Dylan Dog’s version “OldBoy” always transports us to the 80s, reading these pages one is seized by a sense of amarcord and nostalgia for a time, in which not everything worked but it was more carefree.
The register that presents two stories involves us in a whirlwind of events that make us smile bitterly, especially in the first story “With closed eyes” with drawings by Marco Nizzoli and subject by Bruno Enna, in which a mysterious individual: Jacob has the ability through your eyes to travel in the folds of time.
He presents himself to Dylan because he eliminates him, as he feels in him a transformation that he will not be able to control. He describes events that we know well, let’s remember that the adventures of this magazine take place in the 80s, therefore the death of Lady Diana, he describes a humanity that will move like automatons attached to several electronic devices (mobile phones)…
Dylan refuses to kill him and mysteriously the individual disappears. Years later due to strange murders that have no motive, they lead the investigator of the occult into a community that he will discover is run by this Jacobs….
A fast and intriguing but above all sobering narrative, a denunciation of the consumerist and individualistic society that exists today. A sense of shiver runs over the skin when our hero finds himself in events such as September 11, 2001 in New York or in London during the covid pandemic, without being able to give himself an answer
The question that arises at the end of the story is this, was Jacob the madman or are we ourselves unwittingly being exploited by a system corrupted by marketing and lobbies that think only of their own interests?
In the second story “The Wild Boys”, drawn by Gianluca Acciarino and subject by Barbara Baraldi, Dylan has to investigate a strange disappeared writer: Bull Lee who until the death of his wife, killed by himself and not condemned, his books were little known but later became a kind of prophet becoming a cult author. In his books he preaches indiscriminate violence to destabilize the system and in the city in recent times acts of delinquency have increased…
A very particular story that takes the investigator into a world reminiscent of the Mad Max film, with individuals who seem to come out of Ken the Warrior, in a world where typewriters have their own personality, all in a very surreal context where action and drama intertwine to arrive at an unexpected final twist, just like in a classic adventure novel.
Perhaps the second comic is less intriguing, too over the top with an excess of the fantastic thus limiting the horror element a lot. Enough to get to the end of the reading in a tired way, one feels the desire, in the last part of the story, to quickly reach the conclusion.