133 What value can comics have today, within the world of communication? What kind of aggregation does they have around them, and what differentiating and unique element can they boast, compared to other forms of art? Comics are a complex organism, a refined synthesis of different languages which, in this singular combination, finds its own specificity. The value that comics can have in communication is probably in relation to their own ability to communicate with all the areas that make them up; which is why the comic reader is very often also passionate about cinema, literature and all the fields nourishing comics and, in turn, nourished by them. Speaking of languages, especially applied to current and global issues such as climate change, how much strength do you think a universal language like the comics' one can have? In brief, humankind has gone from a conception of nature intended as a dwelling, to a conception of nature exclusively intended as a reservoir for a limitless exploitation. The humankind that preceded us, in order to guarantee its own survival, was used to take advantage of the environment insofar as it preserved it, and therefore at the passage of the plough the land could still germinate and become more flourishing, just as the sea waters could still come together again at the passage of the vessel. In our time, instead, the feeling is that the logic of endless growth does not contemplate the possibility of the limit, after which, Plato already warned us, one must fear for his own destiny. How far a universal language such as the comics' one can intervene in such deep and complex processes is difficult to predict and perhaps even to hypothesize. However, I am convinced that a language such as that of comics can undoubtedly express and convey what Immanuel Kant called a regulative idea, that is an ideal vision to strive for which, while not being realized, can nevertheless awaken the critical capacity and mitigate the harmful effects of a system. My mention of climate change has not been accidental. The lines that Nicola Mari drew for Ossigeno #09, through The face of another, crossed the border of the single page and now follow a precise trajectory, which will meet that of other artists in the near future. We would like to join that regulative idea, in the hope that it will be able to mitigate the effects of the great enemy of the twenty-first century, also thanks to Nicola Mari and the artists that, through his curatorship, he will be presenting to us for our next issues and for these pages.
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