Chances are, even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve come across at least one scene or frame from “Strappare lungo i bordi”, Zerocalcare‘s new Netflix series – animated by Florence-based DogHead Animation – released November 17.

The impact of the series has been literally deflagrating, a huge success that has led the first Italian animated production for Netflix, to become the most viewed series in Italy on the American streaming platform. 
The motivations and explanations behind this incredible boom are simple: to address deep and important issues through the universal key of irony and with a direct and simple language – despite the Roman dialect and the arrogance of some passages – able to reach everyone and that is for everyone. 
A perfect balance between laughter, sharp points of reflection and profound moments able to make us clench our stomachs to the point of tears.
6 episodes of 20 minutes each that take us on a personal journey but that affects us all, in which each of us can identify and identifies, as in an automatic reaction of connection with the characters.

“Strappare lungo i bordi” is a small masterpiece of Italian animation that talks about disorientation, paranoia, feelings, hypochondria, love, loneliness and death. Zerocalcare deals with all this marasmus of human emotions in his own way, the way we started to know thanks to his most famous comics such as Kobane Calling, La profezia dell’armadillo, and many others, in addition to his already established fame on the web, this last aspect explains very well the current phenomenology of the cartoonist from Rebibbia. The meeting with the general public, however – before these Netflix series – came thanks to his participation as an “almost” regular guest on Diego Bianchi’s show Propaganda Live on LA7, where Zerocalcare shared his Rebibbia Quarantine, a mini-series in which Michele Rech – this is his real name – described his personal lockdown invading, even in that case, all our bulletin boards and feeds. 
Landing on Netflix Zerocalcare has made the definite leap into the mainstream, which is not a bad thing eh you mean, it has only given the opportunity for those who were far from the world in which Michele Rech lives and moves and that tells his alter ego comics through his adventures, to immerse themselves in a new and unknown world but that he immediately felt his own. 

This landing and the consequent success of Zerocalcare also gives us the chance to discover and rediscover those Italian cartoonists who, for one reason or another, are little known to the general public who don’t read comics but who loved “Strappare lungo i bordi”.

The first to mention is certainly Gianni Pacinotti, aka Gipi.
Cartoonist, illustrator and director, Gipi’s work is a synthesis between adventure and realism that ranges between the news and personal experience. He is not a very prolific author but he asserts himself very quickly thanks to his drawings and his bitter and at the same time touching poetics often linked to existential malaise. His 2013 comic Unastoria is the first graphic novel to enter the twelve finalists of the 2014 Premio Strega. 

Next is Leo Ortolani. 
The father of Rat-Man, with his unique and peculiar brilliant style, makes fun of contemporary society through the typical stereotypes of superheroes. 
Rat-man is in fact an atypical and tragicomic superhero, short and clumsy who spends his days eating and lazing around rather than training. Hypodotised, with a bad smell and without any superpowers, Rat-Man lacks intelligence, physical strength and common sense but manages to exploit the bad luck that haunts him in his favour but above all our superhero does not give up.
Of this iconic comic book was also made an animated series, personally supervised by Ortolani, aired by RAI, consisting of 52 episodes of 13 minutes each.

Mattia Labadessa is another one that if you don’t know you must do everything to catch up.
Cartoonist of absolute talent, the twenty-eight year old Neapolitan is an illustrator and graphic designer as well as the father of a character-bird protagonist of simple and crude situations where dominates the anguish typical of our everyday life related to personal vicissitudes that each of us faces, all accompanied by a devastating humor. His books, Le cose così, Mezza fetta di limone, Bernardino Cavallino and Piccolo are real literary cases thanks to the success of public and critics. 

We close with the young Jessica Cioffi, aka Loputyn.
Illustrator and cartoonist with a crystal clear talent, Loputyn stands out for her delicate and soft style and for her mysterious, dreamlike and disturbing drawings.
Her work is a novelty in the Italian comics scene, especially in the world of fantasy and horror. An absolute pearl.