Tex Willer has been the cornerstone of Italian comics for nearly seventy years now, and perhaps it's about time that the well known Texas Ranger has finally received a worthy English edition on the American shores across the Atlantic (The Lonesome Rider, a 2005 Tex English edition from SAF comics, has only recently been re-issued in hard cover format). A product of the famed Sergio Bonelli Editore publisher (the same house that produces Zagor and Dylan Dog, to name just a few), Tex is a defining product of Italy as much as the Roman Colosseum, cinema of Federico Fellini, or pizza. He's their definition of what an American Cowboy should look and sound like - yellow shirt and blue pants in tow.
Patagonia finds Tex Willer being asked by his friend, Major Ricardo Mendoza, to temporarily leave the American Wild West in order to join him far away, on the southernmost edge of South America, in order to help bring peace and justice to a conflict in which the local natives have been oppressed by the Argentinian military. Having had plenty of experience dealing with indigenous people - Tex (also known as Night Eagle) had married a Navajo woman, and his son Kit is half Native American - the powers that be figured that Willer is the perfect archetype to bring about equality and awareness to the plight of people half a world away whose suffering mirrors those of their distant brothers and sisters on the Northern American continent. Therefore, joined by his son Kit (it's the second most masculine name there is, according to Tex's creators), the iconic Texas Ranger sails the ocean blue, and heads to the distant Argentina.
More so than an average episode of Gian Luigi Bonelli's Western creation - a hero whose motto more often than not is to "kick ass and take names", or even to "shoot now, ask questions later" - Tex Willer here plays against his type: a peaceful mediator on a continent not his own, where he only gets in a single fistfight (as always, he's never defeated, or made to look inferior), and kills only a couple of his enemies (justifiably in the field of battle). Unlike another Italian graphic novel icon, Ken Parker, a poetic hero of the Western pulp whose compassion and generosity typically don't involve him committing much murder, Tex can be - and often is - a more "brutish" type of gentleman. His guns are the ideological vessels of what's right and wrong, but seldom his prose.
As illustrated by the masterful artist Pasquale Frisenda (Ken Parker and Magic Wind serials) and written by the ever-ingenious Mauro Boselli (who's been active on several Bonelli editions over the years), Patagonia (Epicenter Comics, 240 pages; $29.99) is a book that is equal measure marvel and wonder from a pure publishing perspective (to say nothing of its story and artwork, which are also impressive). The large, hard cover exterior is complimented by slick, smooth interior pages, and the result is a complete package of perhaps the highest quality Bonelli comic book edition published in English - at least thus far.
rhetoric of the current POTUS.
The final act of Patagonia - SPOILER ALERT! - which involves Tex and his new allies fighting off the soldiers from atop of a mountain, feels a bit rushed. One gets the impression that Frisenda and Boselli had filled nearly every single one of their allotted pages with the former's glorious illustrations that they simply ran out of space. Still, Patagonia is a grand Tex adventure with one of the finest artworks you will ever see anywhere, a survival story that is humane and universal enough to be better than an average Night Eagle exploit.
B
No comments:
Post a Comment