Written and Illustrated by Attilio Micheluzzi
Translated by Jamie Richards
Published by Fantagraphics Books
In my earliest years reading comic books, I never had the slightest inkling that comics were being made outside of the good old US of A.
Any comic books found elsewhere in the world, I was sure, were merely translations of American comic books. (I was familiar with Tin Tin, but naively assumed it was American!)
DC had even run a few images of foreign Superman comic books. I’ve always remembered that in Italy, Superman was inexplicably called the Nembo Kid!
At one point in the early 1970s, however, I discovered fanzines, and the very first fanzine I discovered was filled with images, previews, and reviews of original European comic books! I learned of Barbarella and Asterix, translated into English, but also of Valentina, Luc Orient, Bruno Brazil, and Bernard Prince. Sadly, I assumed I would never actually get to see or read any of those latter comics.
Jump ahead to the Internet age where foreign comic books and graphic novels are constantly being translated for English-speaking markets and translator apps for one’s phone are handy for actually reading German, French, Dutch, Italian, or Brazilian comics as one goes along. It’s a brave new world in which we find ourselves.
Gary Groth’s Fantagraphics empire has long championed the best of foreign comics.
Today’s offering is The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume by Italian comics master Attilio Micheluzzi. Micheluzzi’s name and work were completely new to me. Looks like these particular (related) stories in this volume were done in 1980 for the Italian comics magazine Alter. Micheluzzi died a decade later, in 1990. This current book is to be the first of multiple volumes reprinting the best of Micheluzzi’s work in English for the first time. I just wish I liked the book better than I do.
There’s no denying that the artist was a master of the comics medium. The art throughout makes stunning use of contrasting black and white, with many, many pages demonstrating a mastery of the use of blacks. The artist also deftly uses basic lines of varying thickness to create lush backdrops, wrinkled visages, or rain. If I had to choose an American artist whose work this resembles, it would be Alex Toth, although I’m not at all sure it was actually influenced by Toth in any way.
The story?
That’s where it falls apart for me. It’s confusing for one. Overall, it reads like an episodic Warner Bros. picture from the 1940s, with Labrume coming across like Humphrey Bogart or perhaps John Garfield, a tough guy mixed up in World War II without actually being a soldier.
There’s also a gorgeous, tragic blonde woman (I’m seeing Madeleine Carroll) and a number of character actor types. There’s desert intrigue, people being captured, people being shot, disguises, choppy seas, exploding airplanes, deceit, treachery, a little nudity, and some comic relief. If that’s not an exciting 1940s programmer (well, except for the nudity) I don’t know what it is.
The only problem is I never once felt invested in it. The characters didn’t feel fully fleshed out in any way. Many scenes were either too short or way too long, which through the pacing off. Perhaps, as the saying goes, something was lost in the translation.
The first half of the book was the best, and, in fact, seems pretty self-contained. I’m wondering if the rest was belatedly done in response to the popularity of the initial piece (which I think was serialized in Alter back in the day).
If you’re a fan of comics art and want to discover a European master whose work has not been all that well known in America, you might like The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume, but if you expect an exciting, or even completely understandable, story to go along with it, you’re likely to be disappointed, too.
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