“Don’t ask me too difficult questions, we live in a time where the answers are difficult.” This is one of the words of Bobo, who was born in 1979 like me, and has made me think the most in recent years. The character created by the genius Sergio Staino leaves us today. For us “diverse young people” in this land of eternal Peter Pans, it is just another lighthouse on an increasingly dark path.

Staino was one of the beings who accompanied and guided us in that endless exercise of understanding the world around us: He was not just a designer, a cartoonist, a journalist; He was an intellectual who showed us the truth from different perspectives with the images and sharp jokes he entrusted to his characters; Angles that are often overlooked because we are too focused on observing Italy and the world from a comfortable position, what we now call the comfort zone. He did not like this position and did everything he could to avoid it; even though this caused him to be rejected and criticized by fewer and fewer believers in the secular church in which he grew up.

This is something that is becoming more and more rare in a world where societies are gradually regressing, where thought is becoming sparse and closed in a polarization that leaves no room for color tones or the finest lines. “Bobo was born, as is often the case, out of desperation. Angry, frustrated, romantic, democrat and leftist,” Sergio Staino admitted in an interview a few years ago. This character was very similar to us because, just like us, he did not know how to act most of the time; It did not have the economic, social and political reference points that accompanied the generations before us.

And here his “father” came to our aid, helping Bobo (and us with him) not to succumb to vulgarity on the other side of the newspaper. Almost half a century of history has passed from the graffiti of these pencils and pastels: the identity crisis of the post-communist Italian left, in which Staino was a disillusioned militant until the end – first the emergence of populism embodied by Silvio Berlusconi, then the 5 Star Movement, then Matteo by Renzi (a love-hate relationship), until the rise of right-wing parties like Salvini and Meloni.

Bobo was there, having a say, answering his daughter’s questions or just listening; another rare exercise in this mayhem where everyone speaks out loud, especially those who have nothing to say. It is very true, dear Bobo, that we live in a time when answers are difficult. And from today on, those of us looking for answers are left a little more alone.