contributed, such as Bruno Bozzetto. In those years, the stories of Nick Carter, Signor Rossi, Corto Maltese, Spider-Man (L’Uomo Ragno, for younger viewers), The Fantastic Four, Alan Ford e il Gruppo TNT, Lupo Alberto and many others became popular in Italian households. The enormous success, which, according to De Maria, could even outshine Mike Bongiorno’s Rischiatutto, served as a springboard for the titles mentioned, in an exceptional mutual support that today might be described as cross-media.
Connected to the world of music, so much so that he boasted of having convinced his reluctant friend Francesco Guccini to come out of the shadows and perform his songs, he sold in 1978 as many as 100,000 copies of the SuperGulp! theme, that is Giumbolo, written by himself with music by Franco Godi, and sung as a self-introduction of the absurd character he had created. An indefinable being with a poetic manifesto: “And when I beam, I become the symbol of all that joy brings!“
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