In the frame of the initiatives organised on the occasion of the International Games Week, the “Carducci” Public Library presents a selection of books, stories, characters and events that belong in the great narrative universe of fantasy, comics, and gamebooks.
Graphic novels, sword-and-sorcery, epic cosmogonies and coming-of-age novels told through comic strips, from horror stories to sci-fi visions, essays and drawing manuals.
Il trono di Spade – Volume 1 (Mondadori, 2019) by George R.R. Martin
📖 A huge conflict is about to erupt in an out-of-this-world land. On the Iron Throne, in the hot, opulent South, sits Robert Baratheon. He conquered it after a bloody war, taking it away from the last, mad king of the Targaryen dynasty, the dragon lords.
👉 The story follows a slow but steady pace, the characters are described to seem real. There are maps and an appendix. Updated translation. Special edition: thanks to the collaboration with HBO and their graphic designers, a new graphic design that will surprise collectors and lovers of the genre.
Heimat (Einaudi, 2019) by Nora Krug
📖 A young woman in search of her roots in the most complex period and place of the 20th century: Hitler’s Germany. A poetic and moving graphic novel of rare imaginative power that questions a collective sense of guilt that shows no sign of dissipating.
👉«Heimat» came out in 2018 and has won many awards. Although the subject matter is inevitably political, the book does not stem from a challenge to populism and the risks of mass instincts, but from a personal need. The author brings to life all the research she has carried out: the archives that made it possible to reconstruct a part of her grandfather’s life against the backdrop of the city’s events; conversations with relatives and witnesses, personal anecdotes; antiques from markets; questions on the internet and to local historians; the school exercise books that her uncle, born in 1926, wrote in Sütterlin with anti-Semitic themes.
Aurora Rising (Mondadori, 2020) by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kritoff
📖 It is the year 2380, the final year cadets of the Aurora Academy are about to be given their first real mission. The school’s star pupil, Tyler Jones, knows he’ll be allowed to compose his own crew as he pleases, so he’s already dreaming of recruiting the perfect team. But a drama unfolds for Ty: after awakening Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley from a two-hundred-year sleep, he discovers that she could trigger a thousand-year war and that he and his companions could be the last hope for the entire galaxy…
👉 This is the first volume of Mondadori’s new sci-fi cycle for teenagers, a Sci-fi, Young Adult adventure full of captivating protagonists, alien planets and mysterious forces
Disegnare fumetti in stile Marvel (Edizioni BD, 2017) by Stan Lee and John Buscema
📖 From the creators of Spider-Man, Thor, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers and a thousand others… The tricks of the trade for making powerful comics. How to create a memorable character, give life and dynamism to your drawings and turn a comic book board into an explosion of energy, thanks to the advice of the smiling Stan Lee and the vigorous John Buscema.
👉 The book contains explanations in distinct sections on how to draw superheroes in the best possible way, making them assume the most improbable positions. Of course, it depends on the talent of those who try, but the text is very clear and explanatory. An excellent starting point to channel the various notions of drawing into the language of comics.
L’Incal (Mondadori, 2019) by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius
📖 John Difool’s world is a distant future, a baroque age of high technology and great contradictions. The known universe is threatened by an evil and almost omnipotent entity, Darkness. To face the danger, a mystical force that has been dormant for thousands of years awakens and John is chosen to generate the creature destined to save the universe…
👉 L’Incal is a comic book space opera, created by Chilean playwright Alejandro Jodorowsky and French cartoonist Moebius between 1981 and 1988, published in the French magazine Métal Hurlant with the original title Une aventure de John Difool (An Adventure of John Difool). It was then renamed L’Incal in the following reprint of 1998.
Esploratori dello spazio. Star scout (Il Castoro, 2020) by Mike Lawrence
📖 Avani has recently moved to a new town and it is not at all easy. Everyone at school thinks she’s weird, especially the Flower Scout girls. But is it so crazy to believe that being a scout means choosing fun and adventure over clothes and boys? Everything changes when Avani “accidentally” gets kidnapped by an alien named Mabel…
👉 Funny and original, full of exhilarating and adrenaline-pumping moments. Graphically very appealing and linguistically immediate.
The walking dead. Raccolta. Vol. 4 ( Saldaress, 2020) di Robert Kirkman
📖 This edition of The Walking Dead – specifically conceived for the Italian market – collects four story arcs of the series in a single volume. More than 500 pages of comics that allow those who don’t yet know it to immerse themselves in the dramatic post-apocalyptic story of Rick Grimes and his group of survivors.
👉 The Walking Dead is the comic book series created by Robert Kirkman that has relaunched and defined the figure of the zombie on a global level. It is actually much more than that, a choral work in which the characters struggle to rebuild the concept of civil coexistence.
Diario di New York (Tunué, 2018) by Peter Kuper
📖Coloured pencils, pens, watercolours, collages: heterogeneous material to give life to thirty years of history of a frenetic, ever-changing city, seen with Kuper’s critical, ironic and highly political eye, including quotations from Swift and stories of political fantasy. A city that is a symbol of our times: the setting for many films, at the centre of world politics, a place of meetings and clashes, a place where fashions are born and where anything can happen.
👉 The author uses very different styles and types of storytelling. A vivid, ringing portrait, like a walk through the streets of NYC, among sounds, colours, stories and tragedies.
Graphic novel. Storia e teoria del romanzo a fumetti (Tunué, 2016) by Andrea Tosti
📖The history of caricature and humorous drawing, the semiotic analysis of graphic languages, the development of the popular press, the controversial transition from the idea of comics as a pastime for the illiterate to that of colourful entertainment for enthusiasts, to that of an art form for mature, cultured readers.
👉 Purists might well resort to the Italian expression “romanzo grafico“, but we are still talking about the dear old comics, aren’t we? Not only a historical review, but also an essay that helps to understand the specificity of paper clouds.
Other covers
