Sometimes some pieces of the puzzle fall into place when you least expect it.
Yesterday I learned there is a new edition of the works of Sergio Toppi being produced.
Now, when I was a kid, Sergio Toppi was the guy that drew incredible comics, the guy whose name you did not know (as kids, we cared about characters, not authors) but whose style you couldn’t mistake.
Later, when I was in high school, I started paying attention to the artist’s name – and I became a fan of Sergio Toppi.
But at that point, my mother had already thrown away all those old useless comic books that were just gathering dust.

But about the pieces falling in place…
Sergio Toppi’s work was all over the place: he illustrated the Bible and did an adaptation of the Arabian Nights, he wrote about cowboys and indians, about Greek heroes and samurai, about Hannibal and Tamburlane. His comics were filed as horror, adventure, westerns…
But he was basically a writer of historical adventure, with an eye for detail that was almost the mark of the etnographer, of the anthropologist. There was art, and research, in the service of storytelling.
And I realize that all those old useless comic books that were just gathering dust contributed to make me what I am, and shape my interests in history and adventure.

So, waiting for the new edition, that I will be unable to afford anyway, here’s a gallery of Sergio Toppi’s black and white works. And tomorrow, one of his color works.

Enjoy!