Emiliano Pagani, Daniele Caluri
Don Zauker Esorcista - Operette Morali

THE REVIEW

"DON ZAUKER: the mass is over. Get the hell out."

Finally, in the gloomy and lazy newsstands of the peninsula, arrives the definitive collection of exploits of this Don Zauker, the insane exorcist priest from whom Quentin Tarantino will soon make a film (or at least I really hope so). A well-deserved success for the two young authors Emiliano Pagani (with the beautiful texts) and Daniele Caluri (with the unbeatable drawings) who have created a grotesque and delightful comic that contains the most malicious, misogynistic, violent, pornographic, blasphemous and politically incorrect things one can read in a comic book today (November 2011).

A nice large bound and glossy volume of 140 pages containing around 60 short BN episodes in which our devious "priest" (?!) shares his cynical and immoral misdeeds, speaking in Livornese, with acidic and polemic digressions on the Church and its prelates, sparing no one including Hitler, Porn, splatter, pedophilia, and much more. All mediated by a sharp sarcasm and humor that, in the end, makes the character quite likable (who, as Caluri himself confessed to me at Lucca Comics this year, is inspired by the great Torpedo by Abulí/Bernet). So kudos to the two authors and kudos to Il Vernacoliere (also from Livorno) for creating and publishing an "in the smell of excommunication" editorial project which, in these homogenized, glossy times with neo-Christian Democrat tronists, is not a small feat. So much so that there's been a spate of debates and controversies on dozens of Catholic and non-Catholic blogs and sites around this truly uncomfortable character who has very little morality... Oh dear, not that priests "in general," I mean the real ones in flesh and blood, are that different, right?