ALAN MOORE´S ITALIAN TRANSLATOR LEONARDO RIZZI

                                                                                                   by José Carlos Neves

- Ciao Leo. First of all, please let's begin with some background. Your age, marital status, sons? Academic graduation and profession?
Hi there! I am 32 yo and single, with no sons that I know of.
I have fought through my Pharmaceutical Studies Degree only to land in the more ethereal realms of working as a translator and a playwright/screenwriter.

- Where did you have born, grow up and live today?
I was born in Bari, an ancient city on Italy's Southeastern Coast, pretty famous in bygone days for having been the harbour from which scores of European ships full
with Crusaders sailed to the Middle East, for the somewhat short-sighted task of freeing the Holy Sepulchre. I've lived down there until I was 26, then I sort of wandered through Europe and, just recently, have finally settled in Rome.

- How did you get started?
I assume you are asking me about my translating comics. I started because of my passion for the medium, of course, working as a translation editor for Play Press,
publishing DC's super-heroes in Italy. I "majored" in the Italian comics field working as a
project manager for several Comic Artists exhibitions and in 1997 I started working for Magic Press, publishing in Italy mainly Vertigo stuff, as well as the ABC line, Wildstorm, Dark Horse and some Image and Fantagraphics material.

- What is it that attracted you to Comics- or "fumetto" as you call it over there? What were your influences?
I don't know, exactly. My fascination for comics dates back to the days of my childhood, as it often happens, in which four-colours funnies seemed the most accessible way to reach a fantasy world in a provincial city like the one I was born in. But I guess that tons of ink have been poured on the childhood subject already. I rediscovered comics some 15 years ago, while doing at the same time classical studies. While I first glanced only at the possibility of reliving my childhood, I immediately discovered a much more complex meaning in the "juxtaposition" of pictures and words. To begin with, words are, let's say, abstracted ideas through which to convey a meaning and to establish communication. In the comics medium, pictures are the abstraction of physical things and become visual ideas. I found this combination thrilling and revealing, with a potential barely scraped in the history of the form.

-That´s it! It has to do with the simultaneous using of the both cerebral´s hemispheres. As a child, did you spend a lot of time indoors reading?  Comic books only or mainstream literature also?
Is that obvious?
And not only indoors: in every single photograph of the myriad of small and long holidays with my parents when I was a kid, I'm always there holding a book. It is obviously a life's obsession.

- Quite like myself. What was the first comic by Alan Moore did you read? Did it had a special impact on you? Why?
My first exposure to Alan Moore happened 15 years ago, with Chapter 3 of Watchmen .
Time flowing everywhere on the page. A life deconstructed under my eyes. The sense of the past, every hope for the future. Everything reduced to bits for the reader to take in rationally and emotionally. The sense of one's mistakes and their inevitability.
And in everything, the flow of life.
It was a devastating read. I decided that comics could be, in fact, a pretty intelligent and totally respectable read.

- What do you think is his best work to date? Why?
My favorite is From Hell. It's doubtlessly Moore's finest, more mature work. It's a complex depiction of Victorian society, with a heart-breaking rendition of its lower classes. It's a small treatise about Freemasonry and London's magic architecture. It's a parable about false illusions and the way the human fantasy becomes transifured. It's a deep meditation about the genesis of evil, about the way universal truths are built and about the invisible sins of historical processes.

- Gee, you are "sounding" like "our bearded scribe. Stunning. What do you think about Big Numbers,if you have read the only two published issues?
This question gave me the chance to go back to read Big Numbers, that  had been resting on a shelf for too long.
It's not so much Big Numbers' complexity that astonished me, as its clarity and the lasting taste of its truth after I read it. The minute I  finished reading it, I still perceived some sort of strange feeling, and  then I realized what it was: it's the only non-genre Alan Moore book I  ever read. And not belonging to any kind of known genre to which being  forced to bow his head, without the need to tell the twists and turns  and quirks of a regural plot, Alan Moore just explored the nuances of ordinary reality, as if "real life" is just a game. And the intricacies of Moore's storytelling, applied to real life, make the irony, the poignancy, the stark madness and joy of it all much more relevant than, say, in Watchmen or V for Vendetta.
Of course, we'll never know how Moore wanted to spread this feeling in his twelve issues, nor if the lack of a genrle would have somehow affected the read. But I doubt it.

