Luciano Bottaro - Pepito 9 (1975)

In the midst of a youth spent largely on a fifty-fifty diet of French/Belgian comics on one side and US comic books on the other, I still managed to dive into other strips, thanks to the myriad of titles that were displayed on newsstands at the time. Most of them were pocket-sized affairs. Some of the most popular (judged on terms that I always found quite indecipherable) were graduated to comic-book size. All of them had the common trait of displaying full stories, with no continuity whatsoever. This made for instant reading pleasure, as long as you went for that kind of stuff...

All these strips had no indication of creators, they came from all over the place and you could even find some real real oddities in there: I distinctly remember stumbling upon episodes of Frank Frazetta's White Indian strip, once. But that's another story...

Sometimes, one of these strips really grabbed me so much I would put it up high on my Top List. And some of them are still there, among which, Pepito by Luciano Bottaro...

The zany adventures of young pirate Pepito, have been incredibly successful in most European countries from the 50's to the 80's and France was no exception! The careful balance between comedy and suspense, the constantly imaginative stories, the hilarious wordplays on characters' names, all supported by the punchy art and carefully designed storytelling made for compulsive, always rewarding, reading.

Granted, it's one of my guilty pleasures, but, maybe due to its tortuous publication history, it seems there is very little Pepito art around.

That's why I was significantly thrilled to find this cover from a 1975 pocket-sized edition of Pepito, displaying both the hero and his arch-nemesis, corrupt governor Hernandez de La Banane.

Oh, boy! I'm sure this one will ring some serious bells in the hearts of my fellow collectors in Europe!

Now, if I can find a page from one of the large-size Pepito stories Bottaro did in the 60's, my joy will be complete.

In the meantime, I will go back to my venerable collection of battered books, drop my bag on the bridge of that good old reliable Pepito ship, La Cacahouete, and sail with the crew to the Sea of Caroubes, looking for the Isle of Surprises...

PS: After some reseach, it appears that Guido Scala who assisted Luciano Bottaro had a serious hand in that cover. So, I'm giving him equal billing...

PPS: 2 interesting documents came with the piece, a colour guide on tracing paper and a pencil prelim on the back of the actual art, interestingly depicting a more primitive approach to the scene. Check additional pictures for these extras.