Review by Frank Plowright
Un uomo un’avventura (One Man, One Adventure) was an ambitious series that ran to thirty volumes in Italy from 1976, with very few ever translated into English. An exception is Hugo Pratt’s The Man from the Great North. This twelfth collection of Sergio Toppi’s work combines the three books he produced for the series in the late 1970s.
It’s as well there’s an explanation for the three stories combined for Men of the World, as without it they’d seem atypical for Toppi. His unique visual style is immediately recognisable, but strangely constrained, his portraits and settings subsumed into more conventional storytelling. In allowing for historical adventure the series theme would seem designed to embody Toppi’s strengths, and indeed ‘The Man from the Nile’ was issued as the series opening volume, but instead the 48 page length drags Toppi beyond his comfort zone.
Two stories place a protagonist at the heart of events that changed a country, the settings being Sudan in 1885 and Mexico in 1914, while the third takes a smaller and more personal theme, being set in Florida in 1840. It’s by some distance the most compelling material here. We meet Sergeant Whiteman commanding a few soldiers transporting a cannon across the swamps, dodging attacks from the Seminole tribe. Whiteman, though, has a secret revealed early and it shapes his perceptions of war as experienced by the Seminoles. This is Toppi in his pomp, revelling in illustrating portraits and the surroundings in his uniquely skilled manner, while revealing well researched historical fact and making a point about warfare.
Research is also apparent in the other material, but it’s placed in meandering narratives that are more glimpses of periods in the lives of their protagonists than actual stories. In the first reporter Bob Wingate is resourceful enough to make his way through occupied territory to the besieged city of Khartoum and later departs with the journals of doomed British General Gordon. Mexican revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata are then contrasted by film pioneer Holly McAllister. Both Wingate and McAllister are fictional, but serve to reflect leaders, while Toppi includes gut-wrenching historical detail, particularly regarding the sacrifices made by followers of the Mahdi. Neither story, though, really captivates, Toppi’s distanced style working against material that needed emotional accompaniment.
‘The Man from the Swamp’, though, brims with emotion, that of injustice and freedom, and it’s combined with a cracking story having a human heart. The remainder might fall short, but a bargain $30 price for a beautifully produced hardcover book means you can take a gamble on Men of the World for the final story alone.
