Richard Starkings
Elephantmen

Let's clear things up right away, that is, despite the similarity, this "Elephantmen" has nothing to do with Lynch's masterpiece film. Or maybe it does. Let's start from the beginning. According to various comic book enthusiasts scattered across the internet, "Elephantmen," which has been published in the USA for years now, is practically underground stuff for carbonari or almost. Minimal success, confined to a practically underground context, in a situation where it seems that comics enjoy a certain vitality there. Stuff for the chosen few, in short. But what is it about?

Born from the imagination of Richard Starkings, assisted from time to time by excellent artists, this hefty comic is set in a future so dystopian as to be almost futuristic. In the twenty-second century and beyond, Earth has emerged from a gigantic war between Africa and China, with Europe as the battleground (of course...). A prominent role during the conflict was played by the Elephantmen, laboratory creatures born from the union of human and animal genes, genuine killing machines daughters of the Mappo corporation. After the war and the trial of their creator, who appeared to be the classic mad scientist but was actually a figure worthy of much deeper analysis, the United Nations orders the integration into society of these very particular veterans. A kind of mix between "Taxi Driver" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"? More or less. Almost always forced into the most humble jobs and true outcasts, these former lab experiments are doubly excluded: excluded as an eternal monument to a war no one wants to remember anymore and excluded for their bizarre if not monstrous appearance. Here we have three-meter-tall beasts with the features of giraffes, elephants, and hippos serving you at the gas pump, at the bar, doing the dirty work. Isolated and under scrutiny, tolerated but never truly accepted, among them are some of the main characters of this long choral story, namely Hip Flask and Ebony Hide, two agents serving an unspecified investigative agency. Their personal story will gradually intertwine with that of Obadiah Horn, a successful and powerful Elephantmen, practically the only one of his kind to have really made it and reached the top of the social ladder. However, Horn's business immediately appears not to be very clear, and Flask and Hide's investigations become increasingly lengthy and risky.

"Elephantmen" features an extremely intricate narrative structure, with each issue of the original American edition presenting multiple sub-episodes, which often might appear disconnected from each other or even from the rest of the series or standalone, whose purpose is sometimes only to deepen a given character's personality or introduce new ones, with a plot that develops very slowly in several directions, involving an ever-increasing number of figures each time. Hence, next to various Hip and Hyde, appear taxi drivers who seem straight out of a Playboy centerfold or 23rd-century poachers, with the action shifting between the USA, Africa, and Europe, with continuous flashbacks that make the entire story as fascinating as it is intricate and complex. Characterized by an extremely varied and refined graphic style, also thanks to the participation of multiple artists per issue, including the excellent Moritat, the panels range from extremely realistic and dark drawings to others colorful and cartoonish in tone, which evidently, if on one side makes each volume extremely varied, on the other perhaps renders it too unpredictable for the average reader, relegating the series to a well-defined circle of a few enthusiasts. Panini has been publishing the various issues in Italy for about a year now, using a rather peculiar numbering, namely 1A, 1B, 2A, and so on, which frankly does not seem too clear or intuitive.

The relatively not too low price of the individual issues, about thirteen euros, might not seem very inviting, especially for those who are not too clear about what to expect from such a series, but it must be said that "Elephantmen" truly deserves it, if only for the excellent graphic style, truly a feast for the eyes, as well as for the captivating plot. The various episodes indeed lend themselves to multiple levels of reading, ranging from pure entertainment to tackling more complex themes such as isolation, marginalization, and the "moral limits" of science. Surely not an easy comic, it might happen on more than one occasion, once you've finished a volume, to ask yourself what you have actually read, given the slow pace with which the story develops, but on the other hand, the care given to detail is undeniable, a not insignificant element that makes the various characters extremely multifaceted. Paradoxically, these very elements, which might apparently represent a limit, work in favor of "Elephantmen," contributing to creating a mature and adult comic, intended for a readership that, besides mere action, which is certainly not lacking, also values the complexity of the characters and the various situations present, thus contributing to an engaging and original science fiction tale. Deserving.