Born today Alessandro Biffignandi
Alessandro Biffignandi (8 October 1935 – 21 January 2017) was an Italian poster artist and cover illustrator, with a strong tie to the comics genre. Although he hasn’t drawn that many actual comic stories, he was most notably the cover painter for many Italian pulp comic books of the 1970s and 1980s.
He was born as Alessandro Romano Biffignandi in Rome, and developed a keen interest in drawing and cartoons during his childhood. At 17 he made his debut as a cartoonist working on ‘Captain Walter’ for AVE. At the age of 19 he became an apprentice of the Italian poster and billboard artist Averardo Ciriello.
Comics career
He started working in the comics industry after moving to Milan in 1958. He provided artwork to foreign publishers through art studios like D’Ami. He made painted covers for French pocket comic books like Nevada, Hondo, Kiwi, Yuma and Rodeo, all by the Lyon-based publishing house Lug. He also drew some comic features for the interiors of these books, such as ‘Rombo Bill’ (Rodeo, 1959), ‘Flambo’ (Flambo, 1959), ‘Antonin’ (Nevada), ‘Agent Special K3’ (Special Rodeo, 1966), ‘Sergeant Fury’ (Zembla) and ‘Peter Berg’ (Hondo, 1964). His main work for the British publisher Fleetway included covers for ‘The Spider’ and ‘Johnny Nero’ in the Fleetway Super Library series, but also to the many war collections (‘Air Ace’, ‘War’, ‘Battle’, ‘War at Sea’, ‘Giant War’) and other series. Interior art included illustrations for ‘The Wonderful Story of Britain’ (Treasure, 1963) and the feature ‘Strange Facts’ for Tell Me Why (1968-1969). Among his 500 British covers are also illustrations for Hurricane, Tell Me Why and World of Wonder, while he also made covers for Italian publications like I Rosa Mondadori, Intrepido, Il Monello, Lanciostory and UFO.
cont. lambiek.net
