The aim of this essay is to outline how Calvino considers and ‘uses’ comics, as a language, as a narrative structure and as a commodity and cultural product, within his public and private writings and in the statements made in interviews. The research reviews the passages in which Calvino talks about comics or uses their specialist vocabulary, to define the author's readings and his comics imagery of reference, to outline the contexts of use and functions of these references and to understand which Calvino's idea of “comics”. The field of investigation, therefore, is the analysis of the discourse that the writer carries out on comics within his written production, with particular attention to the story L’origine degli uccelli and the project Il motel dei destini incrociati
