Born today Alfredo Castelli

Born today Alfredo Castelli (26 June 1947, Italy)  

Alfredo Castelli was born in Milan, Italy in 1947. He started his career in comics in 1965, when he became an editor for Kolosso and drew ‘Scheletrino’ for Diabolik. A year later he founded the popular and influential fanzine Comics Club 104, considered to be the first Italian fanzine. He has become best known for writing comics, which he started doing in 1967, creating scripts for comics such as ‘Rocky Rider’, ‘Pedrito El Drito’ and ‘Piccola Eva’. From that time on, Castelli proved himself a prolific and versatile writer, also contributing to several television series and numerous comic magazines, such as Tilt (which he co-founded), Corriere dei Ragazzi, Zack, Pif and Scoop.

In 1978 he created ‘Allan Quatermain’ for magazine Supergulp, about an explorer specializing in archaeological mysteries. This character inspired the birth of the famous comics creation ‘Martin Mystère’, which started at publisher Bonelli in 1982, with artwork by Giancarlo Alessandrini. For the same publisher, Castelli wrote issues of ‘Dylan Dog’, ‘Zagor’, ‘Mister No’ and the books ‘L’Uomo delle Nevi’ (artwork by Milo Manara) and ‘L’Uomo di Chicago’ (artwork by Alessandrini).
Since the success of Martin Mystère, Alfredo Castelli has not been idle. He still works for Bonelli, writing Mystère-related series such as ‘Zona X’ and ‘The Almanack of Mystery’. ‘Martin Mystère’ has been published at Dark Horse Comics as ‘Martin Mystery’, featuring many covers by Dave Gibbons.
A 2003-2006 animated TV series adaptation of ‘Martin Mystère’ was created by the Japanese anime company Tatsunoko Productions, originally founded by Tatsuo, Kenji and Toyoharu Toshida.