Reviews
  
  



WHAT HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT MARTIN MYSTÈRE



















ALFREDO CASTELLI, MARTIN MYSTÈRE’S FATHER OR PERHAPS HIS LAZY TWIN An article by Miska Ruggeri, appearing in Il Foglio, 23 June 2002. “The more (Castelli) speaks, the more he shrinks the distance between himself and his Martin, an athletic blond-haired man, who knows how to turn on the charm, capable – and this is the real secret of his success – of providing answers, albeit fictitious, to the eternal and ever-pending questions…

MARTIN MYSTÈRE, THE WORLD WILL BE SAVED BY ARCHAEOLOGY An article by Enzo Verrengia, appearing in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 19 May 2002. “Cappi’s writing, enriched with Anglo-American but also Latin-American touches, which derive above all from his skill as an excellent translator, restores a Martin Mystère who is perfectly faithful to himself and, above all, conveys a perfect version of himself to those who meet him for the first time in these pages…”

MARTIN MYSTÈRE HAS HIS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY An article by Guido Caserza, appearing in La Sicilia, 14 April 2002. “(Martin Mystère) is unacquainted with fanaticism of any kind: attracted by mystery and the inexplicable (and for this reason derided by mainstream science], his adventures offer a balanced dosage of magic and realism…”

THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST by Marco Bertoldi. A review appearing in Giornale di Brescia, in the column “Mondo a strisce”, 26 January 2002: “As usual, Castelli’s skill consists in blending reality and fiction in a cocktail that makes it hard to tell where the one ends and the other begins”.

GOUM: MARTIN MYSTÈRE DETECTIVE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE by Stefano Gorla. An article appearing in Itinerari mediali, January/February 2000. "The clash between ‘designer’ comic and popular comic has sparked passionate debate among readers and critics over the past decade, even featuring tones and occasionally extreme positions which have sometimes been way out of line. This is why it may seem to be a form of blasphemy to unit the two elements, yet it is precisely in this framework that Castelli’s comic strip appeals for judgment. Along the byways of the erudite or refined citation, in some cases culled from unrepentant bibliophiles, the twists and turns of an exciting story are unfolded, offering a particularly attractive amalgam of reality and imagination.

MARTIN MYSTÈRE THE NEW AGE INVESTIGATOR by Claudio Risè. An article appearing in Il Giornale, 16 November 1999: "Through the retrospective glance of Martin Mystère, from the mid-80s onwards a new passion began to creep into comics, namely the lure of the ‘alternative’ or ‘hidden’ story, which thenceforth held considerable appeal for the New Age: the latter, like Mystère, spoke of the advent of a “new” founded on an ancient past that modern rationality had sent into denial”.

IF MARTIN MYSTÈRE MEETS THE IRON MASK by Luca Castelli. An article appearing in La Luna Nuova, 27 April 1999: "The great peculiarity of Martin Mystère lies in the detailed explanations and descriptions that accompany each episode, the fruit of passionate research by Alfredo Castelli and his staff. A mixture of mystery, adventure and culture which over seventeen years of history has by now tackled enigmas of all types located in all corners of the planet, always solving them in an original manner”.

THIS VERY CURIOUS GODSON OF MINE, by Domenico Catagnano. Interview with Alfredo Castelli that appeared in Lombardia Oggi, 20th December 1998: "Martin Mystère is a concentration of my personal interests, and this strip gives me an opportunity to use the whole of my own library. He is a polyvalent character and I consider him difficult to associate with a specific genre, since he is a blend of more or less everything: adventure, science fiction, mystery…".

UNCLE MARTY 200 TIMES OVER, by Pier Paolo Simonato. An article that appeared in Il Gazzettino, 16th December 1998: "The plots of his stories always start out from legends, myths and historical "truths" that are cleverly blended with a touch of the spirit of adventure that is so dear to the comic strip…".

WITH MARTIN MYSTÈRE YOU TRAVEL THROUGH TIME AND DIMENSIONS, by Massimo Piagnani. An article that appeared in Il Tempo, 22nd November 1997: "Where there’s an enigma, you can be sure you’ll find him as well; wherever there’s an absurd case or an inexplicable story he never fails to show up. This character, Martin Mystère, doesn’t investigate police cases or crime scenes - he deals with the impossible, which is indisputably his favorite subject-matter…".

