The weekend we spent 5-7 May 2017 The third was organized in Thessaloniki. The Comic Con with many and important guests, while, of course, there could be no missing persons. Disney creators! So we had the honor of meeting members of Komix Wiki and Greek Comics in Q & A of the Disney couple Pastrovium and Extra Sunday, ask them questions along with other fans and listen to their answers!

Let's go see what was said:

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How is it to be a pair of comic book designers with similar object (Disney)?

  • Extra: I think it's something fantastic that hasn't happened to me before, and I found a person who totally understands me.
  • Pastrovium: And for me it's the same, it's hard in this world to find and fall in love with such a person, as there don't often happen to be couples of whom both designers are.

Lorenzo, you've created stories about Disney heroes, who, although the protagonists are always the same characters, are placed in a different, each time, context (The Lords of the Wizards, Secret Agent NN, The New Adventures of Phantom Duck). What makes these characters so malleable?

Good with characters Disney is that there's a lot of people, so you can put them, every time, in the respective role to perform it. This clearly depends on the artist's imagination.

Gjiada, in Greece you are best known as the designer of the W.I.T.C. series. H., which was an almost superhero series addressing a more female audience. Do you think this is missing from the comic book market right now?

W.I.T. C.H. is a series that combines superheroes and manga elements, i.e. we can liken it in style to Sailor Moon's, and is directed exclusively to women's audiences. At the time, in Italy, there was nothing like it. I believe that there are no comic books intended exclusively for women and that is something missing from the market. Something they feel close to, that they have common characteristics.

Lorenzo, in your plan there's a pervasive dynamism that doesn't often come across Disney designers. Physicality of expression or conscious choice?

It's something natural as my readings focus on superheroes and manga, except Disney. So I tried to filter these stimuli in a way that approached Disney stories. It shouldn't have seemed strange to readers. For example, in the New Adventures of Phantom Duck the frames in the format of the page approached the way to create a superhero comic page, despite the disco. However, the most recent history of PKNA, which has been released in Topolino, now approaches the classic dysneyco style, which has made it difficult for me to adapt my design, which, in the first phase of the series, had a greater freedom, and I constantly need to reform the way I diffuse my dynamism within the stories. In the images shown from behind (on the wall) there is a page from PKNA, which was never published, as it was not approved for Topolino.

What are your greatest influences as designers and are there comic books or comic books that you are currently watching?

  • Extra: At this time I read nothing from comic books but literary books. I've been more influenced by cartoons, especially by Japanese animes, even Disney cartoons and other American, more than comic books.
  • Pastrovium: My own stimuli are more diffuse, I have not been influenced by a particular artist nor can I think of a particular comic that I like very much, as I read in a more vague way, finding, browsing various comics, what I like from everyone, and I take it as an stimulus to pass it on to my own business.

At first, the PKNA series had a diffused frame style, not three rows per page. How did this come about, did the designers do it themselves or did some editor ask?

Pastrovium: PKNA is the fruit of a very creative period in Italy and the publishing house, then, simply asked artists to experiment.

As Gjiada previously said, there are no more comic books addressed to women. I wonder, how does a woman end up loving comic books and dealing professionally with them?

Extra: I generally liked to draw from a young girl. It is true that, at least in the Italian market, there is a comic book intended exclusively for women at this time, but I like to design for both boys and girls. Right now, I'm drawing a new story about Topolino, which consists of episodes and in which the protagonist is a Disney female character, a duck who came from space! He's a character of Giorgio Kavacano, which had been used about 40 years ago and has not been used since, and I try to design it from a perspective more feminine than Kavacano's.

Did the W.I.T.C.H. series have the impact you expected, was there people (female audience) to read it?

Extra: The series was very successful and sold thousands and thousands of copies, not only in Italy but also in other countries of Europe, there were many girls who loved it!

Who is everyone's favorite Disney creator?

What do you think is your best job?

  • Pastrovium and Persinoto: We think our last job is the best.

Who's everybody's favorite Disney character?

  • Extra: I like ducks more and, in particular, Donald, while from female characters the Mangica.
  • Pastrovium: The most important thing is for history to be good, because if history is not good, even the best character to be the protagonist, it ends up being an ugly character. At this time, with Francesco Artibani Mostly, we make stories that contain more forgotten characters, because it's very easy to make a story about Donald, Mickey, Goofy Mr. Tull, but it's too hard to make a whole story about him. Rich or GlobeFor example. Nevertheless, these stories are quite small, but in future we would like to try something bigger.

Let's imagine that Disney assigns you to take your favorite character and introduce it to a completely new audience through any kind of comic book, keeping everyone's basic features, e.g. dramatic, comical, adventure, thriller. What would anyone choose?

