By Vittorio Giardino, translated by Jean-Jacques Surbeck (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-094-3
Born on Christmas Eve 1946, Italian electrician Vittorio Giardino changed careers at age 30 and began his true life’s work as one of the world’s most gifted graphic storytellers. Initially working for many European comics magazines, his first collection, Pax Romana, was released in 1978. There have been many more since.
Giardino has worked slowly but consistently on intriguing and complex characters such as detective Sam Pezzo, the cold-war hero Jonas Fink and diffident super-spy Max Fridman as well as general fiction tales, producing more than 35 albums to date.
In January 1984 Italian Popular Arts and nostalgic style magazine Glamour International featured an engaging ingénue in a sexually charged yet delightfully innocent homage to Winsor McKay’s immortal fantasy strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. Little Ego then graduated to in her own occasional series in Comic Art (July 1985 to November 1989) which was reprinted in this saucy little collection and Heavy Metal and Penthouse Comics.
As well as some of the most clean-lined and sublime narrative art produced in the last half century Giardino’s unique ability to inform and suggest with nuanced expression and gesture plus his scrupulous devotion to research and historical accuracy elevates his work far above the usual adults-only one-handed reading matter whilst his clearly heartfelt homage to a past master and lost age reveals a sly, dry sense of humour and deliciously whimsical bent. Whenever his frankly frustrated heroine dreams the world is full of wickedly animated flowers, an amorous crocodile in her bath, mischievously narcissistic mirror-images, persistent but extremely handy umbrellas and the double-edged problems of ultra efficient bust-enhancement creams.
As all the vignettes end with Ego wondering what her therapist will think, it’s clear that psychological “hot-button topics†played a big part in the strip’s make-up…
Eventually the two-page complete adventures gave way to longer and even continued escapades, beginning with an embarrassing public nudity dream – but one with a happy ending – followed by the introduction of dream companion Onis, whose bold and boisterous nature inevitably got her and Ego into lots of sticky scrapes and situations as they went on an extended dream-vacation through the labyrinths of erotic imagery and her suppressed subconscious…
With wing-walking, the exotic Middle-East, lost palaces, Bedouin encampments, Big City fashion houses, night clubs and the permanent promise of the enigmatic Green Sheik and his under-used and over zealous harem to tantalise and titillate Little Ego (and her readers) this is a book open-minded adults will yearn to own.
Lucky for one and all then that even though out of print this seductive slim tome is still readily available…
© 1989 Vittorio Giardino. English edition © 1989 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.