Petra Chérie (The Fantagraphics Attilio Micheluzzi Library)
If you think you know comics, think again! And venture into the world of the fumetti, led by Attilio Micheluzzi. Born in Croatia in 1930 to a father serving in Mussolini’s air force, Micheluzzi worked as an architect for many years, designing buildings across North Africa. He was appointed architect for the Royal House of Libya just before Gaddafi overthrew the monarchy. Micheluzzi returned to Italy but found working there as an architect difficult. For the last eighteen years of his life he created comics, all centered around incredible characters.
In the introduction to this complete collection of comics featuring intrepid aviatrix, adventuress and spy Petra Chérie, cartoonist Paul Pope mentions that Micheluzzi’s friends teasingly called him “Hapsburgian,” a description that could apply to Petra herself. The House of Habsburg ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire for centuries, including Croatia, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, parts of Italy, Bohemia, and parts of the Balkans. Petra Chérie moves through all of these countries taking advantage of the extraordinary independence conferred on her by her youth, beauty, wealth, and the chaos of the times. She’s a diplomatic courier, a spy with multiple identities, an aviatrix who brings down German planes.
Micheluzzi draws her starkly beautiful face with spare lines, depicting her world with depth and shadows. As the series progresses, Petra takes more and more risks, always surviving because of her sophisticated wit, her social connections, and her ability to fight in heels and a long skirt. Micheluzzi sometimes inserts himself as a walk-on narrator, issuing warnings without judgement.
Petra’s story ends much as the Hapsburgian monarchy did in 1918: Deprived of the wealth brought to her by oil wells that are now in Bolshevik hands, now stuck in a world without glamor, the aristocratic company she enjoyed all gone. She survives, but her world does not.
