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part from a very few exceptions,
there are no fixed |
baddies.
Different figures appear in the various stories, from zombies to serial killers,
from the Werewolf to the "simple" murderer, from vampires to criminal maniacs,
from supernatural entities to the madmen who believe themselves to be (or actually
are) the reincarnation of Doctor Jekyll or Frankenstein.
Death in person is the true and perennial adversary of Dylan, medieval
Death, with a black mantle and a sickle slung over her shoulder,
the connecting thread of |
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a "macabre dance" often accompanied by "songs" in verse)
that extends throughout the whole series.
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Xarabas.
Although he has appeared fairly seldom, he was Dylan's first and greatest enemy,
starting from number one, "The Dawn of the Living Dead". His name is the anagram of
that of the demon Axabras. A biologist on a quest for the serum of immortality, he
is the one who awakens the dead and transforms them into zombies. In the fantasy and
dream-like dimension of Nr. 100, "Dylan Dog's Story", readers discover that he is the
"obscure half" of Dylan's father, which got separated from the good half
(which has been relegated into another dimension) after Xabaras actually tested his
serum on himself. |
| Killex.
Appearing so far as the protagonist of two stories, this protagonist is half-way
between the classic mad scientist and the Hannibal Lecter of the "Silence of the
Lambs", a sort of jack the Ripper who hacks up his victims in the search for
the very essence of life, physical evidence of the existence of the soul. |
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Mana Cerace.
This entity is also a protagonist of two adventures. It is an evil entity generated
by obscurity. Indeed, it is the very incarnation of darkness and of the ancestral
and childhood fears linked to the world of darkness. |
Monsters and aliens Monsters constitute a distinct category. Often
they are "baddies" but much more frequently they are |
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innocent victims of fear,
and therefore of hatred directed towards that which is "different" or "abnormal".
And Dylan's attitude towards them is another strong point of the series:
human sympathy, understanding, compassionate love. The main cinematographic references
are "Freaks" by Tod Browning (1932) and "The Elephant Man" by David Lynch (1980).
Exemplary in this sense is the story of "Johnny Freak" (in the issue of the same name,
which later has a sequel in "Il Cuore di Johnny" [Johnny's Heart]: a young cripple is
kept closed up in a cellar, in an almost animal-like state, by his wretched parents.
And even when the monster (whether a misshapen creature, a "blob" or a disfigured
person) is truly evil, although Dylan is obliged |
to fight against it and kill it he cannot help feeling sorry for it,
and he reflects that the only real monsters are almost always men, i.e. it's us who
are the real monsters.
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| Another category, also distinct from the others, is constituted by |
the aliens,
who have appeared several times in the series, and in particular in a "trilogy"
involving UFOs (composed of the albums "Terrore dall'infinito", "Quando cadono le stelle"
and "Lassł qualcuno ci chiama", inspired both by psychoanalytic theory
(extraterrestrials as protection against fears rising from the unconscious)
and by the positive and ecumenical vision of Spielberg's films
("Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T.").
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DYD'S WORLD |
He doesn't move far from home, but he's constantly traveling
through the most obscure labyrinths of the human mind! |
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