Berardi Milazzo
Ken Parker: Oltre la frontiera

My son looks at me “stunned” when I talk to him about things I take for granted, things that have now been assimilated, that are now part of my DNA... If I mention Stanley Kubrick, Franz Kafka, David Bowie, Zanardi, Apocalypse Now, The Blues Brother… He looks at me with an air of not understanding what I'm talking about.

How, then, can he grasp the greatness and expressive originality of a western comic like Ken Parker, born with Bonelli and expired of natural causes in less than a decade?

How will he be able to enjoy (assuming he manages to read comics, now considered “obsolete” by him or, as he once told me, “old folks’ stuff”!) the dozens of cultural references that the authors Berardi (texts) and Milazzo (drawings) managed to slip in between one page and another?

I still remember the caricatures of Laurel and Hardy as gold nugget seekers, a Franz Kafka (still) similar to an explorer and also John Wayne, Albert Einstein, Primo Carnera, Buffalo Bill, President Carter not to mention the constant iconographic references repeatedly taken up, of paintings, writings or scenes now part of our iconographic culture.

Ken Parker arrived like a bolt from the blue in March 1979 and right from the start, I understood that, even in this case, this comic would sweep away in one blow the do-gooder rhetoric of Tex, the easy idealistic adventure of Zagor, and also the lively 50s epic of Mister No – which of the three mentioned was undoubtedly the most interesting.

Reading this comic was like reading the screenplay (with related storyboard) of a real movie, more than a “comic”: full of ideas (read: Like a Mirror, a Bonellian series album), with scenes fitted in unconventional ways and funny yet also damn serious dialogues (see “Strike”) that give you chills.

Ken Parker was of an embarrassing humanity: never before had a character shown himself to be so weakly human (he had lost his wife, was often depressed and lonely, hated the use of weapons) but equally strong in denouncing injustices, throwing himself first to save a life or claiming rights for workers treated like slaves (we are still at the end of the 19th century).

Through Ken Parker we young people began to understand better and with new eyes certain facts (the slave trade between Africa and America, the class struggles of the labor movement across the sea, the massacre of the indigenous peoples of America, etc.) far from schoolbooks, cold and aseptic in describing the facts mentioned in just a few lines.

Ken Parker was a man of the street who became a sort of big brother, endowed with a strength of spirit and a truly enviable humanity.

He was the older brother I always dreamed of having.

Silent, moody, often with a humble, low-profile tone, very willing to listen, often antisocial and brooding, but precisely because of this “alive” and close. Even now (30 plus years have passed) if I have to think back to Ken Parker I immediately think of him as a “real” person, alive… with his contradictions but also with the great dose of humanity and feeling typical of the “good people” we rarely get to meet.

And God knows how much I would like to meet and know “today” someone so smart!

Returning to the comic, everything cannot transcend from the pictorial, soft, and innovative style of Ivo Milazzo: three marks were enough to characterize a glance… two watercolor brushstrokes to convey to us the sensuality of a truly compelling female gaze. A truly sublime artist for class and recognizability!

But the genius, above all (and I want to emphasize this again), was concentrated in the texts and scripts. Modern, brilliant, full of ideas and plot twists: in just one Ken Parker there was the embryonic seed and the strength to package at least 10 Tex albums.

And it is precisely due to the difficulty of keeping up (Quality, as we know, has always been paid for ... and at a high price) that in the spring of 1984 Berardi would announce the farewell to Bonelli and the relative closure of the character, unable to keep up with the 100-page deadline that Bonelli imposed. A truly grueling rhythm that clashed with the quality standards of the albums produced until then.

A farewell that would later be diluted with sporadic releases with other publishers and charitable or occasional editorial initiatives of little importance.

Perhaps it’s just me, but even now, if I have to think about rereading some comic of “excellent quality”, in terms of intelligence and perfect balance between text and images, my mind thinks only of Ken Parker (and a few others…).

I’m only sorry that my son will miss these things… in favor of some other dynamic and interactive PSP or internet contraption but certainly less stimulating than certain things I loved.