sabato 8 ottobre 2011

Have you ever heard of Dick Drago?!?!

I guess you haven't.

Anyway, a brief introduction is needed.

Last Sunday my girlfiend and I went to a comics street market. There were lots of stands, with a huge variety of comics, most italian ones like Tex and Dylan Dog but also american (Marvel and DC superheroes), and mangas. Obviously, 99% of the stands was selling used comics, and some of them had old rarities. The market was pretty crowded, and lots of people (most of whom were in their thirties or above) were looking for old comics to complete their collections.
I was there mainly to go for a walk with my girlfriend, but I took advantage of the situation to look for some old Dylan Dog comics that are missing from my collection.
While I was looking for them in a shelf packed with comics, I hit on a strange comic, that I had neve seen before. The name was "Dick Drago". The strange thing was that, starting from the font used for the title, everyting looked very similar to Dylan Dog: horror comics with black and white drawings and a male, dark haired main character, same graphical layout, same cover color. Since It looked very "alternative" to me, and it was the first time I had seen It, I eventually decided to get it.
Once at home, I learned from some websites that Dick Drago was issued as a clone of Dylan Dog in 1994 (but only 11 issues camo out, than it ended): Dick Drago is a reporter from Belfast with paranormal powers, that travels around the world to write articles about strange facts.
Finally, some days ago I managed to read the copy that I bought, "Le tombe della luna piena", the second issue published.
I think that the most appropriate word to express my opinion about it is: whortless.
The drawings are not that bad, but dialogues are really horrible (sometimes there are even grammar mistakes).
The plot is trivial. It starts in medias res without giving an explanation of why Dick Drago was going in that place, and the plot seems not interesting at all. Then the climax rises and the story starts to become a little more interesting, but the end is so unoriginal and stupid...Even the attempt to copy the "open ending" from Dylan Dog is ridiculous.
On the internet I learned that Dick Drago is famous among Dylan Dog fans to be a such uninspired and careless imitation of Dylan Dog, that some of them ended up to "worship" it (ironically), considering it an example of trash clone comics.

Anyway, I'm glad to have bought it, though, since now I own a trash rarity from the nineties!

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