The literary genre, erroneously considered the “poor brother” of adventure, is experiencing a second youth. Comics, TV series, video games have a common trait that attracts: the hero struggling with a path of redemption
Conan cornered himself and brandished his axe. He was the image of the invincible primitive: legs spread, head forward, one hand leaning against the wall to support himself, the other holding the ax while the muscles swelled like ropes under the skin and the features of the face formed into a furious mask. The eyes burned through a veil of blood and the opponents hesitated: however ferocious, dissolute and criminal they were, they belonged to the so-called civilized races and had received a certain education. He, on the other hand, was the barbarian, the natural killer. The attackers retreated, well aware that the dying tiger can still cause death.” Robert E. Howard (born in Texas in 1906) wrote these sentences in 1932, four years before he died in 1936. He left early, but not before having created one of the most extraordinary characters in world literature: Conan the Barbarian.
And the amazing thing about it is that it still works. Just under a hundred years after his debut, this broadsword-wielding, muscular brute continues to inspire authors and readers around the world. Panini comics publishes his black and white comic adventures in the Conan’s Wild Sword series. Mondadori’s historic Urania has just launched a new fantasy sub-series in paperback format for bookshops, and the Conan stories do not look out of place alongside the works of George RR Martin, the inventor of Game of Thrones.
Yet it still works. Not just Conan, all fantasy. A genre that has long been underestimated, which has never enjoyed the intellectual legitimation enjoyed by detective stories and science fiction. Little adventure stuff of little value, at best medium-quality entertainment for kids: this has always been said of novels and tales of ancient warriors, dragons, sorcerers and wizards. But fantasy has continued undaunted to churn out masterpieces, has adapted to the passage of time and is now triumphing on the shelves, managing to involve even the youngest audiences who are usually allergic to books. Who knows, perhaps the merit also goes to the so-called young adult narrative, which involves teenagers and often presents fantastic settings. Or maybe it’s thanks to the monstrous success achieved by Game of Thrones.
In some cases, video games create successful phenomena. Julien Blondel and Shonen have adapted the manga adaptation Dark Souls – Redemption from the Dark Souls videogame saga, published in Italy by J-Pop. The two cartoonists – guests at Lucca Comics – created an original story rendered according to the canons of the most innovative and effective Japanese works on a graphic level. The result was an excellent result: an adult, dark, exciting comic. After all, fantasy also has this rougher declination, which in the novels is perfectly interpreted by an author like Joe Abercrombie, of whom E/O is publishing some of the most beautiful novels. Here too the atmospheres are adult, violent and sensual: tales of demons and swords rinsed in Quentin Tarantino’s filmography. Those looking for similar emotions in manga can browse Berserk, which even surpasses Ken the Warrior in terms of level of brutality. If, on the other hand, less bloody but still very original and outside the norm nuances of adventure are favored, there is an interesting Italian production: One Last Time by Dario Sicchio and Caterina Bonomelli (also published by J-Pop) again in manga style.
Either way, it works. It works on digital platforms such as Netflix, just mention the series The Witcher based on the Geralt of Rivia Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski, of which a new novel has just been released. The universe of this silver-haired monster slayer has also inspired numerous comic books and perfectly demonstrates how flexible and layered fantasy is. There are manifestations of it for every type of reader. After all, one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The Lord of the Rings, is a fantasy. And the Earthsea Tales are also fantasy, or rather the Earthsea saga created by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin from which Miyazaki made an animated film in 2006. Between Le Guin and Tolkien there is indeed a sea, between her and Conan an abyss. The American author was a radical feminist, her novels are steeped in racial and gender themes. Nothing could be further from the barbarian than Howard, who feminists probably consider a prototype of toxic and predatory masculinity, with the aggravating circumstance that the author was an iron conservative, a friend of HP Lovecraft and also the author of a story about the end of the white man.
But perhaps this is precisely the point. Regardless of the intensity of the violence and the darkness of the plot, and above all regardless of the political connotation, fantasy continues to endure and thrive because it always provides a variation on the theme of the hero’s journey, one of the cornerstones of Western culture. Ultimately, that’s all each of us needs. Someone, exhibiting quite a few prejudices, could dismiss this genre of literature as rubbish, even pretending to ignore that it was authors of genius such as Gene Wolfe and many others who made history. Of course, you can even laugh at dragons and trolls, at exotic sailors and warriors with skin inlaid with scars. But upon closer inspection, fantasy is even more realistic than the one we find ourselves immersed in. Decades of political correctness and the concealment of violence have transported us to an artificial, sugar-coated world that deceives by pretending to be harmless. In Fantasy, however, you always have to fight, you have to show courage and overcome your limits, in one way or another the warrior virtues are celebrated, even when they are well hidden within the progressive imagination. In fantasy you face the demons of the world and not just your own, and every time the protagonists have to travel the arduous road that makes adults, and which inevitably passes through dark forests populated by ferocious creatures. These are the canons of the genre, but real life also forces us into this horizon. Here then fantasy is contemporary epic, it is the ancient but always alive tale that reveals our deepest nature. It is a spiritual genre, which involves asceticism – with or without a god to pray to.
This is why it works: because at the end of the day, under the thick blanket of do-goodism and lies in which we have wrapped ourselves, a barbarian waits in the shadows, eager to fight.
