@vaillant:
I'm no expert on Italian comics, just read a comics magazine about them:
http://www.reddition.de/index.php/start/neuigkeiten/ausgabe55Have a look, it's very nice, you can even flip through the minimized issue!
The discussion of German comics we had somewhere else. I'll post it here again (these are the words of a German publisher):
The german comic-market:
It is dominated by three companies, which put out mostly (if not only) foreign material; there is Panini, which publishes the most US-Comics (that means they are publishing Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, IDW, Bongo and some more, all in one publishing house), their most popular books are The Simpsons (which sold here up to 160000 at its peak, which is far more than in US, as I know) and Star Wars.
The biggest is Ehapa/Egmont, which publishes mainly Disney-stuff.
In fact, Disney-Comics (especially Donald Duck) are the most popular comic-books in germany (not western; in fact, western comics are very few here, and they are oddly enough mostly produced in France), there is a weekly magazine called Micky Maus which is now being published for 60 years, and the even more popular monthly paperback "Lustige Taschenbücher" (sells about 250000, about 450 issues so far) plus a lot of other Duck-related books from collections of famous artist like Carl Barks to special editions featuring the adventures of the Fleagle Boys or something.
All the bigger companies have no policy for publishing comics originated in germany, even if they are publishing an occasional one from time to time.
The publishing houses which are producing original german comics are few, and most of them are small underground or independent-publishers like my company (with a meager output of 10 books a year), with one exception: The guys of Mosaik, they are putting out a monthly comic book (which is kind of a leftover of the GDR) on a very professional basis ...
There were some publishers during the 50s and 60s publishing homegrown comics, mainly featuring the tame adventures of knights and jungle heroes, or some SF-heroes. A lot of this stuff was drawn and written by just one man, Hansrudi Wäscher.
With the advent of US-Comics in germany during the 60s (by then western was very popular here) this kind of comics died out. Mainly because the imported stuff was far superior to the often crudely drawn comics of german origin.