Comic Art Profile: Mario Alberti
Mario Alberti is an Italian cartoonist, illustrator, and writer known for his collaborations in Italy in the series Nathan Never, Dragonero and Tex, in the USA as a cover artist for DC and Marvel and for contributing art to Amazing Spider-Man and in France for his series Morgana, Redhand and Cutting Edge.
In 2016 he won the ILM Art Department Challenge on Artstation with works based on the Star Wars characters. He’s currently hard at work on the third and last issue of the series Le Mur (The Wall) for Glenat in France.
Fun Fact # 1:
Mario’s created his first comic before he could write.
“The adventures of Polip, an octopus wearing a top-hat and a red cape, was my first comic …the letters were randomly put in the balloons as I couldn’t write yet!”
Tiramisu for Two
Fun Fact #2:
Mario almost didn’t become a comic artist and was going to pursue a career in marketing instead.
“I started thinking comics could be a job quite late and after (almost) a degree in Marketing. I had all my exams done and was working on my final thesis when a friend gave me a tape of a copy of a copy of a copy (at the time finding animes and mangas was nearly impossible) of Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa…that really hit me like a train. I found the guts to show my stuff to a publisher and got my first gig.”
Le Mur (Glenat) process
Fun Fact # 3:
Mario still struggles with imposter syndrome sometimes.
“I still find it hard to believe I’m any good at this. So much so that when ArtStation announced the winners of the ILM Challenge, I thought “Hey, let’s go see what amazing stuff those people did” and clicked on the link without reading the names. Which landed me on my stuff and had me thinking I clicked someplace wrong.
“But that’s your name, there!” My son, at the time 12 years old, was so angry with me because he said he was the only one thinking I could win! I think we had some of our best laughs together after he stopped kicking me in the shins.”
Fun Fact #4:
Mario swears by putting the story and message above everything else.
“Whatever you do, be it a comic, an illustration, or a cover, the story you want to tell takes priority over anything else. It needs to be at the kernel of any choice you make. This means the most important thing is that you need to have something to say. Believing this might matter to someone else, helps.”
Fun Fact #5:
The answer to what it takes to be a comic artist according to Mario lies in a collection of German letters.
“It’s an urge, something you can’t but do. Sometimes they ask me what it takes to be a comic artist (but it applies to whatever passion you want to turn into a job). I think a good reply can be found in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a young poet. Go check it out…and despair (as Galadriel would say)!”
#1 Tip for Comic Artists:
“If you feel you really need to do this as much as you can’t hold your pee, go for it, work hard and be authentic.”
News
Book 2 of the series Le Mur, inspired by a pitch for a movie by Antoine Charreiron just came out for Glenat in France,. Walls, robots, techno-zombies!
The Siren’s Song (Cutting Edge) is a series developed for Delcourt in France by Mario Alberti and his writer and pal, Francesco Dimitri. It is set for release in the US by Titan Comics, coming out in November 2020.
Cutting Edge
