It’s not everyday that you can stroll along the historic walls of Lucca and encounter Spiderman! But if you happened to be there over the weekend of 29th of October to the 1st of November you would have seen not only Spiderman but just about every other hero or villain portrayed in all the most popular fumetti (comic strips), cartoni animati (cartoons), and video giochi (video games), plus many others that you’ve probably never heard of, I certainly hadn’t!
Lucca comics is a celebration of fantasy that, over the course of 43 years, has grown from humble beginnings to become the largest festival of its kind in Europe. Just to give you an idea, this year’s show attracted roughly 140,000 visitors, a fairly large percentage of whom arrived in costume. By chance we happened to be in Lucca that weekend, and what really amazed us, apart from the quantity of participants, was the incredible quality of the costumes, masks, and ‘posing’. These were obviously very dedicated fans who had put a huge amount of time, care, and thought into how they presented themselves, but hey, siamo Italiani, no!
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At the same time there was nothing overbearing about the crowd, who were mainly in their late teens and early twenties, in fact the overall impression was of people having a great time whilst sharing their passion with other fans of the genre and the general public alike. Just walking through the crowd and stopping to admire the diverse characters you couldn’t help but feel a smile creep across your face.
One of the things that really pleased me, was seeing so many people participating in something very contemporary. Most tourist only know and see Italy as Europe biggest open air museum, and yes, we are very proud of our heritage, but life here didn’t end in the middle ages. Italy like everywhere else is a country that is still growing and evolving, there should be room for the new alongside the old, providing, of course, that it is done with that special ‘Italian touch’.

If you would like to know more about Lucca Comics then I suggest that you start with these two web sites: http://www.luccacomicsandgames.com/ and http://lucca09.luccacomicsandgames.com/ If you are planning an autumn break to Toscana next year I would definitely recommend a visit to Lucca Comics 2010. As they say ‘Be there, or be square’!



