Nathan Never Gigante #14 (2011) 'The Hidden Spring’

Nathan Never looks a lot like a Blade Runner film starring Brad Pitt. He's a Special Agent with the quasi-governmental Alfa Agency, with adventures often revolving around political, financial, and environmental concerns. This story mixes all three in a tale about water rights in the American Southwest. The "New Alamo" district (Texas) needs to divert rural water supplies for the benefit of the urban center whose economic engine means prosperity for the region as a whole. But what about those who depended on that water previously? It's an ecological parable about competing priorities.

The cover recalls Frank Frazetta's triangular compositions, with a hero atop a pile of corpses, one arm lifted to the sky in triumph. As usual in Bonelli books, the cover image is a montage of elements from the story, but the main image (the robot on the dino-creature) is not specifically seen in the interior.

I don't own all the pages of original art of this issue; far from it. I have the very beginning and much of the ending. I'm missing huge sections in the middle which I'll summarize on the posted pages surrounding it that I do own.

The Italian industry has its own terminology and publication patterns. Apart from the monthly 86-94 page books (each of which is an "album" made of "plates") for their various ongoing fumetti series, Bonelli publishes various annual issues for many of them. A "Maxi" issue contains three separate 94 page stories, a good way to clear inventory stories, of which they apparently commission a large number. A "Speciale" is a single story of around 180 pages. A "Gigante" issue is larger in both page size (11.75"x8.25") and page number (224 story pages) compared to typical fumetti. It's printed in black and white (as most fumetti are, unless designated "Color").

This story deals with water rights in the American Southwest. I could easily imagine a version of this story, stripped of its sci-fi elements, taking place in the Old West, a favorite setting for Italian fumetti. However, this issue owes much of its character and plot to the 1974 film "Chinatown," starring Jack Nicholson as a detective investigating the murder of a dam engineer.