MARTIN A TOURIST AMONG ITALIAN MYSTERIES by Marco Bertoldi. An article appearing in Il Giornale di Brescia, 27 June 1997: "Castelli’s character, who lives in New York although he has the habit of going off all over the world, is portrayed as spending a long period in Italy, where his author gives him a base at number 2 in Anguillara Street in Florence. This is the period that saw the birth of `Mysteri italiani´, now back on the scene at the Mystfest in Cattolica in the exhibition “Nostra signora degli enigmi”

AN ARCHAEOLOGIST BY THE NAME OF MARTIN, by Simone Bedetti. An article that appeared in Mattina, supplement to L’Unità, 26th June 1997: "For the first time the protagonist of a comic strip series destined to a vast general readership was not an invincible hero or an adventurer with a stormy past, but a forty-year-old archaeologist and anthropologist who preferred citations from the world of culture to exercises in heroic rhetoric…".

ETERNITY IS A COMIC STRIP STORY by Guido Tiberga. An article appearing in Torino Sette, supplement to La Stampa, 23 May 1997: "Today, if we disregard the odd baddy and a dozen or so supporting figures of the immense universe of American superheroes, the paper heroes do not die, unless it be to scoop up a couple of thousand new readers while awaiting the character’s surefire return to life. Some of them, however, do grow old: and the unfolding of their adventures leaves imperceptible traces on the paper heroes, who discover they have white hair and wrinkles on their forehead. One of these is Martin Mystère, the `Detective of the Impossible´ by Alfredo Castelli".

MYSTÈRE, JOURNEYS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE, by Emanuele Rebuffini. An article that appeared in Avvenire, 7th January 1997: "Uncle Marty displays a rare degree of learning and an intellectual curiosity that leads him to investigate unresolved secrets and enigmas, from King Arthur to Stonehenge, from the Pyramids to the Holy Grail. But he’s not a trivial transposition of Indiana Jones…".

ON A TRIP WITH MYSTÈRE, by Antonella Visconti. Interview with Alfredo Castelli that appeared in La Prealpina, 16th July 1996: "For the last fourteen years or so, with his monthly adventures, but also with the non-series issues, the Almanacks of Mystery, he has taken up almost all the time of this mild-mannered gentleman, a passionate scholar of the mysteries of history and of myth, and an equally passionate popularizer of his discoveries…".

MARTIN MYSTÈRE COMES HOME, by Valeria Veltroni. An article that appeared in Il Manifesto Extra, supplement to Il Manifesto, 8th January 1996: " An archaeologist, anthropologist, a university professor, director of a TV show for the ABC network, collector of unusual objects, indefatigable traveler and incurably curious about everything, Martin Mystère is American by birth but he acquired most of his cultural education in Italy…".

MARTIN MYSTÈRE, review by Oscar Cosulich that appeared in the feature "Il Fumetto", in L’Espresso, 19th November 1995, on the occasion of the publication of the work "Mysteri in treno": "Alfredo Castelli, the creator of Martin Mystère, loves to play around with scripts in which the most diverse citations are intertwined in an apparently casual fashion, giving rise to bold reconstructions of parallel realities, which may seem to a large extent improbable but are always philologically plausible…".

CULTURED MARTIN AT THE BOOK FAIR, by Francesco Specchia. An article that appeared in Giovani, supplement to L’Arena, summer 1995. "Martin Mystère has also been a star testimonial at the Book Fair that closed just yesterday in Turin. This was the very first time for a cartoon, and it was thoroughly deserved…".

MYSTÈRE, FROM COMIC STRIPS TO THE LIBRARY. WITH IMAGINATION, by Stefano Bettera. Interview with Alfredo Castelli that appeared in L’Informazione, 3rd May 1995: "Created twenty years or so ago by Alfredo Castelli, this is one of the few characters of the genre that can boast a profound link with the world of so-called "serious" culture…".

THERE IS A MYSTÈRE AMONG THE MYSTERIES OF TRIESTE, by A. Mezzena Lona. Interview with Alfredo Castelli that appeared in Il Piccolo, 27th May 1994: "Our manner of working is geometrical. Once the stories are finished, they resemble concentric circles. They function on the basis of a mechanism I could define as mathematical…".

SPINA AND STRIP, an article by Robero Barbolini, that appeared in Panorama, 31st December 1993. "Despite his illuministic vocation that makes him considerably more reassuring than his colleague-rival Dylan Dog, Martin Mystère in his own small way suffers from the paradox of every type of illuminism: the light that seeks to dispel the darkness merely pushes the dark a little further ahead, so that it finds nothing other than itself along its path. The mystery? It’s always a few steps beyond…".

MARTIN MYSTÈRE: THE OTHER FACE OF DYLAN DOG, by L.B. Interview with Alfredo Castelli that appeared in La Gazzetta di Ascoli Piceno, 15th August 1992: "When Castelli speaks of Martin Mystère he does so with the air of one who is telling all sorts of details about someone he knows very well. Perhaps a relative or maybe even himself. Because it’s as if Alfredo Castelli were in some sense partly Martin Mystère…".