- Great, man! That´s almost like I think,also - and had been one of the best replies I´ve got on this fascinated subject. What do you think Alan would have intended to convey with this very promising story?
Frankly, I think that the goal was very simple: to explore the complexities and intricacies of real life in a finite space, in an isolated system, in which he could have been able to connect the lives of a finite number of people and letting a pattern emerge from them all, "an accidental grace, a coreography."  (BIG NUMBERS art by Bill Sienkiewicz) 

- Do you agree with Chaos theory that our world (and the Universe as a whole by extension) is ruled by fractals, strange attractors and so on, where a little alteration on initial conditions could cause big and unexpected alterations on the final ones?
Well, if we stop thinking about the complex Chaos Theory, and simply mull over the very
words you used... What you said, "a little alteration on initial conditions could cause big and unexpected alterations on the final ones": it's life, isn't it? It certainly sounds like it. It sounds believable.
Yes, I believe in Chaos Theory, as I generally believe in science.
Science generally tries to break down the mystery of existence into tangible, measurable, possibly  foreseeable, quantities. You could say that, with science, men try very hard to look in God's mind, using a couple of glasses called rationality.
Chaos theory adds up to the Classical Science, considering things that had been left behind before, thus trying to give a scientifical-philosophical explanation to the world's unpredictability.
It seems to me it tries to explain life and it does a pretty good job, still leaving behind a few holes in its wake.

- Could a graphic-novel comprise all the complexity of human existence, common life, the whole Universe and so on, as an unique, united system, as AM intended to do with Big Numbers?
No religious or philosophical system ever created accomplished that feat without leaving a few holes, imperfections, small faults. I doubt a graphic novel, even if written by Alan Moore, could do that.
I think that, as in any religious or philosophical system, a graphic novel could focus on an aspect, a precise and very definite side of existence.
You could say that this focus is the couple of glasses you wear to  examine existence. You can only wear a couple of glasses at the time: the rationality glasses and the emotional glasses.
There's a third option: the 32nd path Moore is focusing the whole Promethea series on, but I guess I haven't gotten so far, yet.

- Do you think someday Alan could change his mind and thinks about it again?
I am pretty sure that he will not, simply because Big Numbers has no use for Moore anymore. Moore decided to get into a more complex and, surely, very different path for his own life.
Right now, it seems to me Big Numbers' rationality is simply old-fashioned for Moore and, thus, absolutely pointless .

- We all have read rumors about the fantastic possibility that he will  begin it again.What artist would you think could do this job plainfully?
Since I feel it's a fantastic possibility, I imagine I could choose  anyone I want. Well, I would like to have it completed by Sienkiewicz, in this fantastic world where they could have worked out their differences. I find it very hard to imagine some else. But if I push my fantasy further, I would like to see the art of some sort of unreachable, even  absolutely dead, artist. I guess that my favourite would be Windsor McCay. (below) 

