‹‹I love being in Italy, more than any other place in the world. And not just because of my Italian origins. Italy is a land of people who love culture, both “high” and “popular”. Americans, on the other hand, seem interested only in today, in the immediate, they have no sense of history. They live in the present, they know nothing about the great American films and comics of the past. Italians love American culture, they share my passions. Italians are like me››.
It is a declaration, from a few years ago, by Don Rosa, the greatest living American (Italian-American, to be precise) Disney, several times in Italy, where he is much better known than in his country (in which Disney comics are a niche ).
These days he is at Lucca Comics (which ends on November 5th) to present the new edition (for Panini Comics) of his biography of the richest duck in the world, ‹‹The saga of Scrooge McDuck›› (originally released between 1991 and 1993), which tells how a young Scotsman from Glasgow, living various adventures around the world and discovering gold in the Klondike, managed to become a trillionaire who lives in a deposit full of coins (in which he swims) in Duckburg, Calisota state (located where California is, but with the climate of Minnesota). A true self-made man.
The one presented in Lucca will probably be the last edition of the Saga in the world, given that the presence, albeit for a few pages, of a zombie (already appeared in a story by Carl Barks, creator of Scrooge), drawn with features (apparently ) too caricatured towards people of color, makes it, in the eyes of current Disney, unpublishable.
This time too, as always in Italy and Northern Europe, it was a huge crowd, even though he hasn’t made a fuss since 2006, his last adventure was ‹‹Uncle Scrooge – The prisoner of the white agony ditch››.
Don Rosa has a retro soul, after all even his “normal” Duck stories (i.e. not those about Scrooge’s past) are set not in the contemporary age, but in the fifties when Carl Barks (1901-2000) wrote and drew his most famous adventures (Scrooge created it in 1947).
‹‹I also have my own deposit like Scrooge – he said. – With almost all the American comic books released between 1945 and 1970, the DVDs and Blu-rays of my favorite films and my favorite books. There are seven rooms in all: as an author, now that I have retired, I have returned to being a fan!››.
Garth Ennis’ America Pulp
Very different from the old style of Rosa is America in the comics of the Northern Irish screenwriter Garth Ennis, another famous guest of Lucca Comics, very violent and at the same time grotesque.
Ennis prefers war, horror or detective stories to superheroes, but he is still one of the most appreciated comics writers. It is proof of his skill, but also of the fact that in the States there are not only Marvel heroes (like Spider-Man, or the Avengers) or DC Comics (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman).
He made his debut in the horror series Hellblazer, starring the English magician John Constantine published by Vertigo (DC Comics’ author’s label), and achieved success with Preacher (also Vertigo), drawn by Steve Dillon, between westerns and horror with strong blasphemous streaks ( the protagonist is a preacher with divine powers who goes in search of God to make him pay for crimes against mankind). At Marvel he finds his character: it is Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, not a real superhero, but a serial killer of criminals.
Over the years he probably wrote the best version of the character, recounting, amidst killings and ultraviolence, also his own vision of America, which for him was dominated by the military and industrial complex, far more criminal than the mafia bosses massacred by the Punisher.
His stories are always very violent, truly pulp, but it is a violence that is often paradoxical and full of irony, as in Quentin Tarantino’s films or Joe Lansdale’s novels (he admits to having been influenced by the Texan writer).
Between 2006 and 2011 he wrote the series The Boys with drawings by Darick Robertson.
We are in a world in which superheroes exist: they are superstars, like actors and footballers, managed by a very powerful company, Vought International. But they are often arrogant and corrupt and, as would also happen in reality, cause several civilian deaths while fighting crime. A bizarre team of anti-superheroes (with superpowers), The Boys, must keep them in line.
A TV series was based on it (for Amazon Prime), now in its third season, which, in a metanarrative manner, satirizes the prevalence of superheroes in current entertainment and at the same time reiterates their centrality.
Ennis is much loved in Italy, and even cited.
In a 2015 story, the screenwriter and editor of Zagor (the avenger of the Darkwood forest created by the publisher Sergio Bonelli and the designer Gallieno Ferri in 1961) Moreno Burattini finally revealed the name of the hero’s archenemy, the mad scientist Hellingen . At the suggestion of a journalist friend who was a big fan of the screenwriter, he called him Garth.
Those of Don Rosa and Garth Ennis are different Americas, but the second is not necessarily more realistic than the first: both are myth and legend mixed with reality and, as in John Ford’s classic western ‹‹The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ››, the legend always wins.