Torpedo (comics)

The collaboration ended when Toth decided he did not share Abulí's darkly humorous view of mankind and frequent use of profanity, and withdrew from the project.

Luca loses his older brother to a severe beating by their drunken father, orchestrates a vengeance against the latter by using a vindictive neighbour as an unwitting agent, and finally witnesses their mother dying of sorrow upon her son's and husband's consecutive deaths, thereupon being fostered by his uncle Vincenzo.

Despite the fact that he engineered his father's death at the hands of their neighbour, the ancestral institution of vendetta prevails and Luca kills him with his uncle's aid; this is implied to be his first direct murder.

He is then forced to flee for America as a teenager where he works as a shoe shiner, thereby meeting an abusive senior police officer named MacDonald whom he finally shoots, being involved in other law infringements, such as bank robberies, which also happen to end in murders, and soon becoming a hit man ("torpedo" is 1920s slang for a contract killer).

From here onwards it is difficult to maintain a linear narrative since no dates are given (aside from incidental details such as the Volstead Act, the outburst of the Spanish Civil War and, later in the series, the Cuban revolution).