Finally, Andrea taught us to tell everything.
Not just what we want to know. Absolutely everything.
He told us that women poop, that teachers have sex, that parents cry and cheat, that drugs make you laugh before they make you cry, that death takes your sister and your brother, not just the neighbor.
He told us that the concierge is screwing the boy on the fourth floor, that the boy on the fourth floor has a girlfriend, that the girlfriend of the boy on the fourth floor has two boyfriends, that the two boyfriends of the girlfriend of the boy on the fourth floor are brothers. He told us nobody lived on the fifth floor because an old man had hanged himself there, and the old man’s ghost kept changing the lock on the door so nobody could ever get into the empty apartment of the old ghost on the fifth floor.
He told us that when you cry the sun is always shining and when you laugh it pours, but who cares if we’re happy and laughing in the rain?
He told us that publishers don’t pay, nor do banks, but grandmas sure do pay. He told us that school is a war and that’s why we went in smock uniforms, that a car could be driven but also sold or stolen. That they cut drugs to sell more, like certain comics by certain dishonest authors.
Andrea told us about cats and dogs.
Andrea told us that animals talk. And they don’t babble like the Disney ones.
Andrea told us everything he saw, but above all (and better) everything he didn’t see.

Andrea was from the south and he showed us his home, where he lived and where he died. And he offered us coffee. Only the sugar had run out, so he had to go and ask the neighbor for a cup, and he came back half an hour later with his shirt all crumpled and no sugar, because he’d forgotten it.

Andrea.
In his comics Andrea cursed while praying and prayed while cursing.
Andrea made us so human that we looked for God. And so divine that we joked with Him.
Andrea always gave me the impression that comics were just a beautiful accident that had happened to him. Strange, given that he drew and told stories all day and every day. But if you really read him, I’m sure you’ll notice this thing too.
Andrea would have been a good car salesman. He’d have sold sodas well from a little van. He’d have been a very funny soldier. A mercenary pizza maker. Maybe even a great teacher, the kind you go out for pizza with. He’d have been excellent as a park guide, a pearl fisher, a cook on a ship. He’d have known how to fly a plane, or better yet drive a bus.

Great authors are like that. They go beyond their careers. They’re balls of energy. How many painters do you know who never painted? Writers who never wrote? Musicians who never played?
All of them brilliant, too.

But Andrea made comics and didn’t sell cars or sodas. And that’s what we’re talking about here. Comics.
In his comics Andrea told very long stories of two pages and very short stories of a hundred pages.

Andrea believed in words. That’s why he caressed them until they became huge.

But Andrea knew that readers don’t make comics; they sell cars or sodas, make pizza or go to war. They spend eight hours a day on a plane or squeezed into a bus. So Andrea had decided he wanted to entertain his readers.
And so off we go with pussy, drugs, duels, betrayals, thefts, bets and explosions.
May the stories become an amusement park able to swallow these readers whole.

After all, Andrea lived in an amusement park. And in amusement parks only the customers have fun.

That’s why Andrea died.