Born today Sergio Zaniboni (4 August 1937 – 18 August 2017, Italy) was an Italian comic artist and illustrator. He was best known for his long association with the ‘Diabolik’ series, and for his many contributions to the children’s magazine Il Giornalino.

He was born in 1937 in Turin. He was originally a radio technician for electricity company Enel, and then worked as a technical designer, graphic designer and illustrator. One of his well-known designs is the logo with the knight of the Panini figurines. Zaniboni began his career as a cartoonist in 1967. His first job was drawing a comic book with ‘The Three Musketeers’ for the publisher Alè Toro, but the project remained unpublished. He then made a comic adaptation of the 1827 Alessandro Manzoni novel ‘The Betrothed’ (‘I Promessi Sposi’) with Angela Giussani, which appeared as the first issue of the series ‘I Classici a Fumeti’ of Gino Sansoni’s publishing house in March 1967.

Also during this period, he made two episodes of ‘I Naufraghi’ (“The Castaways”, 1967), a comic about the beat generation with Pier Carpi and Michele Gazzarri for Il Giorno dei Ragazzi. With Carpi and fellow artist Enrico Bagnoli, he also made two albums of the racing comic ‘Nic Cometa’ for Mondadori in 1968. He additionally drew several stories for Horror magazine (1969-1971).

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Comics in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s

Zaniboni was additionally present in the monthly magazine Orient Express with ‘I Reporters’ (1983) in cooperation with Giancarlo Malagutti. The four short stories deal with two journalists of a San Francisco TV station, who engage in political and social events. By the late 1980s Sergio Zaniboni turned to a more comical drawing style for the adventure series ‘Speedy Car’ (1986-1990), which he made in cooperation with Paolo Ferrarini for Il Giornalino, and the one-shot ‘Pam & Peter’ (1990) with scriptwriter Luigi Mignacco for Comic Art. Zaniboni and Claudio Nizzi worked together again on ‘Piombo Rovente’ (1991), a long adventure of Bonelli’s western hero ‘Tex Willer’. In 1995, Zaniboni was also one of the artists of the sci-fi feature ‘Ombre Virtuali’ in Bonelli’s Ken Parker Magazine.

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