August 1942, the world war II is raging and the earth is divided in two: the Allies and the Axis.
On the streets of Brooklyn a child with patched clothes walks clenching his fists tightly, holding firmly the nickels with the face of Jefferson – “the one form Mount Rushmore” for him. Sweat drips from his hands like vultures dropping on the president rock. He has to walk for a long time, a left turn, then a right one and all up Hicks Street, counting the smoking manholes: from there you can see the bridge.
Fist clench more and more, to protect his precious treasure as he crosses Whitman Park – even if it’s not call that yet -, he advances a few steps more onto the asphalt and here he is at the finish line. He crosses the threshold of a small newsstand, the only one within several miles, with the tired joy of a runner upon the arrival: “Detective comics, thank you” – he said.
It is n°66 and Two-Face, Batman’s most feared nemesis, makes his first appearance: the one who “Either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain”. The comicbook transpotion of the dualism of good and evil, a Jackill & Hyde sharing the same cheeckbones at the same time. He used to flip a coin to decide – to not decide. Javier Bardem comes to my mind immediatly in the famous film signed by the Cohen brothers: “Whats is your biggest lost in heads or tails?”.
February 2023, war is raging and dividing, but it is not called world war yet.
In the Sydney countryside, a boy still wearing pajamas runs through the house clenching his fists tightly, holding firmly a metal key: on of those with all the doodles on the handle. Sweat drips from his hands like tears from the wounds of the last glaciers in Greenland.
“Mom, mom, let’s go” he shouts. He wants to dive into the old things shelved in boxes, forgotten from year to year in the attic. His mother pulls a string hanging from the ceiling and the stairs appear in an instant – like pure magic. Each step of theirs makes the parquet creaks, like a body that has been asleep for too long.
He just has to choose which box he wants to discover, shich crystal ball to interrogate to open his way into an unknown world.
Blow across the surface of the biggest and dustiest and a cloud, worthy of a Stephen King novel, engulfs the entire area. Gradually emerges a writing faded by time “ Grandpa John”.
He is authorized to withdraw only one object: “Detective comics, thank you” – he say.81 year, squeezed into half of a word page, like grapes in vats during winemaking.
All of this means “Globalization”, and doesn’t seem to be wrong or evil. If it weren’t for a few coin tosses that went wrong, if it werent for some Gotham City mafia bosses, maybe Globalization have remained a good thing, instead of ending up, disfigured, forgetting about Social Justice, the other side of its coin.
By Antonio Floriani
