CHINA PROFONDA 
the late seventies in Italy there were no schools to turn to the comic and aspiring authors were with their attempts to harass the elite of those who were already. Ask for advice, seek a confrontation with those who had a professional response was the main tool of verification of their work. There were those who came from Bonvi and then stayed to help him inked, who pursued a Lucca Comics Manara, who was sweating cold front Magnus (surly and uncontrollable) and those who listened that Tartarin of Tarascon by Hugo Pratt and brag while distilling pearls of wisdom comic strip. The comic was released by his stage craft (in cui, specie nel seriale, non si dichiarava la differenza tra un autore e l’altro) e l’epoca della ricerca dei confini del linguaggio inaugurata da Linus, ripercorrendo tra l’altro i modi di raccontare del fumetto sin dalle sue origini con importanti recuperi storici, era ormai un patrimonio comune di autori e lettori. L’esordiente del momento, impegnato a produrre prove e brevi storie in quel periodo, sperando di accedere all’universo del fumetto d’autore aggiungeva un’altra variabile all’evoluzione del fumetto, ed era quella che nasceva dalla tecnica e dai materiali. Cosa usare per disegnare e quanto si poteva essere originali quando si utilizzava quel particolare materiale o quello specifico strumento? È lecito inchiostrare con il pennarello? E la penna Bic? E le fotocopie, che effetti si possono ottenere con una buona fotocopiatrice?
L’Autonomia bolognese era molto simile ai giovani virgulti del fumetto che arrivavano in città sospinti dalla novità del “Penthotal” di Andrea Pazienza e da tutti gli altri autori di cui Andrea era la scintillante punta emergente, e non solo perché spesso l’autore era militante quanto migliaia di giovani della sua età, ma perché la forse abusata “fantasia al potere” era un punto di riferimento comune. L’Autonomia bolognese was, unlike that of other cities, linked to the imagery, derived directly from the Situationist Guy Debord, and saw in the telling of the reality under the impulse of creativity a form of subversion profound and invincible.
The young designer came to Bologna, the city in which to grow the ferment of the new comic, knowing that in a center of research and experimentation, scared by the possibility of not being able to overcome their disability. And in those years was to find not only the authors of old but tried to mingle with the innovators, the countercultural magazine self-managed, to Cannibal and then Frigidaire , convinced that he could only find an identity among others and to be like that, paradoxically, he also had to be different, unique .
The exoticism of the Argentine comic strip was a mixture of admiration and secret. Obviously aware that those authors used their instruments as a form of rebellion against the regime ... on the press to investigate all of the magazines uncertain then as Alberto Breccia got its mix of mystery and avant-garde collage, ink, pencil ... mixed, but what ?
of that school was also part José Muñoz. Muñoz, Sampayo together, had created the detective Alack Sinner, a metropolitan police, set in New York seemed unlikely that a version of the Big Apple of New Hollywood nth power of satire and grotesque evil. Alack Sinner of the piss that was at the core narrative of an entire page, was considered the biggest challenge in the comics since the days of Popeye and Krazy Kat, and fans of traditional comic strip screaming horror (forgetting where everything was born from that of the Yellow Kid ... naughty slut). Alack was an awkward, neglected, marginalized ... Other than The Warriors Walter Hill (who was still a few years back to Alack), the dangerous people drawn from middle-class Muñoz: unwatchable faces, marked by adult, marked by expressions intolerable in a sort of update to Grosz's Weimar Republic, a global soul. The New York Muñoz was not a specific place, was regarded as a minimum of metonymy Human Stain. Although some kinship with the films of Scorsese, from Mean Streets to Taxi Driver , he had, but there was no redemption, only the extreme sadness of failure. It was a New York contaminated by Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, with an air that corroded the skin and faces, leaving petty spirits and stripped to the bone. And young artists who moved to Bologna, including an art-house films and another, between a beer and the next, wondered how he used his instruments. The sign was more impressive: a black man who was scratched in competition with the descriptiveness of the drawing, tearing the definition of boundaries and giving a strong sense of matter even in black and white net. As a work of Fontana, Muñoz seemed a sign of a web of cuts inflicted on the page. Painful, painful, pitiless, gaping, random, precise ... contradictory to the vertigo.
"In my opinion, use the pen and paper thin."
"It is not drawing paper is any paper."
