‹‹I know Castelli (and his friend Mario Gomboli, author and for years also editor of Diabolik), a few years older than me, since I literally wore shorts, we were in the same high school – says Luigi F. Bona, director of the WOW. – I’ve always wanted to do an exhibition about him, I had all the possible materials, even the lesser-known magazines and comics in which he had collaborated or which he had designed, but I had always lacked the time. But last autumn there was the exhibition dedicated to him at Lucca Comics, very well curated by Alex Dante and AMys, Martin Mystère’s fan club. At the Museum we have expanded it, with the addition of a lot of material (Dante couldn’t have known much of it because it was prior to his birth).
A chronological journey through Alfredo’s almost sixty-year career, from the comic stories of Scheletrino in the appendix to Diabolik in number 400 of Martin Mystère, released in June››.
In the exhibition, among other things, there are images of Castelli’s few but significant Disney stories, one of which (‹‹Mickey Mouse and the Bermuda Triangle››, from 1977, drawn by a master like Massimo De Vita), with its themes, is a sort of dress rehearsal for Martin Mystère.
His best-known character had a long gestation: he hit the newsstands in 1982, the year after the first Indiana Jones film, ‹‹ Raiders of the Lost Ark ››, starring another adventurous archaeologist, but it was conceived long before, at the end of the seventies, with the name of Allan Quatermain, and the features of the actor James Coburn. In the exhibition you can read an unpublished story of Quatermain, retrieved by Castelli from his archives, which will probably be published (perhaps by AMys).
In fact, in recent years some publishing houses have been re-proposing Castelli’s enormous production of extra Bonelli heroes in various volumes (some can be found in the museum shop): Nona Arte for example, has reprinted the entire saga of the Aristocrats, while Cut-Up Publishing, among other things, the stories for Tilt (in two volumes), the new adventures of Uncle Boris (since some years in the appendix to Martin Mystère) and the updated edition of a ponderous essay on ‹‹Frankenstein››.
In the book it turns out that La Stampa was the first Italian newspaper to mention Mary Shelley’s novel which in Italy would only be translated in 1944 (while the famous film with Boris Karloff in the role of the monster is from 1931) at the beginning of the article ‹‹The formidable action workers in England›› of 2 May 1926, with this sentence: ‹‹In perfect knowledge of the adventures of Frankenstein, the one who made a monster only to end up devoured by it››.
The article is rather poorly written (not everything in the past was better than now) and there are inaccuracies (in the novel Dr. Frankenstein is not devoured by his creature) but it still remains a record for our journal.
And many are Castelli’s records: from the first Italian fanzine to Bonelli’s first special book (dedicated to Martin Mystère, released in 1984), to gadgets (such as the booklets in the Dizionario dei misteri series for years attached to the specials or the plate in the tenth anniversary issue of Martin Mystère) to team-ups (meetings between characters from different series) with characters from Bonelli.
In fact, already in number 2 of Martin Mystère there is a cameo by Mister No (aged because the adventures of the pilot transplanted to the Amazon are set in the 1950s) and in 1990 Castelli wrote the first real Bonelli team-up, between Martin Mystère and Dylan Dog (subject in collaboration with the creator of the so-called Nightmare Investigator Tiziano Sclavi)..
If a three-part miniseries starring Dylan Dog and Batman is now on the newsstands, the credit is also his.
In the exhibition there are two panels with cameos by Castelli in various comics he wrote, many in Martin Mystère, where he is known as ‹‹the man with the beard››: he is an authentic, brilliant, ‹‹comic book man›› .