He was supposed to go into space; for now, he's only just arrived at the Turin Book Fair . A temporary stopover for Riccardo Atzeni (aka rikats), a self-taught illustrator, cartoonist, and animator from Pirri, Cagliari, of extraordinary talent. In his latest creation, "I Have to Go into Space," marking his debut as a solo author, he tells—and draws in watercolor—a story of thirty-somethings unable to face reality, of difficult family ties, of their relationship with technology, and of precarious employment. All set in a surreal Cagliari.
The artist makes his debut as a fully-fledged author with a graphic novel endowed with a rare and admirable quality : despite having a superficially surreal and dreamlike premise, the story is an absolutely realistic tale, in which the symbolic element does not disturb the empathy that the reader will surely feel towards the protagonist.
Mocci is a thirty-year-old with a strange job: every day he takes his small car into space to recover things people lose and want to recover. He doesn't have a great relationship with his sister, a rapidly rising writer, and even less with his father, who is ill, perhaps more seriously than most people think, and whom Mocci never visits, constantly inventing new excuses, the summary of which is that "he has to go into space."
Which is true, but that's no reason to avoid a healthy reckoning with a parent who has disappointed their child, but who doesn't deserve to be ignored like this. Tender, light-hearted, with a wonderful ear for dialogue and a delightful and never inappropriate wit, this comic is a balm for broken hearts , and a silent gesture of forgiveness towards their absent fathers.
The author's interview, by Sara Marci, will be appearing in L'Unione Sarda tomorrow.
