When I first became
aware of Italian comics and graphic novels (known as “fumetto”,
for “picture-stories”, in Italian), I found that most of what has
been translated for English-speaking audiences are books by the
greats of Italian erotica: Guido Crepax’s adaptations of erotic
classics like The Story of O and Justine, Milo Manara’s
amusing and often thoughtful flights of fantasy and Paulo Serpieri’s
buxom heroine Druuna. Hmm, I wonder what that says about the
interests of English speakers?
When you start looking, you find that Italy has
produced quite a number of notable comics in both the adventure and
humour/satire genres, although sadly not many of them translated into English. For example, in 1968 the writer and artist
Franco Bonvicini (better known as Bonvi) created the popular anti-war
comic book Sturmtruppen, which is set in WW2 but (like Robert
Altman’s M*A*S*H) never had to refer directly to the conflict by
name because it is obvious to the reader from the numerous
German/Nazi caricatures.
There is also Benito Jacovitti’s hot-tempered, chamomile tea sipping gunslinger
Cocco Bill, whose adventures in the Far West are accompanied by his
cigarette-smoking, tequila-drinking horse Trottalemme (literally,
“trot slowly”). Jacovitti’s style was reminiscent of Asterix
co-creator Uderzo, or maybe the English underground cartoonist Hunt
Emerson, although he pre-dated these artists by some years.
Then there is the
satirical spy comic Alan Ford, first created by Luciano Secchi
(writing as Max Bunker) and Roberto Raviola (drawing as Magnus) in
1969, which was laced with surrealistic black humour and sardonic
references to contemporary Italian and wider western society. The
book tells the story of a collection of spies called “il gruppo
TNT” (literally, “the TNT group”) who operate undercover out of
a flower shop in New York, and are perpetually broke. The characters
are all incredibly smart but also incredibly lazy, and their struggle
against people like the criminal Superciuk (“superhick”), who
robs from the poor to give to the rich, I understand sometimes
results in them defeating him purely by accident.
The books became
very popular in Italy, but although editions appeared in French,
Danish and Portuguese (primarily for Brazil), it never really caught
on in the same way in those countries. It also never appears to have been published in English, despite the fact that Magnus modelled the main characters' appearance on the English actor Peter O'Toole.
We can only wonder
if the way the books were translated had something to do with it, as
the only country outside Italy where Alan Ford caught on in a big way
was across the Adriatic in neighbouring Yugoslavia, which at that
time stood between the capitalist west and communist east with its
unique commitment to market socialism and the Non-Aligned Movement it
helped create.
When Alan Ford was
picked up by the Yugoslavian daily newspaper Vjesnik
(“Bulletin”) in 1972, its success appears to have been partly down
to its translator Nenad Brixy, who inserted lots of uniquely Croatian
references into the strip. The comics’ Italian writer certainly
credited Brixy’s work as playing a large part in the books success
in the Balkans, and it is clearly a testament to their combined skill
that the Ford books remain a cult icon in a number of Yugoslavia’s successor
states, primarily Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
The latter even
hosted an exhibition “Alan Ford in BiH: yesterday and today” in
2014 as part of its Month of Italian Culture. For its curator
Professor Daniele Onori of the Italian Embassy “in
the characters and their behaviour, Yugoslav readers found something
which spoke directly to them.” Perhaps
it
was because
unlike Batman or James Bond the characters all lived in poverty on
the floor of their flower shop, or because Yugoslavs saw in the leader of the TNT group, a man named Number 1, an unintentional caricature of Tito...who knows?
Although
Alan Ford and the TNT group have proved most popular in the
Serbo-Croatian speaking parts of the Balkans, the villain Superciuk
is notable for having inspired the name of a Macedonian punk rock
band, and despite the
paper
Vjesnik
having come to an end a
few years ago Alan
Ford continues to appear in print thanks to the
Croatian publisher Agarthi
Comics.
On a side note, the
paper Vjesnik actually had quite an interesting history. In
the west the so-called “underground” press merely referred to
newspapers and comics that were published and distributed quite
openly, but generally marginalised to outlets like head shops
frequented by mainly young people with left-liberal political
leanings. They were sometimes targeted for obscenity, like Oz
magazine in the UK was in 1971, but were generally allowed to publish
unhindered.
Vjesnik
however was started during WW2, when Croatia was under literal Nazi
occupation/annexation, as a paper of the leftist Yugoslav Partisans (the
anti-fascist resistance), only becoming a national newspaper-of-record after
the Nazi defeat in 1945. Within this context, printing and
distribution must have been quite a challenge.
It seems a shame to me that after the break-up of Yugoslavia the paper came under the
control of the Croatian Democratic Union, which was at the time the country’s
ruling conservative party, who even changed its name for a while to Novi Vjesnik
(literally “New Bulletin”, which to an English speaker reminds me
of the same kind of right-wing revisionism that led to New Labour). These moves only led to a terminal decline in readership and the papers eventual
closure in 2012.
Fortunately, like
most good comic strips, Alan Ford’s cult appeal seems to go far
beyond his original platforms.
