Interview with Andrea Coccia from La Revue Dessinée Italy - Lucca Comics and Games 2022

A few months ago La Revue Dessinée Italia made its debut in Italy, a new (at least for our country) quarterly magazine of comic journalism that was created with the audacious goal of telling, explaining, showing and investigate issues of general interest through the use of comics. In more than 200 pages, without any advertising, the various issues contain journalistic inquiries and high-level columns signed by journalists and cartoonists. The Italian project is inspired by another French publishing project also called La Revue Dessinée and was founded by Massimo Colella as art director, Andrea Coccia as journalist, Lorenzo Palloni and Alessio Ravazzani who are cartoonists. We had the opportunity to interview Andrea Coccia at Lucca Comics and Games 2022, an event where La Revuee Dessinée was awarded as the best editorial initiative of 2022 with the Stefano Beani Award.

The original La Revue Dessinée was born in France in 2013 thanks to the founders Franck Bourgeron, Olivier Jouvray, Kris, Sylvain Ricard, Virginie Ollagnier and David Servenay and to participatory funding from various users. The aim was to create an absolutely independent project able to tell the complexity of the reality in which we live. The medium par excellence for this purpose was that of comics and the artistic direction was entrusted to Elhadi Yazi, a well-known French designer and modern artist. In less than ten years, the magazine has reached the remarkable figure of ten thousand subscribers and twelve thousand sales in bookstores, also giving rise to a series of collateral projects.

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Interview with Andrea Coccia from La Revue Dessinée Italy

I had the opportunity to read your first two issues and first of all I can only congratulate you for bringing such a courageous idea to Italy (not having any form of advertising within the various volumes is not a thing recently) as ingenious. In this regard, I would like to ask you how did you make the decision to launch this "challenge"?

Massimo Colella, partner, president and artistic director of La Revue Desinee Italia, had the idea of ​​bringing La Revue Desinée Italia to Italy. As a good Parisian he has been a fan of the original Revue since it came out and it is from the first issue of the latter that he wonders: 'When will they do it in Italy too?' The first French issue of La Revue came out in 2013, in the meantime none he brought it to Italy and during the pandemic I was blocked in France for family reasons and we were close to Massimo. A mutual friend, Raffaele Alberto Ventura, put us in touch and we decided to start the project. He actually had already decided a long time ago, but he needed partners crazy enough to follow him and he found them in me, Lorenzo Palloni and Alessio Ramazzani and we started. First with a crowdfunding almost two years ago that brought 500 supporters of which 300 subscribers who paid us the first issue and now we are at the second issue released, the third in print which comes out in December and we have reached the quota of almost 1200 subscribers and we are happy to have started very well and we continue like this. | ); } In Italy, for several years, unfortunately, there has been a negative trend with regard to readers of printed newspapers, while the growth concerns online. Yours is a different form of journalism, called graphic journalism that is not very common in Italy. Comics, on the other hand, annually record an increase in sales, especially thanks to the younger population: do you think, therefore, that this combination could be the solution to revive print information?

Yes, but we don't really want to define it as graphic journalism. The reason is not that the aforementioned definition disgusts us, on the contrary we are very passionate about many authors such as Zerocalcare, but ours is a different thing because there are never unique authors and authors. In fact, we put together the professionalism on the one hand of those who write for newspapers and have a journalistic method and on the other side of those who draw. All this makes the final product of real journalism become and not a reportage, as for example happens when reading Zerocalcare, in which we want to find out how he sees the world. We want to do something slightly different and to make journalism the combination is the perfect solution. As for print, the crisis is due to the lack of trust of those newspapers on the part of readers who have also been abandoned by the discussion of topics that do not particularly concern them. The advantage of Slow Journalism, which in our case is graphic, but also exists non-graphic, is that readers are put back at the center economically and we find ourselves responding only to those who read us, without any interest in advertising and we have a lot of time to investigate. arguments since for a story it takes us about a year to make it. This is an advantage for us, but also an advantage for the readers because it is a sort of quality certificate because we make stories that last over time. For example we are now working on stories that will come out in June 2023 and therefore it is clear that we cannot ride the controversy of the day.

Comics are one of the most multifaceted mediums there can be, but it is basically seen as something for the youngest. Your target, on the other hand, covers a wider segment of the population with some topics covered that concern a more mature population. How do you plan to break down this possible barrier and what is the added value of comics in dealing with even very demanding inquiries?

I believe it is a cultural barrier built on nothing because comics are not a minor way of expressing oneself. The comic is read by people of all ages and all types of income. We did not move in a particular way or with particular strategies. Our only desire was to give readers important information by telling dynamics that do not age that truly concern everyone's life without political background. We talk to you about the violence of childbirth which is perhaps something that happens to a family much more often than being the President of the Republic and we tell stories close to those who read us even geographically because you will hardly find in La Revue Dessinee a story about the revolution in Myanmar. not because we don't care, but because we can't send anyone. Instead you may find some closer stories that concern you more and we can send designers to see us: this is a very important thing. For example, the first comic of the first issue reports a story of Ostana, a town in the province of Cuneo, which has been repopulated and we managed to send Emanuele Racca to the artistic residence for a week there and then you can see the result. This is one of the main qualities of La Revue.

Going back to the surveys, how are they chosen? Also how do you manage to choose the right artist (draftsman and writer) for the specific investigation?

The stories come both from outside to us, that is freelancers who write us proposals and we who go hunting for journalists and journalists we like and contact them. Once you have chosen the story and given the cut, we also choose who designs it according to the mood, the stroke that we believe is useful and often balancing because maybe there is a story that tells of death and we put a slightly lighter drawing , or depending on the geographic location such as a story about Rome then we put a designer from Rome. In reality this is not always the case, like Paolo Castaldi drew the reportage by Francesca Mannocchi from Corviale even though he didn't go there to draw it. In that case Francesca sent us so much material, such as photos and videos, that Paolo is practically as if he had been there. In general, however, we choose a lot according to the mood, but also according to the personalities of the authors who have to work together and therefore have to "understand each other". The work revolves around this and is one of the biggest at the editorial level, because we do not accept already made pairs.


I firmly believe that comics on paper are another reading experience. I don't think it's impossible to do it digitally, but it would have to be completely rethought to adapt it, for example, to tablets and smartphones. For example, you have a really huge interaction with the world even simply thinking that you don't just scroll to the right, but to each side. It is quite another thing, a screen is a window, a table is another thing. So if we were to go digital, we would certainly invent something else. The only possibility of making it as it is is that the paper runs out, which is not impossible given the times. Another idea could be animation, the French editorial team is doing it with Le Monde, and since it is another medium it makes sense, I don't think it makes sense except for logistical reasons. I don't think the future of digital comics is the PDF of paper comics: the freedoms and possibilities that digital comics offer go far beyond this.