My search lead me to find out that Mastantuono is an Italian artist who was working for Disney at the time, but he did some western stories for the Italian market. I needed-up purchasing some of the French reprints of his Tex comics and I highly recommend them. All stories are over a hundred pages long and are printed in gorgeous black and white. They are done in a looser style than the above cover and have a cool John Buscema/Frank Frazetta vibe to them.
I also found a bunch of images on the web featuring his designs for Disney. They looked great! His "cute" stuff had real structure to it and was very expressive. But his stories were always part of some Disney magazine with just a few pages at a time, available only in Italy, and costing a more to ship to US than reasonable. I kept looking for a collection of his Disney work but could never find it...until about a year ago.
Le Grandi Storie: Bum Bum Ghigno is a black and white 222 page collection that got published in 2002, but I only saw it last year. It was a bit pricey, but I picked up a copy on e-Bay that, after shipping, cost me $55. It's well worth it. I enjoy looking at it and seeing the wonderful way his characters move around the page.
So does it mean if you live in US you have to shell out $55 to enjoy this? NO!
Just a few months ago a new collection has been published. "Disney D'Autore: Corrado Mastantuono".
It's 520 pages (!). Full (wonderful flat color) color! Includes a few sketches and a few roughs, but mostly all comics. It reprints the previous collection and an extra 300 pages of material. It is in Italian, but has such wonderful storytelling that it is enjoyable even if you don't speak Italian. For example, the episode where Mickey goes back to find his old boat "Steamboat Willie" is both charming and nostalgic.
And here is another good news: it is available on amazon.com for $27 plus $4 shipping, or you can buy it on amazon.it for 14 euro plus around 10 euro shipping, or e-Bay for something in between those two options.
2 comments:
Hi Alex, I just recently "discovered" Mastantuono's work and am completely in love with his stuff. i've been scouring the net trying to decide which collections of his work to get. So far I want to get his Tex collection and also found a collection of Nick Raider stories he worked on- is there anything else you would recommend?
Besides the Disney related stuff of course.
Jerry,
I have the "Nick Raider" collection and I think its great. Some wonderful crime noir stories...that I can't read :).
I have two French collections of his Tex stories ("Missouri" and "Les Justiciers de Vegas") and one Italian Tex collection ("Il Profeta Hualpai"). All three are excellent and I highly recommend any and all (as I mentioned in the post all are over 100 pages and are reproduced in black/white).
There are also 2 catalogues covering his work. One of them, "The Art of" is a slim volume, but the pages are magazine sized and the reproduction is beautiful. It's available on amazon.com from US book stores.
He has also completed art for a number of issues of "Magico Vento" ("Magic Wind") but I do not have any of those issues...they are being slowly reprinted here in US.
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