ProGlo: Quattro Dita di Rich Koslowski

ProGlo Edizioni – Collana «Sequenze» 5
Quattro Dita
di Rich Koslowski

Vincitore dell’IGNATZ AWARD 2003

-Warren Ellis

Prospettiva Globale è orgogliosa di presentare l’edizione italiana una delle graphic novel più originali e innovative dell’ultimo decennio: Quattro Dita (Three Fingers) di Rich Koslowski.

Quattro Dita ripercorre la vita di Dizzy Walters, indiscusso genio dell’animazione americana, attraverso mezzo secolo di storia Hollywoodiana. Ma Quattro Dita è anche la storia vera della vita di un topo di nome Rickey Rat, un tempo fulgidissima star del cinema animato, adesso vecchio e alcolizzato cartone che blatera di strane storie e ancor più strani complotti…

Quattro Dita si presenta nella forma (del tutto inedita per un fumetto) di falso documentario (o mockumentary, come si dice in inglese), innestandosi sulla via già tracciata da capolavori cinematrografici come Zelig e This is Spinal Tap. Koslowski rielabora il genere del mockumentary per il medium fumetto, inserendo interviste esclusive, fotografie d’annata, eventi e personaggi che hanno fatto la storia del cinema e degli Stati Uniti: l'operazione di mimetizzazione è talmente ben riuscita che sembra di assistere a una puntata di Behind the music, lo show televisivo a cui l'autore si è ispirato, ambientata in un universo parallelo.

Il punto di vista che sottostà all'opera è, se non inedito, del tutto non convenzionale: Koslowski immagina che i cartoon siano dotati vita propria nell’America degli anni ’50 e ‘60, e racconta di una comunità ghettizzata che tanto ricorda quella afroamericana: un tema già suggerito in opere come Chi ha incastrato Roger Rabbit, ma qui reso con tutta la crudezza e il cinismo idonee a un’opera che pretende di raccontare una realtà, seppur fittizia (ma neanche tanto, se si pensa alla fonte d'ispirazione di un gran numero dei primi personaggi dei cartoons. Questi ultimi derivavano, in effetti, da una visione stereotipata delle minoranze etniche, tipica anche delle riviste di vaudeville).

Una graphic novel che riallaccia fili e temi della storia sommersa d’America (come la caccia alle streghe, i Kennedy e l’interazione razziale) e tesse un unico grande affresco al cui c’entro c’è lui, il topo più importante di Hollywood. Quattro Dita racconta di pettegolezzi e Storia, passioni e vizi, successi e fallimenti, che si stringono, come cerchi concentrici, verso la madre di tutte le teorie del complotto.

Anche dal punto di vista del linguaggio l'opera offre degli spunti d'interesse, non solo per la componente sperimentale offerta dalla particolare struttura del lavoro, ma anche dal modo in cui questa struttura viene esplicitata. Ci troviamo davanti a due modulazioni diverse del linguaggio che interagiscono: le sequenze ambientate nel passato narrativo, che presentano materiale d'archivio raccontato in voce off, vengono rese tramite l'uso di fotografie e collage, con una struttura libera della pagina e testo che si sovrappone alle immagini, laddove le sequenze che illustrano il presente narrativo, le interviste, sono completamente disegnate, con tavole prevalentemente in griglia fissa di due righe (metodo che rende alla perfezione il tempo televisivo dell'intervista), griglia che occasionalmente, in alcuni momenti di maggior tensione drammatica, viene scardinata. I due metodi interagiscono a meraviglia, imprimendo un senso di movimento a un'opera che altrimenti sarebbe apparsa ingessata.

Quattro Dita deve certamente buona parte del suo primo impatto al ben posizionato twist della trama, di stampo cospirazionista, che avviene nella prima parte del volume, ma è anche un'opera che, alla rilettura, offre una serie di spunti di riflessione non banali non solo sui retroscena dell'industria dello spettacolo, ma anche sul rapporto fra fruitori e personaggi di fantasia.

