This volume is an invitation to travel. Beyond its covers, there is a continent of signs, lights and colors. By the power to give body to our imaginations and to unite the word and the image in its narrative frames, the comic book is the refined and unique expression of the modern sensibility. Far from being a minor genre, it is loaded with tradition and open to the temerity of the experiment. Her discovery is the rediscovery of our own courage to dream.

Cosmopolitan and eclectic, the comic book is animated by the traveling spirit of adventure and the fragrance of freedom, many of her legendary heroes combining an incurable nobility with a sharp detective mind and an unbeatable idealism. With this remarkable volume, Ioan Stanomir reveals the complexity of a particular universe that rarely transcends popular culture towards the uniqueness, refinement and subtlety of the masterpiece. By systematically eliminating the prejudice of the comic book as a minor genre, the author convincingly shows the dignity of an artistic species exiled, at least to us, in the area of ​​children's literature. He analyzes the cartoon in the context of European cultural history alongside great literature, great cinema, confronting the ideological background of some scenarios with the exemplary character of the characters indelibly inscribed in the memory of so many generations. Taking us on a fascinating, unforgettable route, from superintective Tintin accompanied by the friendly-devotee-tireless Milou to the exotic and refined dandy traveler Corto Maltese, Ioan Stanomir becomes a guide of aesthetic sensitivity, a stylistic demand and a hermeneutic subtlety. the boundaries with the great critical literature and the highest formulas of the essay. But, above all, for Ioan Stanomir, the colors of the comic strip remain the colors of nostalgia. Who reads remembers. [Angelo Mitchievici]