" However, it is the nib. See that there are small splashes? "
" A Brause? But small or big ones? "
"Use ink fountain pen, which is more liquid. If no, would that effect the absorption ... "
was a short set of conjectures. Who is already working with Linus planned an operation worthy of a spy mission behind enemy lines: sneak in the archive of the tables in working with the complicity of some editor. To visit Muñoz, who lived in Milan, was out with those designs a little 'fear of the put. A rumor that it was un uomo estremamente sarcastico ed era oggettivamente troppo bravo per affrontare il suo giudizio.
“Lorenzo ha conosciuto Muñoz,” disse qualcuno un giorno. Era un privilegio invidiato. Ma Mattotti era indecifrabile, descriveva le cose per ellissi, si perdeva nei discorsi e a volte pareva proprio che volesse tenersi tutto per sé. Niente era dato sapere di come disegnasse Muñoz, il segreto era conservato nella vaghezza delle parole di Mattotti. Ma quale pennino usava? Chissà. E prima faceva le matite o uno schizzo a parte e poi andava sulla pagina direttamente con l’inchiostro, senza nessun layout sotto? Non era dato saperlo. “Cazzo hai visto, Lorenzo?”
was hard to be a group, although the group was what gave you more visibility, as a band and as a band, they always fought. Or there were small enmities. Nobody thought the unwillingness of Mattotti as a form of autism poetic: he did it deliberately to keep to themselves all the discoveries made through Muñoz! And contribute to making even more mythical and looming figure.
Then came the Igort. He had known and had gone drinking with him and Sampayo. "Everyone in the room became a character. Looked at her and imagined her life. "Igort was stunned by their ability to complete a description of intimate, articulate and merciless through appearance, posture, clothing and what little else they had available to those unknown to the bar. They could exercise their narrative style at any time, as a gun to anyone's head. Muñoz and Sampayo did not stop for a moment the role of scourge, their merciless satire of human weaknesses did not stop at nothing, there were no age or social status empowered to give exemptions acceptable in their eyes. The cartoons were the visible part, but those two did not stop for a moment, unstoppable machine in a process of vivisection of the worst that belongs to everyone us. From the description that also seemed to suffer, that the sarcasm was hiding behind a profound evil, that of the shared human ugliness, not judges be posted. They were heroic, Shakespeare ... Argentina!
It was a commonplace to think that in those pictures there was a smell that smelled of tango: a mixture of sweat caked in which you want to crystallize hormones frustrated, melancholy music that extended their melodies in a stabbing and then tossing and turning with sudden gusts of tail, tearing those who dared to dance. And the ambiguity of the bodies that populate the cartoons. There was all Gardel its contradictions and tragic appeal of his epic (well before Muñoz portray him in a story) and Piazzolla because he felt the same irresistible desire to change things that were widely believed to be immutable (such as Piazzolla tango before, in fact, and this case the integrity of the figures drawn).
Show pages gave the vertigo. And the tools by which drew Muñoz, still no trace. Meanwhile there rages in trials: is lame pens, rubbed on paper sheets in search of that perfect sign that reproduced the inner baseness of every human being (and the beauty of his suffering). But nothing.
One effect, however, that the research was obtained, revealing a large group of authors in a style that Muñoz could be considered the "spiritual guide". It was a style that expanded its influence: Mattotti, Igort, Carpinteri, Iosa Ghini and many others who have published in magazines of the time, Linus , Alter , Frigidaire ... all had a bit 'of Muñoz in his plan. Why con il suo segreto apparentemente tecnico Muñoz aveva stimolato in loro il recupero del fremito originario del segno, costringendoli a sintonizzarsi con la propria sensibilità, con l’impulso profondo del loro desiderio di esprimersi attraverso il fumetto.
Nessuno sarebbe diventato un autore che ricordava Muñoz, ma ognuno di loro gli deve essere grato per un esempio che gli ha consentito di scoprire il mistero (personale e irripetibile) di una tecnica che non può essere replicata e che racconta le proprie storie secondo una sintassi che appartiene a quell’autore e a nessun altro. Il segno nel fumetto non è lessico, e il fumetto è un linguaggio con regole non completamente scritte, non completamente visibili. Ci si inoltra così sulle piste di un autore per poi deviarne e aprirne di proprie quando quelle scompaiono nel fitto di un territorio che è solo suo.
Muñoz, come pochi altri, ha aperto una pista che per molti autori ha rappresentato l’inizio di un percorso.
