Guido Crepax - Valentina. Io, Valentina - 2000

You have in your hands a true piece of history of Italian authorial comics. This specific edition is part of the prestigious series "I Classici del Fumetto di Repubblica - Serie Oro", originally released in the mid-2000s to celebrate works that elevated the genre to an art form.
Here is a detailed presentation of the volume:
The Work: "Io, Valentina"
The book is dedicated to Valentina Rosselli, the most famous character created by Guido Crepax’s pencil in 1965. Valentina is not just a character on paper, but an icon of style, emancipation and psychological complexity.
Key Points of the Volume:
• The Author: Guido Crepax, unquestionable master of erotic and avant-garde comics. He is famous for his fine, elegant line and for having revolutionized page layout, fragmenting panels as if they were cinematic frames.
• The Character: Valentina is a Milanese photographer (aesthetically inspired by the actress Louise Brooks). Unlike many other comic heroes, she ages in real time with the readers, lives surreal dreams, psychoanalytic nightmares and a very concrete everyday life.
• Content: The title "Io, Valentina" suggests a selection of stories that explore the character’s identity, moving between the plane of reality and that of the unconscious, typical of Crepax’s dreamlike style.
Edition Features (Serie Oro)
This specific edition is particularly appreciated by collectors for several reasons:
1. Format: The volume is a large-format softcover with flaps, which allows full enjoyment of the minute details of Crepax’s drawings.
2. Critical Apparatus: Like all volumes of the "Serie Oro", it contains not only comics but is enriched with a broad critical introduction, in-depth articles and biographical notes that help contextualize the work within the cultural panorama of the 20th century.
3. Aesthetics: The fuchsia cover with gold lettering is the hallmark of this series, designed to turn comics into true coffee-table books (and not only magazine-distributors).
Why is it an important book?
Reading Valentina today means immersing oneself in the climate of Milan in the 1960s and 1970s, between design, jazz, psychoanalysis and sexual revolution. Crepax does not tell simple stories, but builds visual architectures where time seems to dilate.