Talking clouds

Published: 2008 - October/November, Culture, Venetian Itinerary

There is a very long bridge connecting New York and Venice to the comic strips. On one hand the American comics have for decades, especially after the War, influenced the Italian culture, literature and cinema. On the other, a group of intellectuals have learned the lesson and ended-up rebuilding the image of “their” America so faithfully to be called by the Americans,  ‘masters’.
Professional designer and painter, collaborator of magazines and books for Mondadori,  Corriere della Sera-Rizzoli, Bonelli Editore, Walt Disney, Fabbri and daily newspapers like the Il Gazzettino, Il Giorno, Corriere dello Sport, Il Resto del Carlino, Tuttosport, La Nazione, Il sole 24 Ore, Paolo Ongaro, Venetian mainland born, collaborator even in France with Larousse, in Great Britain with I.P.C., with works of graphics, water painting and comic strips displayed in Spain, Denmark, Norway and probably the only Italian designer to have published works in China, tells us about his drawn world.

Ongaro, you export your drawings in many countries and like you Cavazzano and much before still Pratt and Battaglia. A Venetian school of comic strips?
“Yes, I’d say yes. It all started after the Second World War, with the creation of Asso di Picche, (Ace of Spades), by Faustinelli, Alberto Ongaro, Pratt and later Battaglia, originating from the America’s own Masked Man. Then from Venice an interest for comics has crossed our borders and many have been called in Argentina by Edizioni Civita to create a comic magazine. The first was Pratt and thanks to me he’s been able to meet Jose Luis Salinas and Breccia, whom I consider the acknowledged fathers of the famous magazines Skorpio and Lanciostory”.
You have drawn westerns for many years, so how has America influenced your way of putting together a story, from behind the borders?
“It’s difficult to explain when considering that for the designers of westerns stories there is only the research of style to be done, because Americans have never had large productions given that their mentality does not conceive far-reaching stories as in fact it happens even in the comics by Marvel. It’s happened only with a story narrating the Klondike times, but anyway it was designed by Giolitti, an Italian. So far the best western comic strip is the work of Italians and French.”
And what about your first impact with the American style?
“My first impact with the American comics was Intrepido, through the conception of the story ‘Al di la della realtà’, (Beyond Reality), for which I was supplied with old glossy American comics in which texts had to be maintained, I was to redo the drawings to bring the American product to the attention of the Italian reader leaving however intact its features. Then there was the Immortale, my very first ‘American style’ comic strip published also in France and Spain and which, after 30 years, is still present, so much so that it is reprinted in volume and will be shown in Comics’ episodes in TV and at the Lucca’s comics. It has an American graphic but the story has European innuendos; it is the story of an extraterrestrial, who loses its memory falling on our planet, but rediscovering its powers each time, to defend the planet Earth.”
And America? Its Designers?
“I remember a trip of many years ago. With Pratt and Bonvi. Paraphrasing the start of the novel ‘Death in Venice’ by Bradbury, I’d like to say that Manhattan, in those days, had much to offer to those who indulged in comics. A happy circumstance took me to touch with my hands a four generations myth: Flash Gordon. I met Alphonsus ‘Al’ Williamson at the bar of a Manhattan hotel. After a short greeting he introduced me to his wife and another person with him: Frank Robbins, author of Johnny Hazard, a comic character known also by us. I couldn’t believe it: I had standing in front of me two great American authors who treated me as their colleague. A few hours later I was at Williamson’s home as his guest. We spoke in Spanish; Venetian dialect has always helped me with that language. During the car trip I mentally reviewed his work. As a boy, around the mid Sixties, I had ‘discovered’ the designer on the pages of the first issues of ‘Creepy’, an American comics magazine, reintroduced in Italy by Mondadori with the name of Zio Tibia, which I used to find at the Messaggerie of Venice in Riva del Carbon. But also his first episode of Flash Gordon on the ‘Comics Club 104’, the first Italian fanzine founded by Paolo Sala and Alfredo Castelli. At his home, while looking at the many tables, almost point-blank, he forced me on an old leather armchair and, laying on a desk some strips by Rip Kirby, of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim designed by one of the greatest designer ever, Raymond, then he said to me: ‘you are sitting at his desk, my friend’. If I ever thought premature calling me friend, in that moment he became just that for me. He had given me a beautiful emotion.” 
Raymond, one of the greatest designers of all times, for the comics is the equivalent of Disney for the anthropomorphic comics. Raymond was not inspired by comics, he invented them. Like Hugo Pratt who had put on display in one of his exhibits “the language of comics”. How did they influence your style?
“The regards for Raymond’s art I nurtured for years, in that moment reached the climax. I knew those drawings from the publications by the Spada brothers of Rome, but the original on a cardboard which by yellowing gave away their age, were something else. The ‘world’ created with flawless strokes of brush, portraying of the characters (the falcon men, Ming the cruel suspended cities) all was a precious mosaic, a story that since 1933 made entire American and European generations dream. The explanation for the success was obvious: it was the work of a ‘giant’. Exactly for this reason, many prominent artists have drawn with both hands from those images: from Philip Pearlstein to Jasper Johns to Roy Lichtenstein.”
Did you meet Williamson for a second time?
“Once in a while I still remember how we met him at that famous bar, forcing my guide to go around the tables hollering ‘the one who’s pushing me is an Italian who wants to meet Mr. Al Williamson.’ I suggested that to her remembering some scenes from comedy-film, but every now and then she would burst-out with a not so respectful ‘crazy’. Later we met often. At his first visit in Venice I pointed out to him that Saint Mark’s basin was not a place for a Malayan junk, the one he had drawn in a story set in the lagoon. ‘It’s true – he replied smiling with irony – I am afraid it slipped in these waters to avoid the attention of an Asiatic documenting file.’ An oversight that takes away nothing from the superb representation of a Venice unknown by him.”
For years in Italy you have been drawing Martin Mystere, an educated character and very much liked in New York where the story is set. How do you feel about it?
“It is a character who I have always loved. Archeological researches, mysteries, globe-trotter living in New York. Created by Castelli much before Indiana Jones. He is a very fascinating character but does not allow me any graphic curlicue as I could with publications with different requirements, but yet live gripping stories, in which I find myself sensing the love I feel for the atmospheres of the novels by E. A. Poe or H. P. Lovecraft.”
A bridge built with pencil and nib. A bridge longer then the Liberty or Brooklyn. A bridge built to sustain centuries and that can be crossed even by just closing the eyes and give-in to imaginations. A bridge uniting Venice and New York, crossed by designers like Ongaro and Cavazzano and by those characters made of imagination, that imagination no one can do without, those characters made of the same matters dreams are made of.