There are quite standard items. Every year Lucca Comics & Games, from today to November 5th inside (and also outside in the renovated tensile structure where the fair took place until 2005) the walls of the Tuscan town, is increasingly larger, hosts more and more events and has now extended to all pop culture, from comics to games, from animation to cinema from TV series to genre literature from video games to cosplayers (those who dress as characters from comics, films, TV series, cartoons). So much so that we wonder if it wouldn’t be better to divide it into four or five thematic weekends between October and November, one dedicated to comics, one to games, one to TV series and films and so on.
But then came the lump sum of Zerocalcare (aka Michele Rech), probably the best-selling cartoonist in Italy now, which changed the perspective.
We will talk about this later, now we dedicate ourselves to this new edition, increasingly rich and forward-looking, but which looks closely at the authors who formed the generation of current thirty-five-fifty year olds.
Among the guests we have for example a cartoonist like Frank Miller who on Saturday (7.30pm, Cinema Astra) will present the screening of the cult movie ‹‹300›› (2007), directed by Zack Snyder and based on his 1998 comic book which in Lucca is republished (by its new Italian publisher, Star Comics) in new editions, from normal to extra-luxury.
Or like Don Rosa, the greatest American Disney (Italian-American, to be precise) who presents the new edition of his biography of the richest duck in the world, ‹‹The saga of Scrooge McDuck››, (originally released between 1991 and 1993), probably the last in the world given that the presence of a zombie (already appeared in a story by Carl Barks, creator of Scrooge McDuck), drawn with traits (apparently) too caricatural towards people of color , makes it, in the eyes of current Disney, unpublishable.
Furthermore, it is no coincidence that there will be a limited edition comic book, produced by Lucca Comics itself, written and illustrated by Roberto Recchioni (among other things, screenwriter and former editor of Dylan Dog) dedicated to Max Pezzali, icon of kids of the nineties.
And among the Japanese guests we will have Naoki Urasawa who became famous for the 20th Century Boys series, which began at the end of the last millennium.
One of the most anticipated volumes will be ‹‹Myths of the North›› (Tunuè) in which a master of comics like Philip Craig Russell adapts into comics the first part of the book of the same name by Nei Gaiman (the creator of the cult comic Sandman, which is always alternated between various media).
Bao, the publishing house of Zerocalcare, presents ‹‹The journey of Shuna››, a volume, between the manga and the illustrated book, in the first Italian edition (it was released in Japan at the beginning of the 1980s), by a master of animation like Hayao Miyazaki whose new highly anticipated feature film, ‹‹The Boy and the Heron››, will be screened as an Italian premiere on Sunday (2.30pm Cinema Astra). There is therefore a good synergy between comics and other media, as demonstrated by the presentation of the limited edition created together with Radio Deejay (official radio of the festival) of the album with which Martin Mystère (the scholar of mysteries such as Atlantis and UFOs created by Alfredo Castelli and published by Bonelli) celebrated his ten-year editorial career in 1992
Zerocalcare has partly changed the cards on the table. Nobody (or almost nobody) pays attention to patronage. And generally nothing bad happens to him, they’re not like the lines in body 2 that Scrooge puts in contracts. But this year in Lucca there is (known since last spring) the patronage of the Cultural Office of the Israeli Embassy in Italy. This patronage (not onerous, the Festival specified, is to recognize the value of the cultural program) derives from the fact that the manifesto is signed by the (very good) Israeli authors Asaf and Tomer Hanuka, to whom Lucca has dedicated an exhibition and has entrusted the image of an edition centered on the theme Together, therefore in the name of returning to being together after years of confinement decided by the state authority.
So Zerocalcare decided to cancel, out of solidarity with the Palestinian people, dividing the community of cartoonists and pushing the Hanuka themselves (among other things Asaf is published in Italy by Bao) not to come, fearing for their own safety, while the Festival maintains its patronage. ‹‹We believed that it would be an act that was not very responsible towards not only the institutions and entities belonging to our ecosystem, but also for all the participants – we read in the press release. – Lucca Comics & Games has always placed only and exclusively the intellectual and creative work at its centre››.
‹‹The issue brings personal, political and moral beliefs into play with the serious facts we are witnessing in recent days – comments the Turin screenwriter Giancarlo Marzano who has Lucca presents ‹‹The detective story of crime fiction›› (Edizioni Di), designed by Nik Guerra, who pays homage to the “black Italian” comics of the Sixties such as Diabolik and Krminial. – Personally, I am against any form of cultural boycott, which risks raising walls rather than tearing them down, but I believe that everyone is free to take the position they wish or deem right. After all, we are in a democracy››.
Asaf Hanuka, among other things, signs the poetic variant cover of the 700th issue of Bonelli’s hero Zagor, with a child who in his bedroom imagines himself to be the invincible spirit with the Hatchet of the Darkwood forest created in 1961 by the publisher -screenwriter Sergio Bonelli and artist Gallieno Ferri, pretending that the hammer he holds is the hero’s axe.
We hope that children can dream again: the cartoonist Leo Ortolani (creator of the Rat-Man character), who will present his ‹‹Tarot›› (Feltirnelli Comics) in Lucca, will give free donations (minimum five euros) of postcards with his drawings, the proceeds of which will be donated to a humanitarian association that takes care of children, the first to suffer in every type of conflict, not just in Gaza.
And with a cartoon from a few years ago he reminds us that those who cannot or do not want to come to Lucca (because they show solidarity with the Palestinians, because they find the fair too chaotic or for other reasons) can very well live the Lucca experience (among other things, the forecasts weather forecast it’s raining again these days): he just has to ‹‹load a backpack full of comics on his shoulders, get into the shower and turn on the water, cold I recommend››.