Pepito 3

The port of Rapallo experienced incursions by the Barbary pirates in the 16th century. It is therefore quite natural that the world of sailors and pirates fascinates Luciano. Bottaro. Pepito was born in 1952. He was quickly adopted by the French publisher Sagédition, which published an eponymous magazine from 1954. Fighter for the justice, the privateer commands the ship La Cacahuète and its crew of sailors eccentrics, lovers of rum and tafia, of ducats and doubloons: the Lieutenant Crochette, Bosco Ventempoupe, La Merluche, Bec-de-Fer, Stockfish... Their adventures take place in an imaginary Caribbean, somewhere part between Easter Island and Hispaniola, and more precisely in Las Ananas, possession of King Alonzo XXXIV, which is ruled by his governor Ventripotence Hernandez de La Banane. Sporting the Jolly Roger, Pepito proves himself faithful to the libertarian ideal of gentlemen of fortune and ridicules the inept representatives of authority, whether king, officers, nobles, civil servants, doctors or scientists, all as stupid as they are greedy, start with the incompetent and corrupt governor La Banane. Bottaro gives here an often ironic, always joyful and burlesque interpretation, close to the commedia dell'arte, stories by Stevenson or Salgari, and great films that they inspired in the 1940s and 1950s, from Captain Blood to The Island treasure.