Altan, “Metropolitan Adventures” is his new book published by Coconino Press

Interviews, when done well and have a precise vision, manage to portray not only the character, but also the person behind the mask. And so, reading what Simonetta Sciandivasci did to Altan, published first in the Foglio and then as an afterword to A me gli occhi (Salani Editore), one discovers a spontaneous, sincere man who does not hide and does not hold back, who says what he thinks and who says it in his own way: candidly, with non-trivial but clear words, direct and non-hostile tones. “Where would you like to go again?” asks Sciandivasci. “Canada and Australia. All large and somewhat empty towns», replies Altan. “And sparsely inhabited.” “The man is not the best to see.”

Altan is one of the great authors of our comics, and has been for decades. Because he is something else and he is himself. His presence is constant in our lives, even if we don’t realize it: just leaf through a copy of La Repubblica or the latest Friday issue; just scroll Twitter and find it repeatedly quoted and shared. His style is immediate, simple, straightforward. He laughs at everything and laughs at us; he tells us who we are in no uncertain terms: his is not a waltz of sophisms; he is a fistfight of truth. He goes deep with a jab, and then goes back up, elegant, adding to the joke – because that’s also what we’re talking about: jokes – a squiggle of cynicism and brutality.

It doesn’t use too many lines, and it doesn’t use too few either. He knows exactly when to stop (or, conversely, when to move forward). La Pimpa, created for her daughter; Cipputi, who gave voice to Italy and the Italians, and then the biographies of historical figures, such as Colombo, stories, cartoons and strips. A swirl of squat bodies, cut with a hatchet, perfect. A set of breasts, nipples, smiles, eyes. Of dry, bewitching and total sentences. Of irony and self-irony. Of intelligence and wit.

Altan, born Francesco Tullio-Altan, knows satire and knows that satire, like all the most important things, is a serious, very serious matter. To be treated with pliers and gloves, to be used with caution and care. Because it has its rules and its limits; and doing it doesn’t mean shooting in the crowd, blindly. Against everything and everyone, indiscriminately. It means having identified power, and having decided to drag it down, down, together with all the others (and power can take any form and any condition: it is not just the master’s tie, tunic or cane; it is also who raises his voice and pretends to be right, and it is he who, believing himself clever, tries to fool the unwary).

Altan is shy and of few words, at least during interviews. He doesn’t like to celebrate himself, and he doesn’t even like being in the spotlight. He makes his work speak of him: please, cartoon lady, please; it’s his turn. From his characters to his creatures, from his men to his women, from polka dot dogs to noses big and red as tomatoes, from wild eyes to wide open and ravenous mouths, he has captured the essence of who we are. And of what, in all likelihood, we will continue to be. Small, mediocre, unhappy. Occasionally determined to improve, and punctually disappointed in our hopes and expectations. Human, all too human: poor us. But luckily they are nice.

Altan, passionate as he is, has never treated politics superficially; he has immersed himself in the depths of public affairs, of the palaces of Power, and at times he has used an umbrella, at others, instead, a malignant and infernal expression. Out with ink, out with pen: another soul has taken shape on paper.

These days Coconino Press is publishing Avventure metropolitane, in which another Altan emerges: one, attention, already published, not hidden; but equally, and pleasantly,

amazing. Altan loves to imagine and intertwine genres. The surrealism of the tones, here, is beautifully combined with the absurdity and excess of the individual situations. But also to the mangy, unfriendly substance of life. And therefore, page after page, story after story, the story adapts, improves, becomes bigger and more powerful. It strikes mercilessly; aims at the lower abdomen of the reader, and wants to overwhelm him. There is no meanness too bad, or taunting too veiled. The cartoons intertwine with the jokes, and the jokes do their job: they capture attention and play with it. As the cat does with the mouse.

Altan is a genius, and maybe he won’t like this thing, this title. Because he sounds absolute and definitive. But like geniuses, he too knows how to translate his intuitions into a universal language, within everyone’s reach; he, too, arrives first to unexplored worlds and lands, and he too, somehow, always manages to find something to show and, yes, to teach. Long live Altan.

Saturday 25 March, at 11:30, at Palazzo de’ Rossi, Pistoia, there will be a meeting with Altan, Giovanni Ferrara of Coconino Press and Maicol&Mirco for the inauguration of the Altan, Cipputi and Pimpa exhibition.