Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"What does the notebook say?"
"Notebooks don't say anything. They don't have mouths."
"He never taught us to read."
"I know."
The man from Pisa returns with his darkest work yet, following two young brothers scavenging and scrabbling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Where they live, on a house in the middle of a lake with their father, would be idyllic, where it not for the poisoned waters, the bloated floating corpses, a paranoid survivalist who is probably the most normal of their neighbours, plus the ever-present threat of the marauding mob of the uberpriest, following the word of God Kool.
The brothers are managing, getting by, just, and growing up on the job under the extremely stern eye of their father, who has decided the best way to make sure they actually hit puberty is to hit them every time they misbehave. Or at least when he catches them, which they're getting increasingly better at avoiding, unsurprisingly. Avoiding a battering is clearly a great incentive to improve your sneaking around and parent-deception skills.
It's impossible to decide whether their father does have any affection for them, actually, certainly they no idea whatsoever. What also infuriates them, particularly the hot-headed younger brother Lino, is that their father writes about them in his journal. Given he's never bothered to teach them to read, and he refuses to tell them what he's writing, Lino has absolutely no idea what his father's private thoughts might be. But after his unexpected death, Lino is determined to find out. He just needs to find somebody who can read. And that... obsession... is going to get the brothers into some serious trouble. A whole post-apocalyptical world of it.
Ah, he's never been one to play it for laughs, our Gipi, and this is certainly no exception. Here, he's crafted what I reckon is a pretty good approximation of just how bleak life would be if civilisation collapsed. What is different this time around is that this is purely a black and white work. I'll freely confess, I was a tad disappointed when I opened this up and saw a lack of colour, because I think his watercolour palette is exceptional. But actually, the absence of colour only goes to highlight his excellent line work, minimal as it is.
He's not even chosen to employ any real shading, either, it's just perfectly placed thin, scratchy lines that build up to dramatic, powerful panels, often pulsing with palpable tension. It's quite striking how if you flick through the pages very quickly, the artwork seems like it should feel weak, not least because there seems such an expanse of white, blank space. But once you actually start reading, the illustrations captivate your attention completely.
Also, whereas with many other creators, anything unusual such as seemingly strangely drawn facial details would immediately break my concentration, here I found myself fascinated by the composition and thus drawn deeper into the characters. It's powerful stuff. He's clearly a man entirely at ease with his own economy of detail. Most of the characters simply have black pin-sized dots for eyes, for example. Which ought to serve to remove such a degree of connection to the individuals yet somehow instead manages to accentuate every other aspect of their facial emotions. The level of expression he gets into eyebrows in particular would make even Roger Moore proud. So very, very clever. He might not be particularly prodigious, but when Gipi does get something out, you know it's probably nailed on to be a masterpiece.
