ROBIN WOOD: LIGHTS AND SHADOWS adventure prolific storyteller, Editorial Columba flagship for decades in the country, the figure of Robin Wood has achieved paradigmatic dimension in local comics. Here an overview of his work, which highlights critical aspects in their scripts, some subjects distorted and "Western-right"
Side of the Mighty is dark. In the darkness stands a train stopped in the middle of nowhere as a strange shadow in the snow infinite. Two guards groan, leaning on their rifles, huddled around a small fire. They whisper in the dark, while around the rest of the convoy sleeps ... a soldier moaning in his sleep ... another coughing painfully ... - Do you feel the air? Soon came the cold ... what will happen then? is bad to fight with the heat, but when the snow falls will be hell ... "says the first, with mournful eyes. -A concerned we do not discuss that, comrade. We simply obey. And you know what happens with that doubt, "says the second, threatening, staring into the eyes of your partner. The first raises his head, afraid-I have never doubted, comrade, I swear ... I swear di-responds softly, looking at both sides, trying to discover the shade of some top middle of the night ... You hear someone sobbing ... Another grunt lost in the night.
Kosakovitch and Connors Back in the early 90's, Robin Wood wrote a series, with pictures of Garcia Duran, which lasted about 40 chapters. The adventures of two mercenaries nice (if that's possible) called KOSAKOVITCH and CONNORS, Dartagnan appeared in the magazine, editorial Columba, maintaining a long tradition of solitary heroes (theme in Robin Wood, mercenaries, in the 70 carried out a series of the same name) The adventures of these two characters, one a blue-blooded Polish half romantic, the other English banned from a British air force to bully and drunk, pass in the middle of wars of the early twentieth century. From Palestine, through various conflicts and civil wars in the Middle East (watching this little has changed), including part of the hosts of Lawrence of Arabia in its fight against the Turks. The vicissitudes of life and thirst for adventure lead to these soldiers of fortune to Soviet Russia, was immersed in a bloody civil war, haunted by the remnants of the Tsarist and Western powers that supported it. The two protagonists are engaged by followers of the Romanov family to free them from the clutches Bolsheviks, due to debt Kosacovitch, Polish, is with the deposed Czar. As we engage in conflict, quickly pass the ethical commitment (debt with former Tsar) to take a stand for him, facing the revolution.
The dialogue of the first paragraph belonging to one of these chapters and is a small sample of Manichaeism simpler than flies this stage of the series, hardly surprising coming from a publisher that does not allow not even a tit into the air. Political commissars bloodthirsty practice gratuitous violence against farmers (admittedly than whites, but the aristocrats, they also do well in these chapters), a Trotsky and hysterical screaming, threatening to kill half the world and a talkative Lenin, and all This opposed to a deliberate and wise Zar, an innocent grandfather, is a finished sample of the historical distortion that hides the series, which otherwise would be taken in solfa, but reading it today, does not cause any grace. The attempt to free the ex-Tsar Romanov reaches several chapters where the reader is witness to the shooting of a good man (which also charges in his arms with a sick child) and his family as if they were not responsible for the misery and hunger of the Russian population during the height of the Tsars. Perhaps the desire to maintain a loyal audience (police and army guys were avid readers of Columba) was Robin Wood to commit these outrages literary .... Or maybe not.
grandfather Fedor In chapter fifteen, THE LESSONS OF GRANDFATHER FEDOR, actors, accompanied by a princess fall from grace (obviously expropriated by the Bolsheviks), come to a miserable village inhabited by small farmers, witnesses indifferent to the civil war. Wisdom leader, an octogenarian ashen mustache, has no limit ... - We? We are farmers. We take care of the crops and nothing else ... but they will come and take our grain, our cattle and our youth, all in the name of Mother Russia--But the only Russian I know is that planting and harvesting. Maybe I am a limited man, but I can not think of any more ... - During the stay of the mercenaries, the village will be visited by the Czarist army, with its attendant violence and abuse, and both, ironically, must face his own side . Towards the end, the village will be the scene of confrontation between white and red, and the inhabitants decided to stay in the mold, as if that conflict were not deciding, in part, its destination. That's when the grandfather Fedor puts the finishing touch to his wise thoughts ... - Do you see? This is up to them. Fighting for their flags. We do so ... let's get ours. That is reality. The rest does not interest us. Did you forget Robin Wood made the Revolution Russian peasants and workers, and that the leadership of the Bolsheviks was the most genuine expression of the wishes of the people, tired of the abuses of the Romanov and his family, and caste ruler who so admires? Does not she know what the white army was primarily responsible for the massacres in Russia? Does forget that the reality of the peasants and workers changed dramatically, leaving an undetermined period of misery and hunger, with the fall of the Tsar and his minions? Fedor grandfather's speech is disturbing ... The villagers, innocent, in the middle of someone else's war, and two armies, equally matched, fighting over who knows what dark interests: Two demons that have nothing to do with us ... ... A two evils fascinating reading ...
If we trace the thread of most of the work of Robin, find a special feature in many of them: from Claim of colonialism and the false manhood (Here the Legion), admiration for the scheduled castes and kings (Dago), the fascination with the Tsar (The Cossacks) and the defense of law and order (Savarese), we get to a conclusion quite clear: their characters, sooner or later, are on the side of Power's vision is that of the conquerors, the Christian West and .... always the others are wild, their scripts might have fueled major studio film in the golden age of Hollywood ("Gunga Din," "Beau Geste," "The Charge of the Light Brigade") is not difficult to imagine how a screenplay by Robin serious about the war in Iraq ... I'm sure that terrorists would be on that side, and this, the champions of freedom. During my childhood, I was a voracious reader of the work of Robin Wood, and I know by heart the most important series of his career, and as I got older, I become aware of the view that it is in the world. While great narrator of adventures, at this point one can not ignore the ideas that seep into many, not all their scripts. conflicting Inevitably, when I think of all this, I am reminded of another great cartoon figure in Argentina, Hector German Oesterheld, which had much influence on several generations of readers ... His humanity, his search for reason and justice, are a true balance is more, the tilt in their favor. The patriotism of the first, second internationalism. A violence without reason, the reason for the violence. Abuse of the powerful commitment to the masses.
Finally, an interesting anecdote ...
several years ago, in a Comics Festival in Buenos Aires, through a recognized writer and a cartoonist, I had the chance to meet Robin Wood. No I can deny that it was an exciting time ... During the event, I shared a table in which Robin, accompanied by a group of fans unwilling to take the counter, just lecturing on this topic. The same said, humorous and ironic that in 70 years of turmoil, where ideologies wandered around the cultural arc through all disciplines, during a talk with students, they labeled him as an enemy of the working class ... For a long time , the office disqualifying those young people, with the argument that he knew what it is to work in a factory, and that his critics were simply revolutionary coffee ... By education, or perhaps time to not ruin the evening, or because he was facing one of the narrators who formed me in childhood, I refrained from giving my opinion, although he had very clear my arguments against it. Today, at a distance, it is evident that students were absolutely right. Ezequiel
Rosingana
(Originally published in Southeast 52nd)