-What are your ideas about Watchmen's innovations?
They were so portentous and devastating that comics should have never been the same anymore. With Watchmen, comics reached a complexity achieved only in  literature.
Watchmen's multi-layer structure was barely attempted before, probably only in Harvey
Kurtzman's stuff for EC Comics and in a much less sophisticated way, aimed just to the effect of providing the reader with some fun. Presently, it seems to me that the only creators pushing forward Moore's multi-layered structure, though in different milieux, are Daniel Clowes, Grant Morrison, Los Bros Hernandez and the always present Dave Sim. (There are, of course, many others excellent creators accomplishing excellent feats with their comics, but they followed  different artistic paths).
Right now, I am pretty angry with what mainstream creators are doing with Moore's
breakthroughs, born inside the mainstream culture: they are ignoring them. It seems that Watchmen never happened. A vast majority of creators just continue to
provide pointless entertainment that only die-hard aficionados care for.
I feel that super-heroes' escapism is quite unbearable, right now, even only because it seems there is no reason to have super-heroes anymore. I still sort of care for the genre, but I don't see any need for having more than 10-15 super-heroes titles on the  market. They would fulfill perfectly the people's need of super-heroes. More than 10-15 titles is just business for the publisher, under the pretence of a false diversification.
Let me rephrase it : super-heroes are okay, but the fact that it is virtually the only genre on the American market is never good for the medium itself, when trying to reach new
audiences.          (Animated GIF by Jose Carlos Neves after Eddie´s)

- Another deep and intelligent reply. And for From Hell, again, do you think it could be considered a history of the cradle to the 20th Century, with all its paranoia, conspirations and corruption?
It certainly seems so. I guess that the scene placing Adolf Hitler's conception (one of the major pop icons of evil in the 20th century) at the same time of the Whitechapel's murders strenghtens this idea.

- What are your impressions on Brought to Light and its references to the CIA's covert operations around the world?
I liked pretty much the "performance" opening of the piece. But now  that I think of it, the whole thing tasted like a theatre performance,  lavishly and groundbreakingly illustrated.

 Somehow, it probably sounds  much better than it reads. It is more shocking. Nevertheless, it's true  that the whole story grows on you and, as it often happens with these  things, your indignation reaches a climax at the end of it all. So, I  would say that Brought to Light it's perfectly successful, but it works  much better when it is set on an abstract and purely artistic plateau and it talks about people's expectations about America, than when it exposes in detail its cruelty. But maybe, it reaches its artistic peaks because of the cold list of CIA's crimes, so I really couldn't say.

- Do you think that comics can be a political instrument , that they can reach and appeal to a large audience?
Every medium can do that. Comics are not excluded. A few years ago, in the middle of the war between Serbia and Croatia, Aleksandar Zograf told me that he and a bunch of other cartoonists posted several hundred copies of a large poster on the walls of Belgrade. The poster was made up of comic strips, of a clear political nature, against the Milosevic regime.
The Serbian cartoonists simply didn't have a better medium to communicate with people, since all the other, more powerful mass media were in the hands of the  regime. The strength and communicative directness of comics could reach immediately every
passer-by.
Obviously, this is just one example of what can be done for politics through comics in an extreme situation, but let's not forget that political satire is often conceived in comics or cartoons, and is incredibly more effective than lengthy editorials.

- And AM´s debuting in mainstream literature with Voice of the Fire, do you think it
accomplished it´s intention, to tell the history of magic, wichtcraft, shamanism and so on, through the history of Northampton?
I am afraid I haven't read it, yet.

- What do you think about Magic and about Alan's lyrics, CDs, The Birth Caul and Snakes and Ladders?
I must confess that I haven't had the chance to listen to Moore's CDs,  even if I read the two Eddie Campbell comics. So, my feelings are  pretty ambiguous, having liked many parts of the comics and probably not  having understood as many.

- Movies and mainly music, can affect us deeply, rousing imprevisible emotions. So it is Poetry. They all can transcend its limitations as a genre. What about comics? Could it have this quality also?
Of course they do. Communication is never limited by the medium itself and always by the one who communicates. The key is always the ability of the artist toconvey whole worlds.
Granted, different media can be stronger and weaker in conveying different ideas and
emotions.
At the same time, I should point out that comics are a media, a way to communicate, not a genre. But, at the same time, the ability to suggest emotions in the audience is not an issue of genres. Genres are simply prearranged paths that envelop the audience
in a familiar environment, where they know what to expect. The artist should provide  the glimpse of his/her own soul and let it shine on his creation.

