Interview with Luigi Siviero, Italian writer born in 1977, author of several essays, comics, poems and short stories. In 2012 he wrote "Dylan Dog and Sherlock Holmes: investigating the nightmare. (NPE Editions)," a book that contains an analysis of the Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi accompanied by an interview with the creator of the nightmare investigator.
In 2016 the second edition of the above book (also NPE) was published, revised and updated by Luigi Siviero. Also this year, the writer won the Fogazzaro Prize in the section Micro-literature and social networks - Special humor award.
In the interview we ask Luigi Siviero a few questions to learn more about both the author and to get more information about his two essays dedicated to Dylan Dog.
DV: Hi Luigi, tell us a little bit about yourself.
L. S.: I have always been interested in comics. In the distant past I edited a couple of comics information blogs when the word "blog" was still virtually unknown in Italy. At that time I also wrote reviews for the site Fumetti di Carta and for the blog House of Mystery. At a certain point the desire to deal with information about comics waned for various reasons and I preferred to concentrate on criticism. The books on comics that I have written are. Analysis of the comic strip. The composition of the pairs of plates. (Abigail Press, 2007), Dylan Dog and Sherlock Holmes: investigating the nightmare. (NPE, 2012), From 9/11 to Barack Obama. Contemporary history in comic books (NPE, 2013) and Sherlock Holmes. Adventure in comics (ProGlo Global Perspective, 2016). I am also very pleased with the contributions I wrote for the anthology Garth Ennis. No Mercy to Heroes and for the exhibition catalog Imaginary interiors Dedicated to Ausonia.
For some time I have also been writing poetry and fiction. In addition to being published in several magazines and anthologies, in 2016 I won the Special Humor Prize of the Micro-literature section of the Fogazzaro Prize.
I also do theater, but I am only a novice beginner. For the past three years I have been attending acting classes at the Spazio 14 theater school in Trento directed by director Elena Marino and actress Silvia Furlan. I also rehearse with another group directed by Luca Buonocunto that is preparing a show based on Moby Dick.
DV: How did the first meeting with Dylan Dog come about?
L. S.: One curious thing is that I have a vivid memory of reading some Dylan Dog albums. The first one, Pink rabbits kill, I read it during a study vacation in Austria between the eighth grade and the ninth grade. Another memory is related to Match with Death, read in the hospital while standing in line to have a cast shower removed that had been put on me following a very serious knee injury. I can date some of the events in my life with very good approximation by reading the date of the comic books!
DV: How did your passion for writing come about? What then prompted you over time to write an essay about it, in 2012, titled "Dylan Dog and Sherlock Holmes: investigating the nightmare."?
L. S.: The passion for nonfiction came from reading one of the chapters in Apocalyptic and integrated by Umberto Eco. I am referring to the chapter in which the first panel of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon strip is analyzed. In fact, my earliest attempts to write in-depth texts on comics were in that direction. In particular, I had become interested in the ways in which cartoonists can construct and relate two distinct panels of a comic strip to each other. The first articles on this topic published online had "leavened" a little at a time to become a book entitled Analysis of the comic strip. The composition of the pairs of plates..
Another initial reference point of mine had been the book The languages of comics by Daniele Barbieri, in which comics were related to other languages such as theater, cinema, music, and so on. The thing that attracted me was not so much to continue the exploration of the contributions made by other languages to comics (a very interesting topic anyway), but to understand what characteristics were typical of comics and made them so.
DV: Can you tell us about the 2012 edition of Dylan Dog and Sherlock Holmes: Investigating the Nightmare? Why did you specifically choose Dylan Dog? What about Sherlock Holmes?
L. S.: When I started writing the book in 2010 I still did not know whether I would be able to complete it. Before then I had only written reviews, texts that were all in all short and a single book that was only about ninety pages long (Analysis of the comic strip. The composition of the pairs of plates.). In this short book I had dealt with a really diverse variety of comics that included the works of Mitsuru Adachi, Georgie by Mann Izawa and Yumiko Igarashi, a Fantastic Four story by Barry Windsor-Smith, Rat-Man by Leo Ortolani, Mazinger Z by Go Nagai and Gosaku Ota, the graphic novel Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, and the Dylan Dog By Tiziano Sclavi.
The fact that I had already dealt, albeit briefly, with Grant Morrison and Tiziano Sclavi had prompted me to speculate about writing a book about either of them, because I thought that the texts written for Analysis of the comic strip. The composition of the pairs of plates. would have been patches of support that could have given me confidence. Then between the two, the choice fell on Sclavi and his Dylan Dog.
