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Today, when I read in the letters column readers' comments about superhero stories starring the X-Men or Spiderman, I wonder what they would have written about Nolitta's Zagor stories, and I believe even they couldn't have failed to appreciate "Arrivano i Samurai", "La marcia della disperazione", or "La rabbia degli Osages". To those who tell me that today Zagor is hopelessly dated, given that flamboyant costume which could strike someone as pretty silly, I point out that the American superheroes run around in even flashier and more picturesque costumes - and they do so without a second thought, not among the trees of a forest a hundred and fifty years ago, but among the skyscrapers of a modern metropolis. I've already written - and I'll repeat it because I'm convinced it's true - in an era like ours, characterized by tensions between the northern and southern hemispheres, the forest of Darkwood is a metaphor for a multi-racial society and the thousands of problems that make up such a society; and a character like Zagor, who tries to act as a mediator between the different cultures, is perhaps more relevant today than he was forty years ago. Just like the love of nature, which breathed forth from every page, was present beginning with the very first stories, written long before ecology was a popular topic. For those who read Zagor, "Dance with the wolves" and "The last of the Mohicans" truly discovered nothing new. Even Dylan Dog comes in second place: Tiziano Sclavi made Zagor the dress rehearsal for his Nightmare Detective, and Darkwood is still the realm of horror. Not the more insulting, splatter kind, which merely disgusts you; but the kind that digs into your soul, leaving you with a lump in your throat and wondering if, after all, even a monster might have a right to some pity. Erskine Caldwell, a recently-deceased American author celebrated for his novels of the Deep South, said that the secret of life is to find people inclined to pay you for doing what you'd be inclined to pay to do, provided you had the money. I would be inclined to pay just for the chance to write Zagor: it's been my greatest aspiration since I was a boy. I've found the person inclined to pay me for doing it: Sergio Bonelli, that Guido Nolitta whom I so admired during my school days. Among the many dreams Zagor let me live, one of them he also made come true. Once, in the letters to one of the Darkwood hero's albums, a reader confided to Sergio Bonelli: "I know that I had a sp
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