The weekend at Lucca Comics & Games gets busy – the quaint Italian city now packed to the rafters with families, fans as well as cosplayers from every aspect of anime, manga, sci-fi and pop culture. Getting around the city suddenly has gotten a lot trickier!
SFN’s day started at a conference with prolific artist Ted Nasmith, a legend in his field with his artwork long associated with the incredible world of Tolkien. This year, Ted worked in collaboration with Lucca Comics & Games to create the stunning poster, displayed throughout the city. With the release of Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power, we asked Ted if he felt that more recent adaptions such as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and the more recent TV series had in turn influenced his own artwork.
“There’s always a sort of feedback. I’m aware of other artists, I take ideas sometimes – steal them even! That’s reasonable.
The films versions gave me new ideas, with things like costume ideas – we’re now seeing a lot more detail, an authentic approach to the technicalities etc, like how you would wear a cloak and a backpack at the same time? There’s nowhere to put the straps!
He went on to address the new series;
“With Rings of Power, there’s a lot of controversy, some dismissing it as being pure fan fiction as if that’s somehow a problem! I love other people taking an intelligent idea around Tolkien, and expanding it in some small corner, as long as it’s done on some degree, to a level of intelligence. What you’re seeing now is what you can do when you’re outside the canon of the dialogue. We’re seeing some extremely profound and interesting dialogue around good and evil that is ultimately consistent with Tolkien. There is ambiguity with his characters in Lord of the Rings, it wasn’t just good and evil and some sort of simplistic resolution. It’s much more complicated and the Silmarillion, My God! That takes that far more into ambiguities and morally grey areas. I’m enjoying what they’re doing with this and am curious to see where they’re going with it. I think they’re doing a beautiful job.”
Following our time with Ted, we were escorted from the Piazza del Giglio, one of the main squares and a hub of activity. We dodge anime characters with massive swords and get growled at by eight-foot Bowsers. In one of the classic and ancient buildings, we were taken into a conference room. Even the conference rooms are clearly centuries old but adapted to suit the modern world. It was increasingly obvious that the blend of the old and modern was going to be indicative of our stay in Lucca.
SFN got a chance to meet the legend Nolan Bushnell, one of the founders of Atari and arguably one of the biggest names in the history of video gaming. Despite his prolific endeavours, Nolan has hardly taken a backseat in the industry and despite it being the 50th anniversary of Atari, here Nolan was keen to promote his latest creation Moxy – involving currency in online gaming.
He spoke hugely positively about the state of gaming, and his optimism was infectious. He was every inch the entrepreneur and spoke passionately of his hope for Video Games and their application in education.
“I think the power of power of video games has just started, and it’s going to be an exciting next ten years. Imagine being able to learn everything that you learned from high school in six months, with better retention. So what do you do to fill that time up? Teach finance, teach programming – there’s no reason why a high school graduate couldn’t have the skills to get a $100,000 a year job. That would be cool! I’m highly, highly optimistic right now. When I think about the future Web3, Metaverse and games over Zoom etc, I still think the best is yet to come”
Nolan cuts a hugely savvy figure and obviously has an eye for enterprise in everything that he does. He did however share his distaste for bait model gaming; video games requiring battle passes, daily quests, etc.
“The play to earn games – they’re a kind of grind. I’m not optimistic about that thread – I think it’s a transient phenomenon, I think the economics are soft. To me Fortnite, it was kind of an aberration – I didn’t expect that one. But it’s still pretty cool, it’s one of those ones that are fun to watch, I find myself going onto Twitch every now and again to watch the crazy shenanigans that are going on.”
After lunch we were taken to the other end of the city, taking the back ways to avoid the now congested main roads. We meet at another Palazzo, seemingly unchanged in 600 years, artwork adorned the walls and ceilings with a maximalist style that would make Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen blush. We are introduced to one of Marvel Comics less well known but exciting new projects, Marvel T.E.S.T Kitchen. A new comic, aimed at children and families, that is available online and seeks to combine Marvel’s entertainment with cooking. The project was introduced to us by C.B. Cebulski, the editor of Marvel Comics and celebrity Italian chef, Cristiano Tomei.
C.B. was thrilled to introduce the new project.
“I’ve always loved to eat, and eating is a part of comics, the convention scene and everything we do. I’ve always wanted to make a comic about a chef in the Marvel Universe, there’s many comics about food in Italy, in Japan, there’s so many Manga about food and restaurants I’ve always wanted to create one about Marvel’s chef.”
T.E.S.T. KITCHEN will follow Anna Ameyama, a high-end chef who decides to take a shot at running her own food truck. However, when Iron Man crash lands in on it by accident, she gets offered the chance of a lifetime: a position at Stark Enterprises. Each comic is divided into a culinary-based storyline with the second half describing the recipe of how to cook the food the story is based around.
It seemed fitting today that we managed to catch up with leading figures across Fantasy, Gaming and Comics, a perfect blend to what was an incredible day. Now time for a Birra Moretti and then bed.
