An absolutely anomalous and revolutionary female character, imagined and designed by Guido Crepax
in the mid-60s, Valentina burst onto the international comics scene as an absolute novelty in the history of drawn literature, as well as a true work of art. She made her debut in 1965, on the pages of Linus magazine, as a secondary character in a science fiction series – she was the girlfriend of the protagonist, Philip Rembrandt, alias Neutron, an art critic with the power to slow down time – but very soon she conquered the scene and a role of absolute protagonist, fascinating throngs of readers in Italy as well as in France, Argentina and Japan. Her unscrupulousness, her independence, her autonomy, her look inspired by the American actress of the ‘20s Louise Brooks, break every previous female archetype in the international comics, and soon turn her into a new female model of reference. To the typical characteristics of Crepax’s style, in which realism is mixed with dreamlike and lysergic dimension, are added touches of nuanced eroticism and elegant fetishism, and a great attention to the unconscious of the protagonist and her biography. In fact Valentina, and this is one of the author’s most extraordinary stunts, lives a real existence: she has a real job with which she earns her living as a photographer, an identity card, a precise Milanese domicile; she was born on December 25th 1942, she gets old (although a bit slower than normal), and she leaves the scene in 1995.