Sara Pichelli: Spider-Man lives in your part – Andrea Bauer

Brado is a place that is fashionable today, you recognize them by the name: a single word, five or six letters. And an idea: in this case a menu based basically on animals raised in the wild. The studio where Pichelli works is nearby, in the Furio Camillo area, southern Rome. Let’s break the ice talking about friends and places in common, the rest is done by the gin and tonic with which we will dine.

“I would like to change, no longer just superheroes, a graphic novel for example is my secret dream”. Pichelli, born in 1983, is currently one of the most important designers of Marvel Comics, the American comic book publishing house that has given life to characters such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and Thor. Pichelli has just signed a contract with Marvel that will keep it busy for another four years.

Look on the menu for “a fried bomb with wild boar” that he remembered but can’t find, so he folds up on a game stew. Pichelli linked his name above all to the success of Miles Morales, the character he invented together with the author and screenwriter Brian Michael Bendis. He is a half Hispanic, half African American teenager who wears the Spider-Man costume in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe. The series was a huge success, crowned by the Oscar for animation won in 2019 by the film starring Miles: Pichelli simply calls his creation, whose costume he also imagined.

“At almost forty I would like to change”, he continues. “I recently did a work of street art and it was beautiful, I kind of woke up. I’ve been making superheroes since 2008, and in all these years I have drawn almost only Spider-Man ”. It’s like talking to a rapper who has just won platinum: you would like to hear him tell about his upcoming collaborations and instead he tells you that it was good, but that now maybe if you think about it his dream is a record for vocals and acoustic guitar. But why don’t you do it then? “I wish I had a lot of money to just do graphic novels when I feel like it, but deliveries for Marvel take my time. In the few free moments I write, script and draw my own stories. When I am ready I will go to a publisher and tell him: here, this is my book, if you like it, you can buy it and publish it ”.

The fact is that Pichelli has arrived in the Olympus of nerds, without ever having been a nerd. “I didn’t read superheroes, I found myself drawing them a bit by chance. In 2008 I was fired from the animation studio where I worked, my partner at the time was already drawing for US publishers and he knew that Marvel was doing a worldwide competition to look for new talent. I participated without too much enthusiasm, I didn’t have high expectations. And instead I won ”.

Pichelli learned in the field to draw superheroes, and at the same time discovered their political value: “You know what it means in 2012, with Barack Obama as president of the United States, to draw a Spider-Man like Miles Morales, who represents two minorities ? The first time I was at Comic Con in New York, a great comic book show, I had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of guys who thanked me. They were moved because I had drawn a superhero who represented them, one who lived in their neighborhood, who could be their neighbor ”.

After Miles Morales, Marvel has entrusted her with one of those projects that generate very high expectations among fans: to draw a Spider-Man miniseries written by JJ Abrams, the director among other things in the series. Lost and of Episode VII and Episode IX of Star Wars, and by Abrams’ son, Henry. “What have I learned from working with him? That writing movies and writing comics are two different things ”, he says, making irony about the director, who is considered a kind of sacred monster. “Everyone takes it for granted that I know by heart Star Wars because I draw comics, that this was my dream as a child, but I answer him: ‘It’s not a faith, it’s not Roma, it’s work’. A good job, but still a job ”.

At the moment there are no fantasy books on Pichelli’s bedside table, much less dystopian novels from worlds to come, but many psychology essays. “It is a personal path of growth, which also helps my artistic vision”.

Pichelli is involved in the activities of the Moleste collective, which brings together designers, editors and illustrators engaged in the construction of a transfeminist point of view in the world of comics. In Italy there have been, at least so far, no public complaints of abuse of power or sexual harassment in the world of comics, while in the United States the MeToo has overwhelmed one of the most successful screenwriters in the world, Warren Ellis. Pichelli explains that it was a necessary shock: “Not only to talk about abuse and harassment, but also to realize that if there are many female or non-binary artists, the positions of power are all in the hands of heterosexual white males” .

To draw superheroes it is not necessary to have special powers, nor to live in California or New York. Even a feminist who lives in Rome and who has so many stories to tell with her pencils can do it very well.