- Could you mention examples?
Just a couple of the immensity of masterworks that are popping into my mind right now.
George Herriman's "Krazy Kat". All of it. It reminds me of Japanese haikus, with their
prearranged, very strong structure, always open to the infinities of the cosmos and the
wonders of human life. Alan Moore's "My Blue Heaven", an episode in his Swamp Thing run, has all the qualities of a beautiful, modern love song.
Lyonel Feininger's "Wee Willie Winky's World": the real world changing seamlessly with the fantasies of a child, in pages having morphing qualities that simply no other medium could ever hope to attain.

- Returning to your own work, how you got involved in translating  Alan´s comics?
Magic Press' editor-in-chief, Pasquale Ruggiero, feels an authentic, deep passion for comics and is, of course, a huge Alan Moore fan: he plans to publish the Italian edition of everything he can get. Pasquale simply felt that I was the right choice, having detected the passion I always spend in working out in Italian everything Moore ever puts out.

- What is it that attracts you so to Promethea, artistically and writing concerning?
It always makes me wonder about things I would never have thought of: my scientifical background is being riddled by doubts, even if they are not being completely replaced by Moore's Musings on Magic.                         (animated GIF by Jose Carlos Neves)

- Do you believe in Magic, Khaballah and so on?
Let me quote from Promethea # 13: "Kaballah is an old Hebrew knowledge system, intended to encode all conceivable existence in a single glyph".
Magic is more difficult to express in one catchy sentence, but it seems  to me that these two knowledge systems, even if being totally different from the others, tend always to the same goal. At the moment, my life is being spent on the "rationality path", but I feel that just one knowledge system is a pretty incomplete thing. Without realizing, my mind is becoming imbued with other suggestions and possibilities. Magic is one of them, glaring with a tenuous nuance. It is not a faith. It's just a chance, an incitement to evolve towards a new stage of consciousness, possibly mixing all my different natures. Probably, you could simply call it "growing up" and "learning the complexity of the world, of all  different worlds." But that would mean to oversimplify things.

- Have you read the books -and magical treatises - by Crowley, John Dee, Austin Spare and so on?
No.

- Do you really believed that something weird has happened with that doomed Promethea # 20? Would you like to elaborate and/or extrapolate on this?
I really couldn't say anything about it. Suggestions plays dirty tricks on people's minds and Moore's magic is all about suggestion, about thoughts taking concrete form.
I will let you know when I will have finished translating that particular issue, in a year or so.

- If sigils work, vodu´s dolls are real, could you believe a story, a drawn one,could kind of "works" magically,also?
Only if you believe it will. That's the _idea_ of it all.

- Under your view, what is till now, the best issues of Promethea? Why?
The best? I couldn't really say, but I have a couple of favorites: 
issue # 10 ("Sex, Stars and Serpents") and # 12 ("Metaphore"). They were a  sort of breakthrough in the series, possibily in the very comics  medium.
The sheer poetry and joy of the "Sex issue" is unparalleled in the more  metaphysical steps of the "Kabbalah Journey", maybe because this story  contains such a nice combination of earthly and heavenly things, sex  being something that we all may achieve with the utmost immediacy and  becoming transformed into something that can reach so high, to the stars.
And "Metaphore" contains so many thoughts and feelings, and musings on  creation and life and stories to fill your soul and brain and make you  wonder for a long time.

- The best cover and interior art?
Probably issue # 23 ("The serpent and the dove"), but it's difficult to  say, J. H. Williams' marvelous style being so steady and high.

- What do you think Alan Moore intends to convey with this character series?
Moore is writing a magic pamphlet to let in people on magic, to show a new, more balanced path for humanity's existence than the "rationality" path and the "emotional" path.
This operation resembles closely to what was attempted by Lucretius in  50 b.C. with the "De natura rerum", concerning a possible physical explanation of all
existence, or in the writings by Manilius, about the nature of planets and stars, or even in the last fifty years by the more ironic Raymond Quenau, with his long poem about the scientific nature  of the universe.
The two main differences are in the medium that was chosen (comics as opposed to poetry) and the very subject of the treatise (a new understanding of magic as opposed to an attempt to describe the physical nature of existence).

