Art Spiegelman has been to Milan to present his magnificent collection of New Yorker covers. Spiegelman became famous with his extraordinary graphic novel Maus, in which he demonstrated that comics could talk about the Holocaust with the force of a great saga. But he continues to be topical, commenting on the events of our time with stories that can bring together current affairs and serious argument, with affectionate references back to the earliest comics. In short, I consider him a genius.
He came to my home for drinks, and I showed him my collection of comic books from long ago, some that are dog-eared originals and others good reprints, and he was amazed to see the covers of old Nerbini albums of The Phantom, Mandrake, Tim Tyler’s Luck, and Flash Gordon, amazed not so much at Flash Gordon, who is still legendary on the other side of the Atlantic, but at the other three. If you look at an American history of comics you’ll find references to The Phantom and others, but it’s apparent, even on the Internet, that the great remakes are more interested in Superman, the brigade of superheroes such as Spider Man, and postmodern updates of Batman, or they rediscover the origins of the oldest superhero, Plastic Man, as Spiegelman has also done in a magnificent book. Try looking for Tim Tyler’s Luck: you’ll find plenty of references to a bad film or a television series made from it, in the same way that a terrible TV series was made out of Flash Gordon, which now has trash cult status, but there’s very little mention of the original comics.
Spiegelman told me that The Phantom, Mandrake, and the rest still seem more popular in Italy than in America. He wondered why, and I gave him my explanation, which is that of a historical witness who saw their emergence and first publication in improbable and ungrammatical Italian translations very soon after they appeared in America. Among other things, the covers of some of the Nerbini albums bore the title Mandrache, perhaps to make it seem Italian. In Italy, we had Fascist comics like Dick Fulmine (Dick Lightning), Romano il legionario (Romano the Legionary), and the adolescents of Corriere dei piccoli, who were taking civilization to Abyssinia or performing astounding feats with the Falangists against cruel Red militiamen. But then Flash Gordon came along to show Italian children that they could fight for freedom on planet Mongo against a ruthless and bloodthirsty autocrat like Ming, that the Phantom was fighting not against colored people but with them to put down white mercenaries, that a vast Africa existed where the Patrol roamed around arresting ivory smugglers, that there were heroes who didn’t wander about in black shirts but in tailcoats and wore what the Fascist leader Achille Starace called “stovepipes,” ending with the revelation of press freedom through the adventures of Mickey Mouse the journalist, even before Humphrey Bogart arrived on our screens, though this was after the war, saying, over the telephone: “That’s the press, baby. The press! And there’s nothing you can do about it.” Such memories bring tears to the eyes—Oh, for the return of Mickey Mouse the television reporter!
In this way, during those dark years, the American comics taught us something and had an influence on us, even on our adult lives. And while we’re on the subject, let me make a forecast and give some advice to newspapers, magazines, and television programs. Every year we celebrate an anniversary, an author, a book, a remarkable event. Well, let’s get ready to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of that fabulous year 1934.
In January, the first Flash Gordon adventure appeared in America, as well as Jungle Jim, also created by Alex Raymond. Two weeks later, by the same cartoonist, Secret Agent X-9 with text by Dashiell Hammett! The first Flash Gordon adventure would appear in Italy in October, in L’Avventuroso, except that the hero was depicted not as a polo player, which was too bourgeois, but as a police chief. Leaving aside March, when Red Barry and Radio Patrol first appeared, in June we have the arrival of Mandrake by Lee Falk and Phil Davis, and in August Li’l Abner by Al Capp, which didn’t reach Italy until after World War II. In September Walt Disney made his debut with Donald Duck—do you realize Donald Duck is now seventy years old? In October it was Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff, which made its tentative debut in Italy over the next few years in installments of Albi Juventus, under the title Sui mari della Cina (On the China Seas). And in the same year, Le Journal de Mickey appeared in France with the stories of Mickey Mouse.
Now tell me if that year doesn’t offer us enough nostalgic interest.
2002