11 (1936 - Part Four) The adventurous
Ci sono anche gli autori italiani, su L’Avventuroso del 1936. La star di questo periodo è certamente Giove Toppi , which tries to emulate the Americans with captivating stories and a savory and aggressive design. Her stories are published on the last page, a prestigious and challenging position, since it has to deal with none other than Gordon . It begins with Shipwrecks mysterious :
Toppi Jupiter plays with the lights, with light and dark (note the last vignette, almost caniffiana!) But above with color. It would be interesting to know if the colors of The Adventurous and other newspapers nerbiniani was the work of technicians anonimi oppure se venivano in qualche modo coinvolti anche gli autori. A sentire Mario Nerbini , quasi tutto faceva capo proprio a lui, all’editore.
Quello che segue è un breve passaggio da un’intervista, in parte inedita, rilasciata dall’editore a Franco De Giacomo , nel 1967:
R.: Io accentravo tutto su me, capisce? Avevo dei collaboratori, ma non prendevano iniziative... Volevo far tutto da me, insomma. Poi guardavo tutti i giornali, davo i soggetti... insomma, facevo tutto da me.
D.: Ma, Commendatore, faceva da sé anche l’impaginazione?
R.: Tutto. I went in the typesetting in printing ...
D.: Pure translation of the texts dealt with?
A: No, I did not know the languages, so I translate. But once translated, I reread them all. If Mario
Nerbini also decided the color of the stories, certainly irrepressible personality as that of Jupiter will Toppi wanted their say.
But the masterpiece (in a relative sense, of course) of Jupiter Toppi is certainly The Queen Atalanta . This story deals with the last page of the weekly, after the first, is the most important. The magazines are in fact exposed to the outside of the kiosks, stopped at the wire with clothespins: children read "a free ride," Gordon , cover, and peer right side of the last week. It is a showcase and a stimulus to buy.
Giove Toppi, in its way, is sensational: it captures at once the novelty of the graphic language of American comics, imitates them in its contents (including the position erotic ) and the formal aspects, with a miraculous boldness. Notice Copy the Gordon submarine of these same months. It is vulgar, vulgar, elementary, but also to participate fully in this aesthetics of comics. Denigrated in the past over the legal (even by me, of course), is one of the most interesting writers of the thirties.
Watch
opium den, in the following vignette: there is something at the level of magma and visceral reworking of myths aliens, the similar scene
Once Upon a Time in America ? Giove Toppi, Sergio Leone as
fifty years later, captures so exquisitely anti-intellectual essence of the American myth.
Giove Toppi reduces the suggestions of 'Art Deco
,
style of the twentieth century and even the road
Cubism aesthetics of the windows of barber shops. But in this, purely "comic" genius.
There are other Italian authors , naturalmente, su L’Avventuroso 1936, alcuni lontanissimi dall’aggressività colorata di Toppi. Guido Moroni Celsi racconta una storia etnografica niente affatto banale, con Il tesoro degli indiani Lupai :
Giorgio Scudellari prosegue nel suo percorso di tranquillo seguace di Lyman Young con I ricattatori del Borneo e altre storie simili, quasi tutte di ambiente “coloniale”:
Interessante l’esordio di Ferdinando Vichi with Hurricane of Fire, history "para-western" whose design is still pretty raw, but that leaves already see some interesting developments. Vichi will, from 1938 onwards, one of the authors Italian by far the most interesting and prolific. We'll talk soon.