I had hypothesized writing a book on Morrison's comics or on the Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi partly because these were works that I really appreciated and that I felt provided interesting and thought-provoking insights. "If I'm going to immerse myself for months or years in certain comics," I had said to myself, "they had better be among those that I think are most worthwhile and exciting."
I did not have a starting thesis to sift through and verify in the book. I built it bit by bit brick by brick.
As for Sherlock Holmes, however, I did not determine from the beginning to deal with it in one of the chapters of the book. The title of the essay, even, was decided last and not by me (for the title, which I like very much, I have to thank the inventiveness of supervisor Carmine Treanni), when by then I had written the whole work.
Sherlock Holmes is present in the book because by rereading one after another all the episodes of Dylan Dog written by Sclavi, I had noticed that there were many references to the Victorian detective and that almost always Sclavi seemed to want to distance himself from Doyle's character. Intrigued by the many Sherlockian references, I wondered why Sclavi had constructed Dylan Dog as an antithesis of Sherlock Holmes, and that's where one of the chapters in the book came from.
DV: Recently instead, the second edition of Dylan Dog and Sherlock Holmes: Investigating the Nightmare has become available (on the official website of the NPE publishing house). What prompted the need for this reissue and how does it differ from the first one?
L. S.: The first edition of the book was sold out, and I think the publisher (rightly) took advantage of the character's 30-year publishing life to reintroduce it. The new edition is similar to the first: I did not revolutionize anything. I added little things that I had missed when I wrote the first version, made a few corrections, and added the few new features on the Dylan Dog written by Tiziano Sclavi that have come to light from 2012 to the present. Unfortunately, the two new episodes of the monthly series written by Sclavi come out at the end of October 2016 and in 2017, so in the book I could only give a nod to their publication but without going into details.
DV: Who is this guide to the world of Dylan Dog dedicated to?
L. S.: That it is dedicated primarily to those who appreciate the comics of this character is a given. I hope that the book will also be useful and interesting for those who are interested in other fields and want to read something about those fields. I am referring in particular to mystery literature: in my book I put Dylan Dog in relation to mystery literature and the evolution that this narrative genre has undergone over time. Since the Dylan Dog by Sclavi is a work that is difficult, if not impossible, to pigeonhole into a genre (the label of "horror comic" is a narrow one for him and says very little about what it is Dylan Dog) I also hope to have as a reader someone who wants to understand why. Dylan Dog was a fundamental component of Italian culture and what one can understand and learn from reading that comic strip.
DV: How will a Dylan Dog fan celebrate October 31?
L. S.: I was supposed to present my book at the L'Aquila Horror Film Festival on October 31. Unfortunately, the festival was postponed because of the earthquake tremors that hit central Italy in the past few days. So I think I will devote myself to more classic activities. On Halloween night I might wear a clown mask and scare the children who ask for trick-or-treaters. Maybe I could even attack them!
DV: As far as horror cinema is concerned, what are your favorite films? What do you think of Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) by Michele Soavi?
L. S.: I'm not saying that for me. Nightmare Is synonymous with horror movies, but we are there. It was the cult series in the 1980s! Other classics that I have enjoyed are. Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero and Don't open that door by Tobe Hooper. Recently, I have enjoyed Rob Zombie's films very much, with the exception of The Witches of Salem.
The thing I remember best about Cemetery Man Are Anna Falchi's boobs. After all, I was 17 years old when the movie came out....
I loved Tiziano Sclavi's novel, and it seems to me that the movie was also well done.
Another memory dating back to 1994 is that so many people had mistaken it for the Dylan Dog movie. In particular, I remember an aunt who was very convinced that Dellamorte Dellamore was based on the comics. There was no convincing her that it had nothing to do with Dylan Dog-and so it was for many others....
DV: Future plans?
L. S.: At Lucca Comics & Games 2016, my new book entitled. Sherlock Holmes. Adventure in comic books and the anthology Daryl Dark - Season Two which contains a 24-page comic strip scripted by me and drawn by Simone Michelini.
In the future I would like to see my Grant Morrison book in print. I would also like to continue writing fiction and comics. It is practically certain that I will write Daryl Dark again, but it would be nice to do something else as well.
DV: Greetings to Luigi and thanks for his time.
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