5 is the Perfect Number

Igort

Italy has a mainstream fumetti culture that just doesn't translate into English. In Italy you'll find a huge variety and quantity of fumetti (comic books) for sale all over train stations, newsagents and magazine stands. It's not dismissed as junk art as it is in this country and has a mass fan base.

This suggests the grown up cousin of the comic, the "graphic novel", has a healthy root system over there. Which is where Igort - nome de plume of Sardinian born Igor Tuveri - comes in. Igort has been working in comics for over 25 years and has founded his own publishing firm. 5 is the Perfect Number is the most successful of his books and the first to be translated into English.

The biggest noises in graphic novels, in English, have been made by political artists - cartoonists whose output is designed to say something new on a serious topic by moving it into an unusual medium. These are works of history or photojournalism in cartoon form. "5" is something else. It's the simple story of Peppino, a retired mafia hitman, whose son is betrayed and killed by a rival gang. No more quiet days on the other end of a fishing line for Peppino, then, for there is revenge to attend to. It's sparsely drawn in dark inky blue and black (what cartoon afficianados, as I understand it, call "duotone").

Igort's Naples is peeling and cracked, emptied of its people, rain-soaked and mournful. Connections, obligations and family: these are the curses of Neapolitans. That's why five is the perfect number, signifying enviable separation. Your two arms, your two legs, and your face, and nothing else.