Four Italian Comics to Read This Summer: From Rave Scenes to Eco-Fables

Artribune presents four graphic novel recommendations for summer 2021. Roberto Grossi's 'Cassadritta' (Coconino Press, €20) follows Torazina and her friends organizing an illegal rave in a dilapidated warehouse on the outskirts of Rome in 1995, celebrating the 1990s rave scene and reclaiming urban voids. Igort's 'Inchiostro su carta' (Oblomov Edizioni, €30) is an artbook spanning four decades of his career, collecting his most emblematic illustrations published in international magazines, with first-person commentary on the craft of illustration. Marco B. Bucci and Riccardo Atzeni's 'Saetta Rossa' (Panini, €25) is not a David Bowie biography but a fictional story about Samuel, who, upon learning of Bowie's death on January 6, 2016, is transported to a future Bologna dominated by technology, without gender barriers, where poverty is a distant memory, and Bowie appears as a spiritual guide urging individual freedom. Lukas Jüliger's 'Unfollow' (Edizioni di Atlantide, €18.50) features Earthboi, a mysterious ancient boy who appears as a messianic eco-leader using social media to promote a return to nature, but his utopia crumbles as his followers resort to extreme actions.