Dylan Dog and Vasco Rossi 420: Jenny, review

Dylan Dog and Vasco Rossi 420

This month the Dylan Dog trilogy dedicated to Vasco Rossi ends. The third issue of a miniseries that has caused much discussion, but has been able to demonstrate how the strings of the Emilian rocker manage to meet those touched in the themes of the character created by Tiziano Sclavi. And we can already tell you that this trilogy could not end in a better way than Jenny. As announced, this Dylan Dog 420 is dedicated to the song Jenny is crazy written by Vasco Rossi in 1975, it is a song that already caused a sensation at the time due to a blind society that did not want to see and recognize one of the evils of our century: depression. But what is embarrassing about dealing with issues such as depression and alienation?

This is a delicate issue of our sociality that could not have been better treated by the writer Barbara Baraldi, a proof that once again earned her recognition as one of the best authors of the nightmare investigator. Listen, do not isolate yourself and find out who is on the other side of the wall, because you are not alone…

Dylan Dog and Jenny

In Jenny's story inspired by Vasco's song Rossi we find Dylan literally imprisoned within unknown walls, where he first has to deal with what has oppressed him in the past, such as alcoholism. But Dylan discovers that he is not alone and that he has sweet Jenny as a prisoner-mate.

"I drank to forget I had alcohol as an anesthetic and self-destruction as a cure. Now I want to remember everything, every mistake, every fall. Everything that allowed me to be who I am today, for better or for worse. "

Jenny is a woman who has struggled for a long time, but who eventually gave up and who wants to be left alone point a woman who just wants to be able to disappear in her nightmares. This is an impossible undertaking when your cellmate is the investigator of the nightmare, a Dylan who does not give up and who spurs Jenny by giving her a new hope to escape from this unknown prison.

But one cannot escape from oneself. Dylan wakes up, realizes he has lost her realizes that he is left alone in the rest of the world and that despite the hope he has not been able to help as he would have liked the woman he fell in love with: Jenny. Baraldi makes an excursus of what perhaps was the story of the two, or perhaps a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, but still worthy of the hope that she could overcome the fears that often overwhelm each of us. It is those fears that we have all known the fear of being a loser the fear of being a loser the fear of not being anyone the fear of not being loved. These fears often lead to one of the strongest nightmares and horrors of our age, namely depression, a horror that is still too little talked about, a monster that is difficult to fight.

The beauty of this story is to see once again an anti-hero, Dylan who could be any of us in the act of helping and supporting those who are suffering, and sweet Jenny a lost woman who succumbs to his fears, the latter a character who, perhaps, at least once in his life has reflected each of us.

"How many times will you want to give up, you still have to find the strength to react."

Without having to make inappropriate spoilers, unfortunately the story seasoned with melancholy sadness, has no winners, but losers. Perhaps it is also this last element that makes everything damn real and close to every reader. Barbara Baraldi has once again demonstrated how to bring emotion and feeling out of the pages of a comic, making us forget monsters, vampires, ancient rituals, curses, but making us excited as it happened with stories of the caliber of The long goodbye and the most recent Anna forever, for the same reason that allows us to identify ourselves and enter a nightmare and a love that we really feel as ours.

This is the power of emotions and writing. Dwelling on the editorials and on this particular musical combination, the former remain a good editorial complement, while the latter, for all Blasco fans and not, remains a simple and in any case successful combination and nothing more.

From verses to images

Oppression. Hope. Resignation.

Feelings similar to each other in everyday life, common in the hearts of men. But how to represent them on paper? This must have been the question they asked themselves in Via Buonarroti in that of Sergio Bonelli Editore, when they read the story of Barbara Baraldi, and the answer was Davide Furnò. The Turin designer has managed to impress these sensations in the images, accompanying with his inks in a masterly way the events conceived by Baraldi ... a harmony that suggests an authentic symbiotic work. Could it have been so? We do not know and we are dying to ask these two authors directly, in the meantime the result is practically perfect.

Dylan's surrender is classic, with few and well thought-out personalities, while Jenny with her beauty and sadness managed to involve us to the point of wishing to have an old boy by our side who would help us escape from chasm…

The double cover is also promoted with flying colors, with the first by Fabrizio De Tommaso who this time sees Vasco in Dylan's studio, almost intent on playing Jenny la Pazza, while Gigi Cavenago gives us his best and suitably obscure work of the entire trilogy… which we announce will also be the last ever as cover artist for Dylan Dog. You got it right. From next month Cavenago passes the baton of cover artist of the regular series to the brothers Raul and Gianluca Cestaro. And also in these terms, at the gates of Dylan's 35 years of publishing life, an era ends with the beginning of a new one, as happened with the legendary Claudio Villa and Angelo Stano.

Jenny is a book that will remind you why every month you go to the newsstand to buy this comic. Because Jenny is a "true" story that belongs or can belong to each of us. The Baraldi-Furnò duo have created one of the stories that we will not forget so easily ... strictly to be read in silence and then a second time listening to Jenny is crazy about Vasco at full volume if you can.