Comics today: interview with Marco Visentin
Hi Marco, you are part of the “new generation” of illustrators. Can you tell us more about yourself?
Hello and thanks for the opportunity! It’s the first time I’ve been offered a formal interview, so I hope I don’t get too bogged down (laughs).
For as long as I can remember, I’ve practically grown up with pencil and paper, from the first timid drawings that mimicked cartoons on television, to more or less anything that crossed my mind. There wasn’t a single dinner party or family gathering that didn’t tempt little Marco to ask for a surface and a tool to doodle on between football debates, slices of salami and sips of prosecco; ah, and I use the vague term “surface” because I’m sure if you asked my mother or grandmother, they would be more than flattered to take you on a tour of the various layers of plaster used to cover my pastel murals on the front of the house… perhaps I was developing an affinity for the graffiti world?
Obviously my schooling, especially starting from high school and my three years at the International School of Comics in Padua, has been fundamental in steering me on the right path in this rather uncertain future that has been plagued by quite a few sticks in the wheels from third parties. I still have a long way to go before I can call myself a ‘comic book artist’ done and finished, but thanks also to the projects you have allowed me to carry out under your editorial wing, I feel that the climb has now begun and I certainly have no intention of stopping here!
Nowadays, digital skills are also crucial in your field. But how much do ‘pen and paper’ still count?
They count exactly as they did 10 years ago. People are often quick to shout: ‘Digital will replace traditional! Sound the trumpets! Call the king!’ The goal of digital, however, has never been this: it is a tool like any other to simplify the production and publishing of a work, always going hand in hand with any prior traditional study base. Obviously this is my humble opinion on the matter: I am sure that if you asked this question to five or ten other authors, you would receive just as many different answers…
At the end of the day, I would like to quote the opinion of one of my teachers, which in time has also become mine: “Digital is a beautiful tool, but nothing beats the sound of the nib running across the paper”.
Do you see an evolution in the world of comics? What is changing?
You didn’t spare any blows on the tough questions! Well, I premise that my opinion and my experience in this sector stand as a grain of sand stands to the entire Jesolo seafront… despite this, in my opinion the world of comics is constantly changing, we are at a stage in this “product” where it is no longer so easy to catalogue a precise date when the cards have been changed. Suffice it to say that we can no longer even use the term “comic book” to define it, since the term “graphic novel” was born in the days of Will Eisner; before him, Osamo Tezuka had captained the spread of “manga” in the East, and today, with what we and so many other publishers now produce, we speak of “eBooks/web comics”.
The boundaries have been opening up for years, creating the beautiful cultural cauldron that we find ourselves in front of today and that, in a few years’ time, will change again… indeed! It is already changing! I cite, for example, the case of numerous projects financed via crowdfunding platforms such as ‘Kickstarter’. These platforms tend to increasingly favour the world of self-publishing, which for too many years has been trampled on, unfairly in my opinion, by the ‘big bosses’ who dominate the sector. The fact is that there is no real way to ‘point the finger’ at what is actually changing, but it is certain, however, that it is happening and that is a beautiful thing!
With La Novella Orchidea you are now on your third comics (in progress), do you think it is still a stimulating challenge?
Each new project always excites me as if it were the first time. The challenges are many and continuous and certainly do not diminish just because you have more experience or more modern materials, but they simply become easier to digest. A 40-page one-shot can be as threatening as a weekly serialisation, you never know who or what is going to get in the way of publication, but isn’t the beauty in that uncertainty? Perhaps, though, this is just my masochistic view (laughs).
Ricardo Tronconi’s stories have a strong erotic component. As a cartoonist do you often have to deal with nudity or sex scenes?
Thanks to Ricardo’s imagination, I can’t deny that scenes of nudity and rough love are not wasted… at the beginning, I’ll let you imagine the expressions of my acquaintances when I had to tell them the content of the stories I was working on (laughs).
These projects were my first ‘professional’ experience with the world of erotic/love drawing: I hated it quite a bit, I won’t deny it, because like any new experience you always have to overcome that initial wall of hatred and contempt brought on by stepping out of your comfort zone. In time, however, he helped me ‘clear my way’ of seeing relationships between us humans represented on paper and for that I will always be grateful to him.
Do you think Italy is still too moralistic on these topics?
Well, having given birth to an immense archive of artists who have made a living on the nude, literally forming the basis of art as we know it today… no, Italy itself is not moralistic, but Italians are!
As I said before, that negative reaction generated by fear of the new and different is to be expected. Just look at the many reports of reforms and opposition to such reforms that we hear nowadays; it all stems from ignorance, since we humans have always preferred to respond violently to what we did not know, rather than extend our hand and try to establish a dialogue. That was the case two thousand years ago and it is still the case, unfortunately, today.
In time, however, as was the case with comics, I think that even in this area, the boundaries will gradually dissolve and we will literally all lay ourselves bare!
