[Servalan]

http://www.paulgravett.com/index.php...iews_dec_2010/

Drawn & Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s & 1980s
by Simone Castaldi, University Press of Mississippi, $40.00

The publisher says:
Exploring an overlooked era of Italian history roiled by domestic terrorism, political assassination, and student protests, Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s shines a new light on what was a dark decade, but an unexpectedly prolific and innovative period among artists of comics intended for adults. Blurring the lines between high art and popular consumption, artists of the Italian comics scene went beyond passively documenting history and began actively shaping it through the creation of fictional worlds where history, cultural data, and pop-realism interacted freely. Featuring brutal Stalinist supermen, gay space travelers, suburban juvenile delinquents, and student activists turned tech-savvy saboteurs, these comics ultimately revealed a volatile era more precisely than any mainstream press. Italian comics developed a journalistic, ideology-free, and sardonic approach in representing the key events of their times. Drawn and Dangerous makes a case for the importance of the adult comics of the ‘70s and ‘80s. During those years comic production reached its peak in maturity, complexity, and wealth of cultural references. The comic artists’ analyses of the political and religious landscape reveal fresh perspectives on a transformative period in Italian history.

Paul Gravett says:
The publisher’s blurb curiously avoids mentioning any characters or creators but presumably Castaldi will be covering some of the truly great rebels of fumetti, from Liberatore and Tamburini on RanXerox to the visinoary Andrea Pazienza and maybe Mattotti and the others in the Valvoline group. I covered some of these thrilling innovations way back in Escape Magazine #5 in 1985 in our ‘Spaghetti Fumetti’ feature, so I am glad to see a new volume coming out on this this stormy, steamy era in Italian comics history.

Nach den ersten Rezensionen werde ich überlegen, ob ich mir den Band zulege. Die University Press of Mississippi kann eine gewisse Tradition gut gemachter Sekundärliteratur nicht leugnen; ich werde aber recherchieren, ob das eine Originalveröffentlichung ist oder (bloß) eine Übersetzung einer italienischen Arbeit.