| Luciano Bottaro | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1931-11-16)16 November 1931 Rapallo,Kingdom of Italy |
| Died | 25 November 2006(2006-11-25) (aged 75) Rapallo, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Awards | U Giancu's Prize, 1995 |
Luciano Bottaro (16 November 1931 – 25 November 2006) was an Italian comic book artist.
He was influenced byOtto Messmer'sFelix the Cat,Winsor McCay'sLittle Nemo in Slumberland,Frederick Burr Opper'sHappy Hooligan,Rudolph Dirks'stheKatzenjammer Kids, andBarks andGottfredson's Disney adaptations.
Born inRapallo, he abandoned hisaccounting studies for cartooning in 1949. That year, he began his career forLo Scolaro, an Italianmagazine, with the character Aroldo ilbucaniere.
He worked forLa Domenica del Corriere,Edizioni Alpe andMondadori, the ItalianDisney comics publisher: his first story was "Paperino e le onorificenze" written byAlberto Testa and published in 1952.
In the same year he began to collaborate withGuido Scala andFranco Aloisi. They were subsequently joined byCarlo Chendi. Unofficially they were called "Rapallo's School", before the birth of the "Bierrecì Studios".
Besides his work on Disney's characters, he worked on othermagazines, creating a lot of characters (Whisky & Gogo,Baldo,Pon Pon,Giò Polpetta,Maramao), and in 1958 he founded the Bierrecì Studios withCarlo Chendi andGiorgio Rebuffi.
The first Bierreci Studios' publication wasRe di Picche, acomic book that published the adventures of theking of thecards, a pitiless andblood-thirstyparody of military world, inspired byAlice's Adventures in Wonderland.
One of his most popular characters wasPepito, the comical adventures of a 17th-centurybuccaneer who fights, among others, the greedy, grasping but essentially lovable Governor of aSpanishCaribbeancolony. Published in various countries in magazines that ranged from monthly to fortnightly,Pepito proved surprisingly more popular outside of Italy than in its country of origin.
Several cartoonists began working with them, includingMaria Luisa Uggetti,Tiberio Colantuoni,Ivo Milazzo,Giancarlo Berardi. They worked on several characters, includingMickey Mouse,Uncle Scrooge,Warner Bros. characters.
They also produced the comics version ofCarosello, an Italiantelevision program that, during the 1950s and 1960s, played the first Italianadvertisements.
Fantagraphics has since 2018 reprinted some of Bottaro's Disney comics in volumes of theDisney Masters hardcover series.
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