Lys

Good things don't last long...

Unfortunately that is a life's big truth. 

Lys comic magazine was on my opinion one of the best Italian comics. As always Red Whale has proven of her good taste in comic publishing. Lys along with Monster Allergy have created a very good impression about Red Whale. And Rainbow too. The comic is not on Rainbow's official site but she was the one that was managing its rights 6 years ago...

The story is about Lys Deval, a 15-year old girl ( it doesn't look like that though...) in 2050. After the Greenhouse effect got way much worse and the glaciers at Earth's Poles melted everything has changed. The whole way of living has changed having the people to form small artificial islands for their cities since most of the known land has got under the surface of the sea. 

The good thing is that people are more green lovers and nature supporters now. The bad thing is that now all king of animals ( even chickens!!!) are endangered species since there are only a few. Another bad thing is that criminals have not extinct at all, and as usual wherever there is something precious the mafia like them wants to have it ( in order to sell it or hang it dead on their walls of course! ). Most of the criminals are hunters or merchants, that doesn't mean that they don't steal or kill at all. In a world where animals is the most precious thing criminality of course will focus on them. 

Good for the animals though there is CE.A.PRO.- Centre of Animal Protection, which is being lead by Lys' parents. She has also a younger sister named Kuz and lots of lots of animals in their bedroom that her parents or other agents has no idea for.

Look just how many!

Sometimes Lys, with the help of her little sister, trespasses in the Centre's secret communication system to listen about any animal founds. Then she wears a sexy tight black suit and tries to get to save the animals before the other agents in order to keep them in her room and give them a safe house. The times that she faces with dangerous criminals are not few....

Thankfully for her her parents are missing almost all the time going to special travels and missions so they have no idea of what's going on. The problem is Tomas though, a young man working for Lys parents, head of the CE.A.PRO. and their babysitter, he is actually the one that raised them ( but that doesn't mean they are listening to him ).

The story begins with Lys being kind of new in a public school trying to make new friends that we'll stay by her side no matter what. That's how her friendship with Mairy Bertoldie starts, from the brilliant idea of a teacher to stick their desks together in order for Mairy to learn from Lys more about animals.

It's funny how she confuses the chickens with the alligators because both of them make eggs!

Mairy is the first person that accompanies Lys on her secret missions... and the person that is with her when she transform into an animal for the first time! Yup! Lys soon learns that with the help of the moon she transforms into an animal, any kind of animal. Then she finds out that she can also transform without the moon by the use of a special medallion, the Double Moon. That is also and the symbol of her kind.

According to the story there are about three kind of humans, one of the already known and two special. The first special kin is the Animahumans, humans that can transform one specific animal, something like the well known to us shape-shifters or were-humans. Every animal specie has it's own moon. For a example, the people who can transform into lions belong to the Lion's Moon, the ones that turn into wolves to the Wolf's Moon etc. There are only a few of those special humans left, thanks to the hunters. Those people are even precious than the poor animals!

The second special kind of humans, Animamooners, is something like the Animahumans with the difference that they have extinct to zero and they can transform in any kind of animal. Yup, that's what Ly's is. Most people believe that the last one died 10 years ago, it seems though that someone managed to got away.

Lys is not the special one, Kuz can call and communicate with the animals like her even though she cannot transform. That soon leads them to the fact that their parents are not their real ones.

Unfortunately the story stopped without giving us any answers on our many questions. I used to read it in Greek when it was out in 2007. For the Greek edition it stopped at the fifth issue. When I did some search 5 years ago to learn why it stopped in the middle the Greek publishers told me that it's not going to be out again and them I read on Disney's comic lessons magazine that the artists group of this comic had split.

Few days ago I checked Red Whale's official site and found that in Italy there were ten issues published, I found some images of issue pages that I haven't read at all. Now I'm actually reading that it'll become into an animated cartoon series ( at least that's what I understand 'cause their site is in Italians and I don't know the language well.... ).

I'm sorry but I couldn't find a better image...

Creators: Katja Centomo, Antonello Dalena, Paolo Madaleni and Giulia Basile

For the Story: Katja Cantomo

For the Script: Katja Cantomo, Franscesco Artibani, Bruno Enna, Michele Medda, Giovanni de Gregorio

For the Design: Antonello Dalena,Federico Nardo, Giavanni Rigano, Luca Ghiberti, Paolo Campinoti

Head Designer: Antonello Dalena

For the Inks: Santa Zangari,Donald Soffritti, Paolo Ferrante

For the Colour: Giulia Basile, Paolo Maddaleni, David Amici, Claudia Checcaglini, Lorenzo Ortolani

Art Director: Guilia Basile

Supervisors: Maryam Funicelli

Special mini comics: Story by Francesco Artibani and Art by Paolo Campinoti

Direction: Elisabetta Angelini, Iginio Straffi

No wonder it actually was one of the best comics! Having so many well known and talented artists is out of question the reason why!

Please note that the names of the artists above are only the ones that were written on the Greek edition.

Amazing story that keeps in the whole time and makes you say that  forty-something pages are not enough! Very good design ( I would say amazing but I used already that word ) with clean inks and well matched colours! The whole idea that presents it's really close on what we think about the future, how it'll be like, the buildings, the people, the circumstances are no far away from us!

Inside the magazine there were as usual lots of tests, games, style...even jewellery craft!

 A few pages... 

Some of the comic studies...
....in architecture!

...in people's style and extra characters!

...in animals!

...in  clone monsters!

Yup! They have monsters too! Fake synthetic animals that melt when they get killed!

I'll try to upload here some pages sometime. I'll try to scan and translate the ones that I have. I'll try to find a way to find and download the other issues too!



Till next time...Have fun!