Comic readers are much more than the twenty-five heralded by Alessandro Manzoni in the ‹‹The Betrothed››. But in reality only in the last fifty years has Don Lisander’s masterpiece been adapted as it deserved.
For the one hundred and fifty years since Manzoni’s death at the last Book Fair (as an attachment to Topolino or sold separately) the publisher Panini Comics proposed the Topolibro (a Mickey Mouse format volume but hardcover, the first was released at the 2018 Fair) with ‹ ‹The Betrothed Ducks›› and ‹‹The Betrothed Mice››, Disney parodies of ‹‹The Betrothed›› released respectively in 1976 and 1989.
The first, written and drawn by Giulio Chierchini (with the collaboration of the texts by Edoardo Segantini), like many Disney parodies, is happily unfaithful.
Don Paperigo (Scrooge), a local squire, head of the Bravotti (the Bassotti, who in the “official” stories instead attack the extraordinary riches of Scrooge) to get rid of the suitor Gertruda da Monza (Brigitta, in love with the rich man even in the “normal” stories ) tries to force Paperenzo Strafalcino (Paperino) to marry her. However, he is already engaged to Lucilla Paperella (Paperina), but the marriage that ‹‹has to be done›› thanks to the alliance of the two ducks, who incite the taxman against Don Paperigo, will not take place. And Gertrude will finally crown her dream of love by marrying the unfortunate Don Paperigo.
‹‹The Promised Mice››, written by Bruno Sarda and drawn by Franco Valussi, is instead much more faithful to the original source. Sarda, who the previous year had adapted Umberto Eco’s ‹‹The name of the rose›› with ‹‹Topolino in: The name of the mimosa›› (version appreciated by the same scholar) for the drawings of Giampiero Ubezio. analogous operation of Disneyzation. Then he had changed the murders into kidnappings and in place of the medieval abbey he had put a nineteenth-century English college, here Renzo Topoglino, owner of a restaurant, and Lucia Minnella, owner of an inn, want to pool their savings to buy the prestigious Hotel Continental, now abandoned.
Contract (the notary is Don Pippondio, instead of Don Abbondio) opposed by Don Pietrigo (Gambadilegno), who owns the main hotel in the area in the Lecco area and fears their competition. The plague in Milan is not the lethal disease, but the pestiferous (precisely) Marchesina Esmeralda de Gomez, very young niece of the Spanish governor, who puts the city at the mercy of her whims: the Manzonian attack on the ovens happens because she has banned the bread, obliging the bakeries to prepare only brioches and various pastries
In Topolino (the number 3521 of the series) with the attached Topolibro Manzoni was celebrated by the story ‹‹Uncle Scrooge and the too true historian›› by Alessandro Sisti (texts) and Paolo Mottura (drawings). It refers to others (always written by Sisti) set in our country, Scrooge, Donald and the grandchildren return to Italy, see old local friends again and, thanks to special glasses invented by Archimede Pythagorean, they also manage to interact with Manzoni (here, in duck, renamed Anaxandros). The adventure is well documented: the writer, like the real Manzoni, in the presence of the unknown Scrooge, is seized with anxiety and starts stammering and also reiterates that for him a novelist must stick to the “true historian”. Yet the encounter with the Ducks (thanks to which he himself finds himself in the seventeenth century of his novel) suggests a new novel, with mysterious ducks that travel through time, destined however to remain unpublished (but who knows that it will not appear in a next adventure written by Sisti).
At the Salone there was also (but it can also be found in bookstores and comic shops) another comic strip parody of the novel, ‹‹Renzo & Lucia›› by Marcello Toninelli (Shockdom).
In the wake of his other successful parodies (such as those of the Divine Comedy, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid) the Sienese author follows the text quite faithfully with a series of humorous strips, immersing the work in the contemporary world: Renzo nerd who squanders his money on superhero books, Lucia feminist activist and the nun of Monza aspiring rapper.
Generally in the appendix to the editions of the novel there is the essay, also by Manzoni, ‹‹Storia della colonna infame››, on the irrational (and always current) hatred for the so-called “infectors” who allegedly spread the contagion of the plague, it is also found in this volume, with, among other things, allusions to the presenter Enzo Tortora, a famous innocent absurdly tried for Camorra association.
For some years the Allagalla publisher has collected in a beautiful hardcover volume the best “serious” adaptation ever made of ‹‹I promessi sposi››, published in installments in the Catholic weekly Il Giornalino in 1985, for the two hundredth anniversary of Manzoni’s birth . The texts are by Claudio Nizzi, at the time one of the leading screenwriters of the magazine but also recently the main writer of Tex Willer (of which he would sign stories for forty years), the drawings by Paolo Piffarerio who, if he is known above all for being Magnus’ successor on Alan Ford (series set in the present) has always given his best in period comics.
Nizzi is very scrupulous, he uses Manzoni’s texts for balloons and captions, sometimes with slight adaptations to make them more suitable for a contemporary reader, and he has the intuition (also used in part by Milo Manara for his recent adaptation of ‹‹The name of the Rose››) to make Manzoni himself the omniscient narrator of the novel, who often appears in the story, sitting in an armchair, or leaning against a fireplace, narrating live the past of Fra Cristoforo and the nun of Monza, or historical facts such as war and pestilence, thus making it easier to read.
Piffarerio creates one of his masterpieces, exalting himself with the puffs of the sleeves of the nobles, the decorations of the clothes, the details of the rooms and carrying out an accurate work of documentation, going among other things several times in the Lecco area.
‹‹Manzoni’s style is too refined and complex for kids to like it – says Nizzi in the interview at the beginning of the volume. – It is a work that only an adult can appreciate. And at that point not only will he read the entire novel, but he will read it again and again, as happened to me ››.
As these stories show, the marriage between ‹‹I promessi sposi›› and the comic ‹‹was busy››