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Rating: THRILL
TERROR
HORROR
If, by chance, on your way home, at the corner of a dark alley in a smoky city you get "attacked" by a living pear in black tights, don't be scared, much less horrified. At most, you'll be overcome by nausea due to the terrible stench that the pear-man emits.
Indeed, because Cattivik aka the Genius of Evil doesn't exactly excel at ready-to-wear robberies and muggings: not only does he fail to nab decent loot, but he is even able to return to his squalid hovel, sparsely furnished, infected and with an avalanche of bandages scattered over his hairy and vomit-inducing body that he often hydrates with sewer water. A true connoisseur of personal hygiene and beauty, come on.
Cattivik is the perfect antithesis of the carefree and frivolous (although only seemingly) world of Lupo Alberto: from the idyllic and graceful little English farm one is catapulted into a rough, unidentified city, albeit with an Italian look, dense with criminals, corrupt individuals, neglected people, perverse and failed ones. Playful, cheerful, and naïve little animals evolve into humans devoid of any positive morality, unbalanced, complexed, a cast of little Kafkas in full decay, ethically rotten, and materially not even that commendable.
The most savage of dystopias? On the contrary. It is precisely the negativity diffused by Cattivik and his world that makes the strips created by Bonvi and brought to fame by Silver so humorous and side-splitting. Also, because the Evil that crowns this comic imbues so much degradation that it becomes ridiculous and amusing to most: Cattivik is the everyday petty criminal, who makes his dirty work his reason for living and his daily routine (he even sets the alarm clock to ring at the strike of the night, the kingdom of delinquency); despite the repeated failures of his pathetic work, he manages to maintain a strength of spirit and perseverance that makes him less "failing" compared to his favorite victim, Gino Solitomino, a depressed accountant perpetually robbed of his meager briefcase. Cattivik is the Genius of enthusiastic and eternal persistence in stealing, transgressing, attacking, assaulting, all actions destined to turn into amusing sketches set between a manhole and a dim streetlight on a foggy night.
If Lupo Alberto and his crew hide behind the calm rural reality of McKenzie Farm irreverent intentions towards modern society, balancing between development and regression, Cattivik simultaneously unveils these critiques, relocating them in a context (the industrialized metropolis) much more eloquent and realistic: the polluted, dirty city, steeped in smog and wounded by criminals of the worst kind (mafia, bullies, murderers, corruptors, prostitutes, and pimps), significantly differs from that utopian ideal of locus amenus developed, clean, neat, morally sound. Even the graphic depiction of Cattivik's neighbors fully expresses this thesis: distorted, coarse, grim, gloomy faces, too big or too lean, shapeless, overflowing, fluid bodies.
Th rill, Terror, Horror collects the most famous (mis)adventures of the Genius of Evil, always on the hunt for new victims and perpetually in trouble: the already mentioned Gino Solitomino, the epitome of a failed and depressed employee, is a frequent supporting character. Worth mentioning is the famous Banda del Buco, a hilarious tale in which Cattivik is joined by the clumsy criminal Henri Le Taupe, a more negative alter ego of the already grotesque Enrico the Mole, who mistakes the Genius for the mysterious Bepè. The Banda del Buco will pave the way for further comic sequels published later, with the tedious Henri always ready to land Cattivik in more absurd troubles.
Other noteworthy stories include Cattivik versus Diavolik and Gli Innamoratini: in the former, the scoundrel clashes with an almost identical version of the famous character from the Sorelle Giussani, and in the latter, he has to deal with the saccharine displays of affection from the Lovers of Peynet.
UAZ UAZ
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