Apologies if it’s been quiet in this space for the past month, but there was a good reason for the “radio silence” — I’ve been away, taking my wife on a trip through Italy as her birthday present, returning only a few days ago. We traveled from Rome in the southeast to Venice in the northwest, with a stop at Montecatini Terme — tucked away in the Tuscan hills — before moving on through Assisi, Florence, San Gimignano, Pisa, and Bologna. The food is as delicious as every visitor says it is and the scenery is often spectacular, whether one is studying the ruins and architecture from centuries past or taking in the natural backdrop formed by the Apennine or Dolomite mountain ranges. My wife returned saying this was, “The trip of my lifetime,” so I guess it qualified as a good gift!
Of course, I had to spend some time in Italian bookstores, which greatly impressed me with their size, depth and variety of stock, and the many, many handsome hardcover editions of prose fiction and comics collections on their shelves. I was reminded of the heyday of Boston’s bookshops, before Americans grew svengalied by cell phone and e-reader, causing them to increasingly turn their backs on good, old-fashioned books. Coupled with corner newsstands spotted in a few locales, I came away pleased to see such evidence of literacy-for-entertainment throughout Italy. One particular book stop during my Italian holiday may be of particular interest to Library of American Comics readers.
On a blisteringly hot Rome Sunday — temperatures reached 97 degrees Fahrenheit! — I made my way to the city’s Termini railway station in search of the large bookseller contained within it, Borri Books. I found its three full floors of books, the shelves dotted with stuffed dolls representing familiar characters — from Disney and Looney Tunes characters to Superman to Smurfs — that added a light-hearted touch to the many hundreds of titles on display. The bottom floor (“Piano [floor] minus 1,” as it was labeled) is where I spotted their very extensive comics section.
I found Asterix, Dylan Dog, Tex Willer, and a broad range of European series, as well as stand-alone graphic novels, available in numerous editions and price ranges. Marvel and DC superheroics were also extensively represented in Italian translations, everything ranging from Steve Englehart’s complete Batman output (in a thick softcover “phone book”) to Italian editions of several Marvel Omnibuses and handsome oversized hardbacked collections of storylines such as Infinity Gauntlet. What interested me most, however, was contained on one display nestled between the superpowered melodramas and the tales that originated on the continent, specifically these two shelves:
Notice how the Italian editions of Rip Kirby are much smaller than our LOAC versions! And yes, your eyes don’t deceive you — those first three volumes of Terry and the Pirates are contained in a lovely boxed set. The pricetag — one hundred twenty Euros — was less of a deterrent to me than the thought of transporting the bulky, heavy collection across Italy and then back across the ocean to our home north of Boston: I didn’t buy it, but I did take it off the shelf and snap a couple pictures to share with you:
Did you spot how the Italian publisher, Cosmo Books, elected to repeat Terry’s headshot on the spine of Volume 2, rather than use the Dragon Lady image on our original LOAC edition? An interesting choice, and one I’m sure that has a solid reason underpinning it.
If I knew I wasn’t going to leave Borri Books with the Terry boxed set, I was equally sure I was departing with a representative sampling of our LOAC a la Italia output. Here’s what I decided to purchase, alongside the sturdy paper bag the cashier gave me (“Those are heavy books!” she said to me as she took the bag from its niche in the shelf behind her):
Below you’ll find a tiny sample from each book — Raven Sherman’s final days are shown out of Terry, as well as the first pages from Jeet Heer and my up-front essays; the start of my essay from Steve Canyon Volume 4 is also here, along with a page of dailies and the subsequent Sunday page from Steve’s 1953 encounter with Princess Snowflower:
Obviously the books made it safely across the Atlantic with me, and have now joined the other three European LOAC editions on my shelves: French versions of Terry and Canyon Volumes 1 and a German copy of the first King Aroo.
After our return, a friend asked both my wife and me: “What was the high point of the trip?” My wife said it was a tie between visiting St. Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace in Venice and the food in Bologna. For me, the answer was simple: “Finding so many Italian editions of LOAC books in Rome!”
