146
6
222 * 295
06/04/2012
All ages
It was Dino Attansio who originally conceived the idea for this little moustchioed character with his strong Italian accent, always dressed to the nines like a flamboyant caricature of himself. Before long, René Goscinny got involved and the small gags became grand adventures, without losing any of the fantastic situational comedy. Without becoming too political, a delicious social satire can be found in the adventures of this immigrant as he tries out a number of different trades while on his search for work in 1950s Paris. This series is still not particularly well known, but luckily Le Lombard is now publishing this complete reissue of the series, which dates back to Goscinny’s ‘Belgian period’. In fact, before he founded ‘Pilote’ magazine with Uderzo and Charlier, the famous writer had already been working for many years on ‘Tintin’ magazine, and ‘Signor Spaghetti’ is one of the fruits of his labours during that period. If the first few gags make use of repetition to create humour, the arrival of the writer marks the start of more developed storylines full of twists and turns, like a fully-fledged cartoon. The satirical look at French society is perhaps not quite as obvious here as it is in ‘Astérix’, but studying the reactions of the secondary characters when they encounter this little Italian eccentric, one cannot help but wonder if it was just a coincidence…
