Romano Scarpa

Paolo Castagno paolo at papersera.net
Tue Apr 26 17:17:22 CEST 2005


Just my thought about the sad news regarding Romano Scarpa:

It was the second half of the '70ties, and I was sitting on the
back seat of my mothers' Fiat 500, it was a rainy Febraury
evening and we were coming back from a place I do not remember.
The wet streets were reflecting the lights of Rome, a city that
then, when I was nine years old, I still didn't know well.
I was holding a comic, issued just few days before, and that I
was carrying with me in order to read it (and read it again and
again, as it was usual, then). Its cover was yellow, with an
image of Donald involved in reading a book, a thrilling one. It
was the "famous" issue number 13 from the "I Classici Disney"
collection, a pocket book which was making me feel more important
and "adult" than I was then, maybe because of its look very
similar to the one of the "real" mistery books issued by
Mondadori. Its reading was surely interesting: its first story
was "Paperino e il misterioso Mister Moster", by Giovan Battista
Carpi, a thrilling one, and also an hard to understand for a
young reader.
Jusst after this one, there was a story which was looking
"different" from the others, surely a better one, which I simply
classified as a *beautiful* one, which deserved to be read many
times, also from my parents, to share with them this fantastic
world, way too big and interesting to be confined just to
personal interests.
The story was about Donald trying to be a journalist, about his
uncle Gedeone de Paperoni, a mysterious cook from Ronchisia and a
weird dish based on a shrimp sauce.

It soon became one of my favourites.

And there is more: among my favourites there were, and more will
be added to them, many others, all read on "I Classici" issues:
the one about an indian necklace, the one about a completly empty
place filled just by the fantasy of a professor who enalrges two
atoms, the one with Kali goddess , the one where uncle Scrooge
was risking his life on a flying galleon; yet another one where
the Phantom Blos was appearing and disappearing like a ghost; and
one with a sort of prehistoric man talking to computers... the
listing is endless, all the stories are great, filled with a
strength which is hard to find in other stories.

Obviously I didn't know, nor could imagine, that all these
stories were the work of a single person (to be honest, when I
was so young I didn't care how comics were made). It was after
some years (maybe ten?) when I found out the name of the author:
Romano Scarpa.

Romano Scarpa was the author who, more than nayone else, IMHO,
concourred in Italy to the birth of a real school, even better:
to a tradition of Disney comics: without his work I don't think
that Mondadori issues coudl reach the success they had, bringing
Topolino to be the most successful comic book in Italian history.

Now, the news of his death has left me stunned, sad and
depressed: I'm thinking about all his stories I read, the book
about his life and works, all the articles I read about his
stories, when I had the luck of meeting him during an Italian
exhibition, when I had his autograph... but mainly I'm looking,
with wet eyes, his Christmas card from 2003, that reached me as a
fantastic surprise and now will always remember me of Romano
Scarpa, a man who all of us owe a lot: dreams are priceless, and
Romano gave us a lot of unforgettable dreams, that will always be
in our hearts, in his fan hearts, who will contribute to maintain
alive his work, telling his stories to the ones who'll be there
listening or suggesting to reading the ones who don't know them
yet.

I'd like to close this posting noticing how this month on Zio
Paperone there is one of his old stories, still funny,
interesting and charming... it is about Donald trying to be a
journalist, about his uncle Gedeone de Paperoni, a mysterious
cook from Ronchisia and a weird dish based on a shrimp sauce...

dreams won't die, never.

Ciao Romano, and thanks!

  - Paolo

http://www.papersera.net     mailto:paolo at papersera.net

p.s.: sorry for the mistakes I made in my not-so-good English!
p.p.s.: Many of you already wrote something, but I think many
more need to be "encouraged" again to write their feelings on
this page, which will be sent to Scarpa's wife:
http://www.dimensionedelta.net/scarpa/commenti.asp





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