Carlo Ambrosini, one of the most important authors of Dylan Dog and creator of the characters Napoleon and Jan Dix for Sergio Bonelli Editore, has died at the age of 69. The publisher announced this on its official website.
Carlo Ambrosini was born on April 15, 1954 in Azzano Mella (Brescia). He attended the Art High School and the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera and joined the studio of Leone Cimpellin as a collaborator, which was also attended by Enea Riboldi and Giampiero Casertano. He made his official debut in the mid-1970s, illustrating war stories for the Dardo publishing house, episodes of the Daniel series by Editoriale Corno, erotic comics for Ediperiodici and some chapters of Enzo Biagi’s History of Italy in Comics.
The turning point in his career came in 1980, when he drew Editore Pellerossa, number 26 by Ken Parker, for Sergio Bonelli. It was a fundamental step in the development of his personal approach to stories, which combined classic adventure and high inspirations, art, literature and psychology. Following these principles, he created the character of Nico Macchia for Orient Express, which also appeared in France, where he continued his editorial life after the magazine closed.
With the birth of Dylan Dog in 1986, he was among the first designers to join the creative team, creating number 15 in the series, Canale 666, using halftone watercolor in some of the most emotional and popular stories such as The Long Goodbye. He soon complemented his work as a designer with that of a screenwriter and, with Behind the Curtain (Dylan Dog 97, October 1994), he became the first author to create the entire text and drawings of a character book.
Three years later he was forced to reduce his commitments to the pages of Nightmare Investigator because he created his own series Napoleone, one of the most original and sophisticated in the entire panorama of Italian serial comics. Hovering between literature, painting and psychoanalysis, the entomologist-detective’s investigations brought the cartoonist’s passions to paper and remained on newsstands for a decade in fifty bimonthly issues.
In 2008 it was the turn of “Jan Dix,” a fourteen-book miniseries starring an art critic and still focusing on the same themes.
In recent years, Ambrosini has alternated his commitment to his characters and Dylan Dog with some books from the Le storie series, two volumes of Il Confine and a Texone, published in 2005.
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