A collection of shorts by one of the most beloved European artists graces the English-speaking world; while some of the stories fall short of the hype other serve as reminder of wide and wonderful is the world outside the American market.
Written, illustrated by Sergio Toppi, translated by Jeremy Melloul and lettered by Mike KennedyCover by Sergio Toppi
Presenting the first in a seven-volume library of works by master illustrator Sergio Toppi. The first volume, The Enchanted World, contains eleven tales of high fantasy in English for the first time, previously collected as Black & Tans, Krull, and A Minor God.
There’s a struggle within the heart of several of the stories that compose “The Enchanted World;” a struggle between the artist and the writer. The two are actually one, long admired Italian master Sergio Toppi, seems beside the point. Throughout this whole collection his skills as an artist are never in doubt; from the first story, “Brocelan Wood,” he establishes a unique mix of believable figures carrying their business across stylized landscape; it’s beautiful look at. The forest in the story isn’t just a collection of woods, it is the ur-forest, our primal idea of going to a lovely stroll through nature only to realize how bigger and scarier it is than us. Other stories similarly see people getting lost in the majesty of nature, as the sublime becomes terror, such as the icy landscapes of “Pribiloff 1898” or the endless oceans gazed throughout “Solitudinis Morbus.”
Yet for all the artistic grandeurs some of these stories end up amounting to very little. “Brocelan Wood” seems a family talk a walk through the woods only to insult a witch who curses them, a curse that manifests immediately. It’s the sort of thing that could be in particularly lackluster Futureshock tale in a rushed prog of 2000AD. There’s an attempt at something greater, possibly a commentary on changing time – the witch’s curse is magical but the actual doom is brought upon via technology – but it’s just the cheapest of ironies.
One could think it is simply a matter of Toppi growing as a storyteller, the stories are presented in a chronological manner from 1979 to 1993, but even the penultimate tale, “Pribiloff 1898,” features exactly the same expected twist. I recall the general formula of many E.C. stories in which a particularly cruel character is being set up only to receive karmic retribution which echoes his own cruelty. So when the protagonist of that story is shown killing seals with a zeal that frightens even his working fellows you can be quite sure what his judgment will be when he meets a great seal spirit. There isn’t any sense of psychology to his actions – he does what he does because that’s what the story demands; he goes out an fateful because if didn’t nothing could happen.
“Krull,” despite being actual quite funny, and a lot of it is down to very good use of character acting (there’s something about the way Toppi posits the characters on the page that is both melodramatic, like actors on a stage, and yet also naturalistic); because otherwise it’s a one note gag: the scary ogre is bullied by his shrew of a wife. That surely must have been a tired joke even back in 1984.
Still, other stories manage to better combine Toppi’s skills as a writer and artist. When the two sides of him truly click we get some outstanding moments. The previously mentioned “Solitudinis Morbus” is particularly impressive in its expressive manner – the whole piece shows the slow mental deterioration of lighthouse worker as he gets infected by…. Something. The solitude, the crushing sound of waves and winds, the endless landscape. It matters little what is the cause, even the meant-to-be-shocking ending is besides the point, it is the process itself that is the center of the story. Toppi’s work flashes between man, nature and industrial wreckage; in all things the man is small; it is by trying to big himself up that he falters. At one point he hangs atop an outcropping, just the outline is seen as he brags about achievements that never happened only to be rebuked by his own hallucination. Beneath him – the crushing waves, above him – cold an endless skies, right next to him – a towering dark mountain. Only he – a speck.
Continued belowOther stories bring to mind the fanciful world of myths and fairytales; with their own logic and rules that is askew to our own yet somehow familiar: “Hortrgue,” with its mysterious central figure whose touch turns all into puppets; she could’ve easily been a boring witch character, evil for sake of evil, but theirs is something strange about her, a sense of melancholy to her existence that she seems to spread around her. When she gets her hands on a hunter we cannot be sure if he is being punished or rewarded; even he he, now unlinking and unmoving, seemed more fearful of the idea that he cannot be with her again than with his strange transformation.
Oblique morality can also be found in the last piece, which is probably also the best, “Minor God,” which manages to feel like a mighty epic despite being less than twenty pages long (which makes it rather big in terms on these volumes, these stories are very short yet retain a sense of grandness). It’s scope, the lifespan of a god, and therefore the civilization he represents, is truly massive and the way the story shifts our point of view is we realize how different from humans is this being through which we experience this ancient society. Likewise, it’s best marriage of story and art as the montage-heavy mode allows us to view the shifting of seasons and locations – we get a sense of these people.
In terms of presentation this is certainly a well-made volume: oversized hardcover which allows the art the room it needs to breath, with high quality pages that seem suited to the task. Yet I’d argue this volume lacks in added value, if the task of this series is to capture something from Toppi I’d love to have a little more in terms of explanation and analysis. Yes, this is an artistic volume rather than a critical one; but with only a short introduction, which focuses not so much on the man but on the impression another has of him, I feel like I might be missing something. What are these magazines that he wrote and drew for? What is the historical and social context he worked in? why these particular stories for this volume?
Still, for all its faults “The Enchanted World” is something every fan of comics art would want to crack open, if only to see the artistic evolution of one of the greats.