- Do you really believe it will finish with issues # 32, with the "rumored" end of the world? (our or immateria world?)
I'm positive it will. At the same time, I'm positive it will be a "cathartic" and optimistic end of the world. Moore is trying to be as responsible a writer as he can.
Presently, I don't think he cares for grim and gritty situations, hopeless and destructive
apocalypses, as the one in Watchmen, that he always refers to as "what he wrote when he was basically in a bad mood."
And let's not forget that Moore wrote the history of the world already, in Promethea # 12, so we are supposed to know how the series is going to end. The apocalypse will be a real revelation, a new enlightenment, the final combination of matter and imagination. That leaves small room for bleak desperation.

- Do you agree with Alan´s concept of Immateria?
Alan's strength is always to make everything he writes perfectly believable and philosophically irreproachable. Immateria is a fascinating invention: perfectly plausible and real. But that doesn't mean that one has to take it literally.
Probably, everyone in the world has to invent his own Immateria.

- Is Sophie dreaming she is Promethea, or Promethea dreaming that she is Sophie?
I don't think there's any difference: the point of it all is that they  are both real, because
they're both figments of Moore's imagination, on two different levels.
Sophie is a figment of imagination imagining another figment of imagination.
It's interesting, though, that in your provoking question, you implied that "Sophie" was a real person, as opposed to "Promethea" being an ethereal goddess of imagination. It means that Moore really succeeded in his objective.

- Have you read, or known, any work before (comic of literary) likePromethea? Where do you think Alan has searched for this stunning idea?
Probably the closest thing I read to Promethea has nothing to do with it. It reminds me, on one side of classic "fantastic journey" literature, like Alice's and  Dorothy's journey in their fantastic lands, but that is just the surface. On the other side, Promethea reminds me of classic philosophical and pre-scientific treatises written in poetry, trying to teach to the audience, while entertaining them.

- To translate Alan´s comics, do you receive a copy of the original scripts or just an issue of the English edition? - if it is the Script, please, tell us about them.
Alas! I just get photocopies of the comic book. I am very attracted at the idea of reading the scripts, though. Do you have any clue of how to get them?

- Here at the site, we have presented already a very good bunch of them, including some to Promethea. Are there any questions about your work on Promethea that no one has
ever asked you but that you would like to have been asked because you can provide an interesting/informative answer?
Yes! "How do you translate Moore's poems that pop up everywhere in Promethea?"
Translating Promethea's rhyming poems in new rhyming poems in Italian is an absurdly
difficult task! I guess that it takes me a longer time to translate them than it takes Moore to write them. That's mostly because when you write a poem, the need for a
rhyme takes you to metaphors, assonances and realms that otherwise you would not think. In a way, a rhyme frees your mind.
When translating rhyming poems, you have two objectives: be faithful to the writer's
imagination and symbolic world and be faithful to the structure of the poem itself. And it is often a frustrating task and it usually takes you an absurd length of time.

- Can see...Translating poetry is like creating it again in another language, i.e. re-create it. Whom do you read and respect nowadays?
I assume you mean in the Anglo/American comics market. I try to read everything by Will
Eisner, Alan Moore, Ben Katchor, Seth, Eddie Campbell, Charles Burns, Neil Gaiman, Los Bros Hernandez, Dave Sim, Peter Milligan, the three Jasons (Lutes, Little and Just Jason), Jessica Abel, Chester Brown, Chris Ware, Roger Langridge, Carol Tyler. I hope I didn't leave out anyone, but it's pretty likely I did.

- Do you know the comic art of the now famous Brazilian Mike Deodato?  What do you think about it?
I used to edit the translations of his old Wonder Woman. I see that his style has changed now and I like it pretty much, but I haven't read yet is more recent works.

-Well, that´s it , my friend. Grazie de esserci tratenato con me. 

Thanks again for all your kind attention and please keep up your excellent work.