Eugenio Colonnese (

Fuscaldo Fuscaldo is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Ital ...

, 3 September 1929 –

Santo André Santo ('saint' in various languages) may refer to: People * Santo (given name) * Santo (surname) * El Santo, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917–1984), Mexican wrestler and actor * Bob Santo or Santo, stage name of Ghanaian comedian John Evans Kwad ...

, 8 August 2008) was an Italian-born

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

ian

comic artist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the literary ...

. Son of a Brazilian mother (who is African, Portuguese and Indigenous) and Italian father, Colonnese moved to

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

as a child, where he began his career in 1949, working for several Argentine magazines. He moved to Brazil in 1964. Three years later, he created the Estúdio D-Arte with

Rodolfo Zalla Rodolfo Zalla (Buenos Aires, July 20, 1931 – São Paulo, June 19, 2016) was an Argentine comics artist. He started drawing comics while still in Argentina in 1953, but his career gained prominence after moving to Brazil with fellow comic art ...

, with whom he produced several comic books for several Brazilian publishers. In 1967, Colonnese created his main characters: Mirza, a Mulher-Vampira ("Mirza, the Vampire Woman") and O Morto do Pântano ("The Swamp Dead"), which, although they have similarities, respectively, to

Vampirella Vampirella () is a vampire superheroine created by Forrest J Ackerman and comic book artist Trina Robbins in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazine ''Vampirella'' #1 (Sept. 1969), a sister publication of '' Creepy'' and ''E ...

and

Swamp Thing Swamp Thing is a superhero and antihero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson, the Swamp Thing has had several different incarnations throughout his publication. The ch ...

, were created some years before these characters. Colonnese worked mainly with horror comics, but he also worked with other genres and did illustration for educational and advertising comics. In 1985, he was awarded the

Prêmio Angelo Agostini for Master of National Comics Master of National Comics () is one of the categories of Prêmio Angelo Agostini, the most traditional Brazilian award dedicated to comics that has been held since 1985 by Associação dos Quadrinhistas e Caricaturistas do Estado de São Paulo (AQ ...

, an award that aims to honor artists who have dedicated themselves to

Brazilian comics Brazilian comics (known in Brazilian Portuguese as ''HQs, gibis, revistinhas, historietas'', ''quadrinhos'' or ''tirinhas'') started in the 19th century, adopting a satirical style known as cartoon, charges or caricature that would later be cemen ...

for at least 25 years.

References

Brazilian comics artists Italian comics artists Prêmio Angelo Agostini winners Brazilian erotic artists Brazilian poster artists Italian poster artists Film poster artists Brazilian art educators Italian educators 1929 births 2008 deaths {{LatAm-comics-creator-stub