Vittorio Giardino

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Vittorio Giardino

Vittorio Giardino (born December 24, 1946), is an Italian comic artist.

Giardino was born in Bologna, where he graduated in electrical engineering in 1969. At the age of 30, he decides to leave his job to devote himself to comics. Two years later his first short story Pax Romana is published on La Città Futura, a weekly magazine published by the Federazione Giovanile Comunista Italiana and edited by Luigi Bernardi.

One year later Giardino creates Sam Pezzo, an Italian private eye based in Bologna, for the comic magazine Il Mago. After the dismissal of Il Mago in 1980, Sam Pezzo finds a new home at Orient Express, a new comic magazine directed by Luigi Bernardi.

In 1982 Giardino creates a new character: Max Fridman, an ex secret agent involved in the political struggle in 1930 Europe. His first adventure, Hungarian Rhapsody is serialized on the first four issues of Orient Express and brings Giardino in the limelight on the international comic scene. Max Fridman adventures will be published in 18 countries, and are universally recognized as comic book classics. Some of the prizes the series won include Lucca Festival's Yellow Kid and Brussels' St. Michel.

Starting in 1984, Giardino produces a number of short stories for the Italian magazine Comic Art, where he introduces Little Ego, a young and sexy girl inspired by Winsor McKay's Little Nemo who stars in one-page dreamy erotic stories.

In 1991 Giardino creates a new character, Jonas Fink for Il Grifo magazine. Jonas is a young Jew in 1950 Prague whose father is arrested by the communist police. He and his mother will have to cope with the discrimination and oppression of Stalin's regime. The book won the Angoulème Alfred prize for best foreign work in 1995 as well as an Harvey at San Diego in 1999.

Giardino's maniacal attention to details in both his art and his stories has made him a star even outside the comics community. Unfortunately, it is also the reason of his proverbial slowness: his fans have to wait for years to read the conclusion of his books. Giardino art style recalls the French ligne claire, while his writing owes a lot to famous hard boiled and spy story authors like Dashiell Hammett and John le Carré.