Andrea Artusi presents comic book inspired by police fiction

Uma of Fernando Pessoa’s “policiary novels” inspired the Italian author Andrea Artusi to write the comic book “The Mystery Vargas Case”, which will present on Sunday at AmadoraBD festival, Amadora (Lisboa).

“The Mysterious Vargas Case – An adventure based on Fernando Pessoa’s homonymous work”, edited this month by Asa, is “a very personal tribute and dedicated to the passion the great poet felt for the genre” police officer, says Andrea Artusi in the postface of the book.

The author considered “an unmissable opportunity” to stage “a story with children as protagonists” from the episode of the arrival of the adolescent Fernando Pessoa to Lisbon, coming from South Africa where he spent part of his childhood, mixing it with one of the novels of the poet left incomplete.

The book opens with the young Fernando Pessoa writing a poem in a small notebook, on the boat that docks at the Lisbon pier, facing a panoramic of the city in the early twentieth century.

On arrival he meets Alexander Search, a young man like him (who will be revealed in the narrative), with whom he will be involved in an adventure in Lisbon, to investigate a mysterious suicide, the same as one of the police novels left by Fernando Pessoa.

“ The starting point of this comic book narrative was the intertwining of the complex investigation of a supposed suicide of the original tale with some biographical elements of the life of Pessoa”, explains Andrea Artusi.

The BD remains “always in the spirit of fiction”, although Artusi has included some real people such as Manuel Gualdino da Cunha, Fernando Pessoa’s great-uncle, and Maria de Lourdes Braga de Sá Teixeira, the first female pilot in Portugal, in addition to references to the heteronymous Alexander Search and the character Abílio Quaresma, the detective created by the poet.

“The Mysterious Vargas Case” is Andrea Artusi’s first graphic novel (Veneza, 1964), an author who, in the 1990s, was at Sergio Bonelli Editore, who was creative director of the Fabrica project, of the Benetton group, and who is a teacher of Language of the Comics and Illustration at the Salesian University of Venice and Verona, Italy.

Andrea Artusi will present “The Mystery Vargas Case” on Sunday, on the last day of the Amadora Comics Festival, together with researcher Ricardo Belo de Morais, from Casa Fernando Pessoa, and editor Luís Saraiva, from Leya group.