I have a very important question for you: why the hell has
"The Bleep-Bleep 15" only ever been published outside of Italy once--in the edition I read? When all the stories surrounding it have been widely published everywhere? WHY?!?!? TELL ME!!! This goes deep, people. VERY deep. If you look on inducks, you'll see that even the Italian publication history is suspicious: it was first printed in 1960, reprinted in 1964, and then not published again until
1994, even though the surrounding stories were mostly reprinted in the early eighties (the case is the same for the story Dave Gerstein mentioned in comments last time that's never been printed outside of Italy). Is there some sort of censorship involved here? According to the accompanying essay, one of the stories we'll be looking at a bit later
was explicitly suppressed for a while--but there the reasons are obvious, if (inevitably) uncompelling; here I just don't know. VERY, VERY SUSPICIOUS.
This state of affairs is especially unfortunate because "The Bleep-Bleep 15" is fucking delightful--one of the best stories we'll be looking at, if not the best. It feels very much like a Bill-Walsh-era Gottfredson story, in a good way.
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