[Servalan]

Paul Gravett vertraut dem Urteil des Medienwissenschaftlers und Comickritikers Matteo Stefanelli, wenn es um die drei besten italienischen Comics des vergangenen Jahres geht.

Il mondo così com’è (‘The world as it is’)
by Tiziano Scarpa and Massimo Giacon
Rizzoli Lizard

Alfio sees strange things. Or rather, he sees words which things (objects, plants, buildings, insects ...) “speak” or tell to each other, if only someone had the unimaginable ability to perceive such conversations with human eyes. These words, however, become visible to Alfio’s – and our – sight as speech balloons. Yes: the most diverse balloons, as graphic devices and synaesthetic forces, are the main co-protagonists of a graphic novel that is a tour de force of playful visual imagination. Il mondo così com’è, co-created by Tiziano Scarpa, a literary writer always interested in signs and objects, and Giacon, an acrobatic cartoonist and designer, is one of those rare works that could not be possible if the language of comics didn’t exist. (...)

Fun
by Paolo Bacilieri
Coconino Press

If you’ve ever taken a look at an Italian newsstand, you have probably seen on the shelves La Settimana Enigmistica, the bestselling magazine in Italy for decades. Its main content is a transgenerational hobby and a national passion: crosswords. In Fun, Bacilieri leads us to discover the history of crossword puzzles, skilfully interweaving the ‘swing’ atmosphere of effervescent New York at the turn of the 20th century and the melancholic urban life of contemporary Milan. Suspended between historical research (thanks to Stefano Bartezzaghi, writer and creator of brilliant puns, who acted as consultant) and some elegant exercise in style - have you ever thought about the similarities between comics and crosswords puzzles’ grids? - Bacilieri infuses passion and curiosity to the somewhat eccentric development of puzzles. A graphic novel that turns into a graphic rebus: a puzzle to be enjoyed with the eyes and to be solved with narration. (...)

Golem
by LRNZ
Bao Publishing

The first graphic novel by Lorenzo Ceccotti, aka LRNZ, is a science fiction story set in Italy, which assumes the end of the global capitalist system. Forget your stereotypical ideas about Italy and drop down into the futuristic but slightly plausible dystopian Italy that LRNZ has built here, brick by brick, company after company, logo after logo. Thanks to his skills as comic artist and graphic designer, and sick of technology, Lrnz brings to an end after many years (working since his college days) a work which is a smart project of world-building, maybe the most mature offered in the genre by contemporary Italian comics. A choral work, led by two unconscious descendants of a bunch of formidable scientists, that tells a not-so-classic parable about power and control, told using Otomo, Miyazaki, Moebius and Evangelion. Entertaining and eye- catching, Golem is also a great work of pop style, where bright colours are sustained by harmonic, clear-line drawing. (...)