Scarpa

[Francesco Spreafico]

Michiel Prior wrote:

> The characters Scarpa draws display a sort of 'elasticity' and they
> 'overact' a bit. Not that I don't think he's a good artist, but I'm
> curious what his fans like about his work. Maybe we could discuss
> this a bit?

Of course, here I am :-)
Me, I consider Scarpa the greatest of all, so I thought I should join the
discussion!

I've always loved his style, since I was three... I should have said
"styles" actually, because his old stories (from the fifties) are quite
different, graphically than his later stories (from the Seventies on). And I
had no idea it was the same artist way back then (of course! I didn't even
know his name).

Tthere's another thing to keep in mind: there are stories only drawn by him
and there are stories written and drawn by him.
Don Rosa once wrote:
"I think any comic that is written and drawn by ONE person, even if it's
mediocre, has a quality that puts it somehow above the best comic written
and drawn by two different people."
And I think he's right... in this case it's not even mediocre comics we're
talking about, but great ones.

So if people don't find "The Big Break-In" that great, it's just because...
it's not that great. Scarpa just pencilled it, he did not write it.
He did a lot of S-coded stories just as he does now a lot of D-coded
stories, but not being written by him (and generally being *very* short)
they don't do justice to his art. (I daresay that "History Re-Petes Itself"
is an exception, and it's the best D-coded story ever, IMHO) (not because
David is here, but just because I really love it).

In the US you've had some examples of the "real" Scarpa with the Gladstone
runs... let me see...
Well, you've had the Flying Scot, that's my favourite Disney story ever. So
let's get down to the point here... why I like it. The story is from the
50's, so the art is "old style"... quite "round" and soft. But I guess that
art is generally a matter of taste. What I like besides the art, are the
characters and the plot. Besides being Barksian even before Barks (the usual
talk about how some years later Barks had the ducks meet a flying vessel
too, but this is not important), Scrooge, Donald and the nephews are real
characters here. Scrooge is the Scrooge I love (100% Barksian, if you like
it so, but not only so). He feels lonely so he gets this bird, the Kaibi',
and then does anything he can to feed him. This loneliness of him is not
something you get in everyday's stories... the same goes for the ending of
the story. I won't give it away in case you haven't read it yet (do it), but
let's just say that what's behind it is the same feeling you get at the end
of "Back to the Klondike". A sort of "I do good after all, but I don't want
anybody to know". The same concept is behind another Scarpa story, "McDuck
Foundation".
So the characters is the thing I like most in Scarpa stories... they're
real, just as Barks' characters were (sometimes even more, in my opinion),
and characters is the thing I'm interested most in every kind of fiction.

Then we have the plot. But that's not easy to explain, it's just to be read
actually... when it's not based on the development of some characters (and
we're back to characters in this case) it generally is the classic
go-find-a-way-to-make-money adventure (Like the Colossus of Rhodes), like
typical Barks' stories. Nothing much to say here... they're just well
balanced, it seems you're looking at a (very good) movie. They're very
"cinematographic", if such word exists.

This for ducks, but Scarpa works with mice just as much as he does with
ducks!
And his mice are perfectly Gottfredson-like. Everybody knows that when
Gottfredson had to stop make real stories and had to turn to self-conclusive
strips, Scarpa in Italy "took his place" continuing from where he'd started
(drawing strips that he himself remounted right away in the pocket format),
forcing himself into using the strip format (In The Mystery of Tapiocus VI),
so to have a gag or a cliffhanger or something every 4 or 5 panels. If you
love strips, you can't but love this style too, since after all, it's the
same thing. (In the nineties he did 4 real strip stories, and IMO they're
among the best things appeared in the nineties... it'd be great if Gemstone
published them)
He did not always use the strip format of course, but in the 50's he also
created some of the greatest detective stories seen in Disney comics. You
can read Kali's nail for an example of this. These are very tight stories,
written around the character of Mickey that was the real Mickey, the one
from Gottfredson stories, not a detective that happens to have two big ears
(as sometimes happens)

Later, from the seventies on, he did something so unusual in Disney comics
(except Gottfredson and Don Rosa) that it passed unnoticed: he kept a
continuity in his Mickey stories. He had Ellsworth's stepson, Bruto, come
live with him, and since then all of his Mickey stories have featured Bruto,
sometimes even openly quoting old stories in a new one. I love this
consistency, it's not easily found in Disney Comics. And it'd be great if
these stories could see the light in the US (possibily in order of course),
since none of them has yet.

One last thing is the characters he himself created... he did not sat at
ease on what he already had, but when he felt that a new character was
needed, he created and made it as real as the existing one... think for
example of Brigitta, the only one well-known in the US too... she is a
complex and interesting character.

So I just hope that some of his (written by him) long stories will see the
light in the US, otherwise he's gonna be seen just as one of many.

Best,
Francesco
http://www.dimensionedelta.net