to be or NET TO BE

(to be or) NET TO BE
by Roberto Grassilli

A comic strip that has told, and put to the pillory the spericolate evolutions of the New Italian Economy. A company of paper, ink and pixel (the "Immanet"), that lives only on virtual pages (until 2004 on Clarence, the historical portal of the "oldest" community of Italy, today on the personal blog of its author) and it's the insolent mirror to the tumultuous world of who works for Internet and around it.
The author, Roberto Grassilli, born in Bologna 45 years ago, co-founder with Gianluca Neri of the mentioned portal, was the pencil of the "Angel" and of all the particular images of Clarence.com "As veterans of the net and point of reference of Humor on-line", Grassilli says "We had the right background for being able to transform in comic strips what we have seen to happen around us in the years of the "drunkenness from the web". I just had to put in good copy the scribbles that I have always produced during all my borings business meetings".
The people of the strip are "terrible likely" to the real protagonists of the New Economy and most of whom are still taken care of Net for job or because they cannot leave the Net.
Grassilli, like his friend Neri, comes from the historical experience of "Cuore", a famous satirical magazine, and has worked in the graphics, in the adv and in animation pictures, before inaugurating Clarence in 1996.

"Nettobe", since its birth in May 2001, has met the favors of the "internet people" and of the operators of the field. From then it travels through offices and desktop in an intense traffic "in and out" the companies where the employees, acknowledging in the described situations, use the strip for sarcastic exchanges with colleagues and friends.
For almost one year the daily publication online has been placed next to the one in the newspaper Punto.com.

In 2002, the strip has caught up an other historical "paper goal": Hops Editions of Milan has published the first collection of it ("To Be Or NET To BE ", December '02).
Today, almost at the five-hundredth strip, the world of Alessio & C. is still growing around what happen on Internet and on the outskirts of it, and has become a real "open source", a free content to launch, to copy and past on the infinite pages of the Net.

The strip is still published to the URL: warehouse.robertograssilli.com/
The archives of the strip can be found here: nettobe.robertograssilli.com/
The book can be found here: Genux.com / Librando.it / Webster.it.

193 photos | 945 views

items are from between 11 May 2003 & 02 Aug 2006.