As ideal speakers of the language of the comic, De Santis and Sáenz Valiente have a unique relationship with it: they speak it as fluently as a mother tongue but also dissect it with the studious respect one has for a foreign language. They know how to decode its most obscure scripts but transfer its symbols with the care of Japanese calligraphers. De Santis enjoys inventing characters that seem shadowy or decadent (“The problems of youth without the energy of youth” says the apothecary Cobalto as he sets out on a new adventure), although really they’re full of life and driving obsession “which moves without moving”. Meanwhile, Sáenz Valiente knows better than almost anyone how to translate this divine (heroic) nucleus into the graphic environment in which these creations live.

From the prologue by Hernán Martignone