Quattro Dita di Rich Koslowski

Brossurato 25,5x21 – 144 pagine b/n – 19 euro

Disponibile da maggio 2008

L’autore

Nel campo dell’animazione e del fumetto fin dal 1990, Rich Koslowski ha esordito come inchiostratore per la Archie Comics, ritagliandosi nel corso del tempo sempre più spazio per i progetti personali e le sperimentazioni sul fumetto e sul racconto illustrato. Koslowski balza agli onori della critica nel 1996 con la serie autoprodotta The 3 Geeks, che racconta della vita semiseria di tre nerd appassionati di fumetti. Nel corso degli anni The 3 Geeks raccoglie tre nomination agli Eisner Awards, che permettono a Koslowski di strappare un contratto alla casa editrice indipendente Top Shelf, con cui pubblica, nel 2002, Three Fingers – Quattro Dita, primo (e finora unico) suo lavoro a star per essere pubblicato in Italia. Quattro Dita vince l’Ignatz Award (il premio più prestigioso per i fumetti indipendenti) come miglior graphic novel del 2003, battendo la concorrenza di opere blasonate come Il Grande Male di David B. (Coconino) e Frank di Jim Woodring (Free Books). Successivamente a Quattro Dita pubblica The King, dove mescola religione ed Elvis Presley, e il racconto illustrato The List, sulla vera vita di Babbo Natale. Entrambi i libri sono inediti in Italia.

Rassegna Stampa (in inglese)

Recensione tratta da artbomb.net

di Warren Ellis

http://www.artbomb.net/detail.jsp?gid=15&tid=302

THREE FINGERS is what you'd get if Oliver Stone had done Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

In the early part of the 20th Century, Dizzy Walters teams up with Rickey Rat, performer from the much-maligned "toon" species that humans share the earth with, and makes the first successful movie starring a toon. But the success does not seem to spread to other toons. They start to suspect that Rickey Rat has something unusual in his favour. They focus on the fact that Rickey Rat has a birth defect: only three fingers on each hand. What if that was the source of his success?

This wonderfully nasty little book is structured as a documentary, "footage" from the lives of the toon stars and their friends and handlers intercut with interviews from the present day with survivors of the time. Toons grown old. Gleefully grotesque little character studies of wrinkled cartoon characters with bulging eyes and weathered beaks. Rasping in the dark about conspiracies and maltreatment and hate. Lots and lots of hate.

It's a completely involving piece of work, cleverly easing you past the central conceit until you're immersed in the story. It gets you to laugh with the black jokes when they happen, so you're not taken out of the story. You go along with it, this great big mad yarn, until finally you're squirming uncomfortably in your seat at the mutilation and the unfairness and the doom of it.

Why won't Bugs Bunny take off his gloves?

Recensione tratta da Comic World News

di Michael May

http://cwn.comicraft.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?column=reviews&page=209

As soon as you see the cover, you know you're in for some mixed feelings. An overweight figure sits alone in an easy chair not smoking the cigarette he's holding as ash builds and builds on its tip. Sitting on the table next to him is a half-empty bottle of tequila and a full glass. It's a tragic, friendless scene, until you notice his big, goofy gloves and the familiar mouse ears in his shadow on the wall.

The cover of Three Fingers is a paradox. It gives you a taste of what you're about to experience by reading the book, but in no way prepares you for it. The story is tragic and goofy, but the intensity of that juxtaposition is something that has to be felt by facing the story.

Told in the style of a documentary, Three Fingers relates the history of movie cartoons, especially the pioneers of the medium, Dizzy Walters and his star Rickey Rat. But what begins as a simple alternative account (‘toons in this story are real creatures, not just drawings) of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse's early years quickly turns dark. In trying to figure out why Rickey Rat was so popular when other cartoons weren't, jealous ‘toons allow superstition to give birth to a bizarre ritual in which they try to make themselves look more like Rickey by surgically disfiguring themselves so that they only have three fingers.

Rich Koslowski is able to use this story to touch on many different subjects from racial stereotypes in cartoons to abortion to the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, JFK, and MLK. All the while making you grin and chuckle. Told you there'd be mixed feelings.

