I'm Mister No, review
I'm Mister No
After Zagor, Cico and Nathan Never, Sergio Bonelli Editore publishes Io sono Mister No. This is a very special volume that revisits the (editorial) life of the character created by Guido Nolitta as an anthology, combining however some extracts of his most famous comic book adventures to a long story in prose, in first person, signed by Luigi Mignacco.My name is Mister No
I am Mister No retraces in a more or less chronological way the events that led Jerry Drake to become the reckless home rider in Manaus known to most as Mister No. But who really is Mystery No?To answer this question Luigi Mignacco starts from the origins of the character. We are in New York and little Jerry Drake grows up in an environment that is anything but healthy enough to meddle with the local underworld making the decision to leave the Big Apple in 1936 after his father ended up in jail. A journey to the heart of America begins for young Jerry, just sixteen, that will lead him to experience new troubles and adventures first in Des Moines in Iowa and then in Buffalo in Wyoming.
Continuing his pilgrimage from the coast east to west crossing the heart of the nation, Jerry arrives in California where, in 1941, he decides to enlist, together with his friend and mentor Bat Barlington in the "Flying Tigers" to fight alongside the Chinese against the Japanese invaders, thus moving to Far East. It is during one of these incredible battles that Jerry is captured and earned the nickname "Mister No" by a cruel Japanese officer, due to the proud obstinacy he displays in refusing to obey orders after being taken prisoner.
Making himself known for his skill and courage even after having been forcibly enlisted in the US Air Force, fighting first in the Philippines and then falling again as a prisoner of the Japanese. Jerry will flee, already deeply scarred, and eager to take revenge. An ephemeral revenge because, in 1942, he will find himself fighting again this time on the Pacific front only to be transferred between 1942 and 1943 precisely in Italy where the taste for adventure and the exotic begins to materialize, returning precisely to solving a mystery in 1948.
After a last dangerous mission behind enemy lines, like many of his fellow soldiers, once discharged, another period "on the road" in America begins for Jerry in 1946 and 1947. Returning to his New York after many years, Jerry finds it changed and an almost inhospitable place for him and for his unconventional and critical outlook on reality. After one last attempt to move to the north, Mister No says goodbye to civilization for good and around 1950 arrives in Brazil where he buys an old Piper. Direction? Manaus, the idea is to explore the Amazon and guide reckless adventurers and unsuspecting tourists.
I am Mister No, I am the Bronze Age
Borrowing the terminology of American superhero comics, if Tex represents the Golden Age and Zagor the Silver Age of Bonelli's comics then Mister No certainly represents his Bronze Age. This is not just a historical fact, Mister No made its debut in 1975 at the height of that editorial phase of American comics, but above all to ideally and at times even practically certain narrative and thematic assumptions.If, in fact, Tex represented "heroism" in its purest form and Zagor, on the other hand, with his narrative syncretism, that desire for evasion typical of the 60s, Mister No immediately becomes the anti-hero for excellence. In fact, since his origins we notice a troubled nature of the character that lead him to live his adventures in an exotic place (with all due respect to the love of his creator himself for those places) but above all to adhere to a much more ethical-moral conduct. gray of his "colleagues". He loves women, he loves to drink and above all he loves to get into trouble sometimes only because of his generous nature and his intolerance towards injustices.
I am Mister No has the merit of highlighting two aspects of the character. The first is linked to the more direct, almost raw, and certainly more dramatic cut of the adventures of Jerry Drake (take as an example the comic sequence taken from Mystery No 148) while the second, also highlighted in the introduction, is the total absence of that shoulder with which almost all SBE heroes, from the most famous to the least long-lived, have wisely quarreled, easing the tension and providing comic passages or other points of view on the events. There is no Cico and there is no Carson for Jerry Drake whose irony is bitter (and most of the time falls tragically on his own shoulders, see Mister No 77) and inevitably the point of view both on the events and on the carousel of humanity that he crosses is disenchanted and disillusioned but not entirely nihilistic and which is also reflected in the prose of Luigi Mignacco.
In this Mister No he is truly a "son" of the years in which he was born, editorially obviously, that is, those 70s that brought about an awareness gained from the struggles of the late 60s and which would have turned into the less abrasive but more subtle (socio-politically speaking) 80s which, at SBE, would have opened with Martin Mystere first and Dylan Dog then finally culminating with Nathan Never or a triptych that would not have preferred to dig into reality and the human soul rather than take it head on as Mister No. did.
Nervous and impatient traits
Also from the point of view The graphic, I am Mister No reflects the ideal change of pace of the decade in which the character made his debut. Excluding the tables of the great Gallieno Ferri taken from the first mythical book in which the co-creator of Zagor shows all the plasticity of his stroke, we immediately notice how the designers involved (whether their tables come from the first whether they come from more recent books) seek a greater synthesis on the one hand but also a greater realism on the other.In this sense it is Roberto Diso (the most popular among the designers present) who sets a bar for his colleagues with his long and sinuous lines and his well-proportioned and never exaggerated anatomies. On this ideal graphic canvas, other interpreters prefer to enrich everything with a more dynamic hatch, such as Fabio Valdambrini, or with deeper and more marked blacks such as Franco Bignotti.
The drawings of the designers present in the volume are just some of those of the most iconic interpreters of the character. The idea of retelling the most important events in the life of Jerry Drake in fact force us to exclude some important episodes (also and above all graphically) which, in addition to representing excellent cases, in fact did not add anything to the story of Mister No that this volume has instead, the intent to present organically.
Finally, in addition to the excellent and never intrusive color work, we should also mention the evocative illustrations that link the various chapters signed by Aldo Di Gennaro. Real pin-ups that capture the reader's imagination in an immediate way thanks to their extremely fast and sketchy style supported by a color that almost seems to imitate, with an ocher background on the rough halftones, the look of old photographs. br>