  • Extra: Planning for Disney, I have seen that managers put many restrictions. What I miss and I'd like to do is get out of these restraints and build a story more personal, more mine.
  • Pastrovium: What Gjiada says is right. Today the public, children, and even older ones, are used to reading things that have matured in a certain way. But when you work for Disney, you must realize that you are working on idols, characters that have been built over time and have taken concrete form, so it is difficult to make big changes, even a small change can lead to negative consequences for your creation.
  • Extra: For example, a kind of restriction is that, whereas in the past, when the hake They did something wrong, Donald beat them up with the stick, now, if you present something like that, it's not accepted by Disney. In addition, in the past Scrooge He had his rifle, which still exists, but you won't see him pointing a character anymore, but shooting in the air. And while she was pouring salt and not bullets, that's still forbidden now. Also, right now we're not allowed to show Donald and her Daisy Kissing.
  • Pastrovium: Every time such small restrictions are added, which, as the years go by, make the work of screenwriters difficult, who, to build the history they want, must try to avoid falling to someone like this «wall».

Which screenwriter have you worked with best so far and who have you got better chemistry?

  • Extra: For me, this is Bruno Enna, with whom we have worked in several Disney stories, even in W.I.T.C.H., and recently we have been working together again. He's a very good screenwriter, but also a man, he helps wherever he needs it, Mr. Tull.
  • Pastrovium: I would like to say the name of someone from abroad, not Italian, to show off, but, unfortunately, the best screenwriters, as far as Disney stories are concerned, are Italian. The first is Tito Farachi, with whom we made the first stories of the New Adventures of Phantom Duck (PKNA), or Castie, with whom we created Black Thunder and, finally, Francesco Artibani, with whom we made the new stories of Phantom Duck's New Adventures and are preparing new things right now. Each one is special in his own way, while many times they all behave like children and you have to learn each other's whims to work better with them. And I, as a designer, must please them every time with the result of my work, because I often don't do exactly what they ask me to do. After cooperation, we gradually become friends.

How difficult is it to be a comic book designer and how Disney comic books, which is an American creation, have come to be produced to the greatest extent by Italians?

Pastrovium: It is very difficult to be a comic book designer and every time you have a chance you have to give the best you can to do it in the best possible way. Italy, as far as its culture is concerned, has some elements of a colony, because, when the Americans came after World War II and freed the country from fascism, they also brought their own culture, which contained films and comic books, resulting in Italy having very old Disney comic books and reaching some point where the Italians made better stories than the Americans themselves, who created Disney characters! So it's natural that someone in Italy really wants to be a comic book designer and choose to deal with Disney characters.

At PKNA they have tried to create, and designally, a quite complex world with more complicated equipment, buildings and characters. How do you manage, Lorenzo, to maintain the simplicity of Disney's style?

You have to find the right way. That requires that you have good designers to accomplish that. A designer may be very good at his own comic, but when you're forced to design comics with Disney characters, you have to be able to filter that talent to use it in the service of these characters. It's very hard to explain how someone can do that. An example of such a case is parodies, e.g. Metopolis. Your work should be addressed to children, but you want to put an element more mature, in more detail either in the design style or in the way the page is set up, how it is directed, etc. They are not much different from each other, that is, even Disney's classic animated films have about the same spirit as the most complex stories, such as PKNA. I think it's every time you manage a story. It was a very difficult question, because it is very difficult to explain exactly how this is done. It just comes out!

As we said, Disney places many restrictions, for example Scrooge cannot use his weapon, but in PKNA's stories and Black Thunder there are too many weapons and we see the protagonists fighting each other!

Pastrovium: I haven't said about the Black Thunder yet, but as far as PKNA is concerned, radial guns are not the same as a normal pistol with bullets. As for Black Thunder, there is no violence that cannot pass through comic books. It's like traditional superhero comic books, one punch can fall and then the other responds, but it's limited there. There is no danger to the lives of the protagonists. For example, in Black Thunder 3.0 (unpublished in Greece) I had to check all the weapons I was going to use, so that it didn't look dangerous, so a gun actually ended up being a water gun! The important thing is just to have something to plan to hold in hand even though it's a water gun, as well as not to reflect reality.

Something unrelated, all previous male designers (in previous Q&A) said it's such a difficult job that, fortunately, they have the rock at home, which is the woman. He cooks, has everything ready for them... In this relationship, how does this work?

Pastrovium and Persinoto: Our relationship has been working for a year and a half now, so we still don't live together. So everyone's home. Moreover, we live in different cities for now! Therefore, everyone is planning at his studio, but, nevertheless, we would love to work together when we get together. We'll have lunch together, then we'll work together... we'll find it!

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In the end, I asked what their favorite manga or anime was. XD

Pastrovicio answered "AKIRA", while Perisinoto someone I didn't know and I didn't hold back (it probably wasn't well known).

~~FINITO~~