I just returned from a Week End in Lucca where I
attended the 2012 edition of Lucca Comics. I am fascinated by the sheer amount
of comics you can find but mostly it’s the beautiful setting of the city itself
filled with real people dressed as fantasy characters (Cosplay). This year the
new comics that grabbed my attention were END by Barbara Canepa and Anna Merli
and ABC by Ausonia. Though the stories are different they both contain the
possibility of communicating between the world of the living and that of the
dead, and since the main character in both is a young girl I immediately
thought of Jostein Gaarder’s Through a glass, Darkly. In all these stories
there is an attempt to explain the separation of the material and spiritual
worlds and a inquiry into death and religion. These stories are very different
to the ones dealing with time travel I read as a teenager such as Nathan Never,
and Watchmen in which Dr. Manhattan has incredible powers including
precognition (explained by Tachyons) but they are all very thought provoking
and beautiful.
