There are comic books both expected and feared at the same time. This is the case of the third special of the Tex Willer series (with the adventures of the future ranger as a young man, when he was unjustly wanted by the law), on newsstands for a few days. Entitled “Bandera!” And set in 1959, it presents the encounter between a twenty-year-old Tex and a fifty-year-old Zagor. For the first time two of the most important characters of Sergio Bonelli Editore meet, in a team-up considered impossible for decades by the publisher.
They are partly different in nature as their creators, Giovanni Luigi Bonelli (Tex) and his son Sergio (Zagor) were different. There are also different eras and settings (Tex around 1880 in the prairies of the West Zagor around 1840 in the forests of the East). Zagor has as his companion in adventures (true co-star of the series) the Mexican Cico, protagonist of many comic gags, Tex is accompanied by “pards” (as he calls them) in the leg, the ranger Kit Carson, the Indian Tiger Jack and the son Kit.
Furthermore, the fantastic is not lacking in Tex, but it is much more present in Zagor, the same forest of Darkwood where it lives in reality does not exist.
Some fans feared that their meeting (which Sergio Bonelli, who passed away in 2011, was against) could distort the characters.
But the register instead has its own narrative sense starting with the authors. The screenplay is by Mauro Boselli, who has been curator of Tex’s stories for a decade and has long been the character’s leading screenwriter, who between the 1990s and early 2000s was the curator and screenwriter of Zagor, therefore knows the characters very well. The drawings are by Alessandro Piccinelli who made his debut in Bonelli in 2006 on Zagor (with a story written by Boselli himself) and then moved to Tex and in 2016 he took over from the late Gallieno Ferri (graphic creator of the character) as cover artist of Zagor.
The story does not disappoint: Boselli is linked to two of his adventures in Zagor released in the 1990s (and reprinted for the occasion) in which he went to Texas and became the blood brother of ranger Adam Crane and the Indian Comanche Lupo Grigio. Almost twenty years have passed, Zagor returns to Texas for the death of Lupo Grigio and helps Adam (who in the meantime has left the rangers to marry an Indian) against persecutors of Indians.
We have a twenty-year-old Tex not yet head of the Navajos and not even a ranger (he is even a wanted outlaw, although obviously innocent) and a fifty-year-old Zagor without his friend Cico: neither is the character who appears in his monthly series, Tex is still inexperienced, Zagor has grown wiser and sees that the dream of peaceful coexistence between Indians and whites in his Darkwood forest is probably just a dream.
The adventure is probably not what some fans were asking, nothing spectacular with the two fighting the archenemies (the wizard Mephisto for Tex the mad scientist for Hellingen), but it works, given that Boselli respects the character of the characters and Piccinelli draws very well history.
When Martin Mystère met Dylan Dog, Mister No and Nathan Never.
In recent years, Zagor has been the protagonist of most of Bonelli’s team-ups: he met the Dragonero fantasy hero, Brad Barron (who fights alien invaders in 1950s America), he also appeared in the third team-up. between Dylan Dog and Martin Mystère, released in 2018.
Extra Bonelli, next year is his meeting with Flash, the superhero of DC Comics of Batman and Superman.
But it was screenwriter Alfredo Castelli who brought the team-ups to the publishing house in the 1980s with his archaeologist-adventurer Martin Mystère.
“The” team ups “have always fascinated me and continue to fascinate me, when they are published” cum gran salis “and not at the foot of the road as often happens today, in which, moreover, any character can meet any other even if the their respective “universes” have nothing to do – he said. – Bonelli had never published any, so, as soon as I had the opportunity, that is, in n. 2 by Martin Mystère, in 1982, I included in the story a “cameo” by Mister No, a little fattened and gentrified. The character then appeared in 1985 also in another story by Martin Mystère drawn by Franco Bignotti, its historic designer ››.
The one in 1985 is between the cameo and the team-up: the Amazon rider Mister No appears for a dozen boards, he is not surprised when Martin Mystère tells him he is dealing with a case of reincarnation and mentions to him when he was in a certain valley.
Castelli had therefore set the conditions for the first team-up between the two, of different ages like Tex and Zagor (Mister No lives his adventures in the fifties, in the eighties he is sixty). However, when it comes out, in 1993, it is partially disappointing: Bignotti unfortunately passed away prematurely, the designers Domenico and Stefano Di Vitto are not as good and by the will of Sergio Bonelli, creator of Mister No (with whom he identified himself) even if in theory now seventy, the pilot is rejuvenated.
< In the meantime, however, Martin Mystère had already met, twice (in 1990 and 1992) the Investigator of the Nightmare Dylan Dog in two epochal books, designed by Giovanni Freghieri. The first, written largely by Castelli, is more effective than the second, the work mainly of the creator of Dylan Dog Tiziano Sclavi. In the nineties Martin Mystère is like Wolverine in the Marvel books of the time: he meets everyone. In 1996 there is the team-up with the detective of the future Nathan Never. Martin Mystère does not travel in time, Castelli remembered one of his stories in which the memory and personality of Martin Mystère had been “copied” on file and so Nathan Never meets an android with the memories of the scholar.
After a few years of absence, the team-ups have recently multiplied, in 2017 there was also a so-called crossover: a story that began on a Dylan Dog book ended on Dampyr’s one released a few days later.
Dampyr, created by Boselli with Maurizio Colombo, is a hunter of various vampires and monsters (he is the son of a “good” vampire) and therefore, even if the characters have a rather different approach to horror, there was a meeting between the two very good.
Of the two books, the second is more interesting (the first is written by the curator of Dylan Dog Roberto Recchioni with Giulio Antonio Gualtieri and drawn by Daniele Bigliardo) written by Boselli and drawn by Bruno Brindisi.
Boselli not only created Dampyr but also knows Dylan Dog well: he takes the character of Sclavi into the horror-historical territories of Dampyr (the vampire leader is a Viking marauder) without distorting it.
The screenwriter and curator announced that there could be two sequels to the team-up between Tex and Zagor, one direct (perhaps even with Cico’s presence) and one set decades later, in Manhattan, when Tex is already a ranger and leader of the Navajos.
Given the precedents, the fans of the two characters (and many are fans of both) can rest assured, the worlds of the leader of the Navajos and the Spirit with the Hatchet, if you know the characters and know how to write, are not so irreconcilable.
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