His representations of the characters contribute to the conflicted emotions. Carhorn Armwhistle, a Foghorn Leghorn parody, is a perfect example. Withered with age, Carhorn has veins protruding along his comb, a gummy beak, and a wattle that resembles nothing so much as a hairy, wart-infected scrotum. He's also very very funny. "Now you listen ta me!" he says, talking about Rickey Rat. "Ah love that lil' son of a bitch! Ya heah me? Got me laid back in '36 by this red-headed hot human broad! Heh!"

Other characters are just as grotesque from their botched surgeries and long lives and just as eternally humorous as Koslowski captures the elements that endear their counterparts to real-life audiences. In trying to learn who took some mysterious pictures that surfaced of ‘toons undergoing surgery, pictures that analysts determined to have been taken by someone moving very quickly, the documentary interviews a prime suspect: a silhouetted rodent with a big hat. "I know notheeng," the Unidentified Former Toon Actor says. "I say notheeng. I don' know who take these peectures… no."

Koslowski uses several techniques to give the comic a documentary feel. Static images overlaid with text remind the reader of those PBS documentaries in which still photographs are shown with voiceover narration. For interview segments, Koslowski uses simple three- and six-panel grids in which each panel on the page is the same shot of the interviewee, with only the character's expression changing from panel to panel. It's an effective system, enhanced by his realistic artistic style. The representations of still photographs look as if Koslowski sketched them from actual photo references, even the ones depicting ‘toons being loaded into police cruisers by human cops. He draws the ‘toon interviewees with as much care and realism as the human ones. The effect is so realistic that you expect any moment for the story to be interrupted an announcer begging you to call in and pledge your public television membership.

I expected Three Fingers to be a funny parody of beloved cartoons, and it is. What I didn't expect is to be as disturbed by their portrayal as I was. And it's not that Koslowski simply went too far in trying to be funny and crossed into the land of the disgusting. It's obvious that he intends to upset at the exact same time that he entertains. It's an enormous challenge for a creator to set for himself, but Koslowski meets it with apparent ease.

Recensione tratta da The 4th Rail.com

di Randy Lander

http://www.thefourthrail.com/reviews/snapjudgments/081202/threefingers.shtml

(Best of the Week!)

Highly Recommended (10/10)

I mostly know Koslowski from his work on the humor title 3 Geeks, but Three Fingers is something very different, and it is remarkable. The book tells a sad and sordid tale of Hollywood excess, and its impressive how much pathos Koslowski manages to wring out of the story because none of it actually happened. While there are links to the real world in references to the cartoon empires of Disney and Warner Brothers and their character libraries, Koslowski takes the approach that the "Toons" are just actors like any other, and explores the history of early cartoons in a way no one has before. This book reads like what might happen if Ken Burns had written and directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and it has a charm and sense of humor that is mesmerizing.

Koslowski has really captured the feel of a Hollywood tell-all in this book, as he "interviews" various cartoon stars and studio heads to talk about the early days of animation and how one star, Rickey Rat, sort of defined the whole thing with his mentor and studio boss Dizzy Walters. There are very thinly-veiled analogues of cartoon characters and studios in this book, presumably for legal reasons, but the similarities are close enough to make this a highly entertaining read for those who grew up on Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons as I did. Seeing these goofy cartoon characters acting like stars, whether broken down old men or haughty performers who scoff at the lowly early days of their work, is an odd but enjoyable experience.

What really impresses me about Three Fingers, however, is the tone that the book strikes. The story told her is undoubtedly a tragedy, ruining the lives of almost everyone involved and causing pain and heartache to every character forced to remember it. However, there is still plenty of humor to be found, whether it's in the strange juxtaposition of a childhood cartoon icon cursing his way through an interview, the silly idea of cartoons being at Senatorial hearings and Hollywood parties or just the mapping of superstar attitudes and politics onto cartoon personalities.

As you would expect from Top Shelf, the book is beautifully designed, done in an oversized format that approximates the "widescreen" format similar to the one Marvel has used in their "Marvelscope" annuals or AIT/Planet Lar in the Channel Zero design book. This allows Koslowski plenty of room to stage the story, setting it up to look like a mixture of "filmed" interviews and still shots, using the full page and sequential panels to indicate the interviews and more white space and narrative captions to indicate the still photographs. Koslowski evokes the look of an E! True Hollywood Story or something similar with his artwork, and it's that style that makes the story work so effectively.