Guests

Born in Newcastle in 1951, David Almond lives in Northumberland with his family.

In 2010, he won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the “Nobel Prize” for children’s literature. He also won the prestigious International Nonino Prize in 2022, which anticipated the choice of Nobel Laureates six times.

He published many novels with Salani, among which “ Clay”, “My name is Mina”, “ The Boy Who Climbed into the Moon”, “Kit’s Wilderness”, “The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean”, “My Dad’s a Birdman”, “A Song for Ella Grey”, “The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas” and “Skellig”, with which he won the Whitbread Children’s Award and the Carnegie Medal

Yoshitaka Amano was born in 1952 in a small town in Shizuoka, Japan. At the age of 15, Amano took part in designing the characters of many of Tatsunoko’s greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the US as G-Force and Battle of the Planets), Hutch the Honeybee and Cashaan: Robot Hunter. In 1984, he published his first collection of paintings, Maten (Evil Universe). He continued to collaborate with various writers, creating almost 20 picture books that sold millions of copies. These works include Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Guin Saga by Kaoru Kurimonto, Arslan Chronicles by Yoshiki Tanaka and Rasen-O (Spiral King) and Chimera by Baku Yumemakura. At the same time, he collaborated with director Mamoru Oshii in 1984 to create the animated film Angel’s Egg, which has become a cult in Japan. His first project as a concept artist for video games, Final Fantasy, became a worldwide success. He also designed characters for games such as Front Mission, Gun Hazard, Rebus (released as Kartia in the US) and Emblem of Eru. In the autumn of 1999, Amano presented a multimedia exhibition of his character Hero at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York City. In the same year, Amano hosted (together with Neil Gaiman) the new edition of the very popular Sandman series.

Yoshitaka Amano will also be present:

- On 29^th October, from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PMat the Performance Area (Carducci Pavilion)

-On 31^st October, from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM for a Meet & Greet in Sala Canova.

Mirka Andolfo is an Italian illustrator and writer, particularly esteemed for the strength and intensity of her female characters.

She gave life to series such as “Un/Sacred”, “Unnatural”, “Mercy” and “Sweet Paprika”: her works have been published in more than 25 countries and they are among the most successful Italian comics of the last decade (released by major publishers such as Star Comics, Panini Comics, Imagine Comics, Éditions Glénat and so forth).

In 2020, she won the “Wow Award: Italian Excellence In The World” (Etna Comics) and the “Micheluzzi Award for Best Drawing” (Napoli COMICON).

She has been collaborating with DC Comics since 2015, working on titles such as “Superman vs. Lobo”, “Wonder Woman”, “Harley Quinn”, “Bombshells”, and on the recent hit “Punchline”.

In 2020, she became the first Italian author ever to write and illustrate a story for DC (“Harley Quinn Black+White+Red”), and she is currently working on her second solo story (with Poison Ivy as the protagonist).

Andolfo is working as a writer for Image Comics (“Deep Beyond”, “Hopeless”), Marvel Comics (“Women of Marvel”), BOOM! Studios (“The Amazing World of Gumball”, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Dynamite (“Red Sonja”, “Red Sitha”). She illustrated some chapters of the award-winning series “Ms. Marvel” (Marvel Comics) and she has collaborated in various ways with major American and European publishers.

As an illustrator, she has contributed to marketing and advertising campaigns for various companies including Netflix, Paramount, Sky, 20^th Century Studios and Juventus.

Paolo Barbieri is an illustrator and author who has worked in the publishing world for more than twenty years. He created the covers of authors such as Michael Chricton, George R. R. Martin, Umberto Eco, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Alberto Angela, Wilbur Smith and many others. He created the covers of Licia Troisi ’s fantasy novels and of the two illustrated books published by Mondadori, as well as the covers of the two Panini Comics series inspired by the Chronicles of the Emerged World. He worked as chief set designer for the animated film “Aida of the Trees” and in 2011 he was the Artist Guest of Honour at Lucca Comics & Games and the protagonist of an anthological exhibition. He illustrated the covers of the “Gea” and “Nathan Never” novels for Sergio Bonelli and he’s the author of “Favole degli Dei” and “L’inferno di Dante” as well as of three other books for Mondadori. In 2015 he started collaborating with Lo Scarabeo, creating the Barbieri Tarot pack and the illustrated books “Zodiac”, “Fantasy Cats”, “Unicorns”, “StarDragons”, “Night Fairies” and “Alice in Wonderland”.

John Blanche was born in 1948. After graduating from art school, he studied graphic design and illustration, becoming a freelance illustrator in 1977. 

Initially, he dedicated to the self-publishing of “Mythica” and “Ninth Day” , the volume drawn in collaboration with other artists, during the period he refers to as “hippy years”. 

He illustrated covers and pages of books such as the British edition of “Dungeons & Dragons”, “The Prince and the Woodcutter” and the “Tolkien Bestiary”. 

In 1984 he started working full-time on illustrations and concept arts for Games Workshop, creating an art department and becoming art director during the 2000s. 

Over the last ten years he has been dedicating his free time to the project “Voodoo Forest”, a world-building exercise that wasn’t only focused on fantasy, but rooted in reality and natural history.

The first version of “Voodoo Forest” was self-published in 2015, while its final form, a rearranged and longer version, was released by Hollow Press in 2022.

(Photo by Francesco Quadrelli)

Tim Burton, who in his career has thrilled the world audience with iconic films such as - among others - “Beetlejuice”, “Batman”, “Edward scissorhands”, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Ed Wood”, “Sleepy Hollow”, “Big Fish”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Corpse Bride”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Frankenweenie”, has directed the first 4 episodes of the new TV series “Wednesday”, created by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar.

By founding Atari in 1972, Nolan Bushnell gave life to the company in which he created Pong, the first blockbuster video game. His creed - “video games should be easy to understand and hard to master” - has inspired a new generation of developers. A prolific entrepreneur, Bushnell has launched more than 20 companies such as: Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater, Catalyst Technologies (Silicon Valley’s first incubator) and Etak, the first in-car satellite navigation system. He pioneered many of the innovations that made Silicon Valley a historic reference point for creative talents.

Bushnell was the first and only person to ever hire Steve Jobs, a story told in his 2013 book “Finding the Next Steve Jobs”. He currently chairs ExoDexa, runs the Moxy platform, and works as a gaming and esports consultant. He has recently been named one of the “50 Men Who Changed America” by Newsweek.

Nolan Bushnell will also be present for a book signing session after the Panel on 31^st October, from 4 PM to 5 PM, in the R.E.C. Room.

Glenn Cooper is an extraordinary example of a self-made man. After graduating with honours in Archaeology from Harvard, he chose to pursue a doctorate in Medicine. He was president and CEO of the largest biotechnology company in Massachusetts but later became a screenwriter and film producer, as a demonstration of his versatility.

Thanks to the resounding success of the Library of the Dead trilogy and his following novels, he also established himself as an international bestselling author. Since then, all of his novels have always reached the top of the charts.

Art Director. Born February 11, 1965, in Nara Prefecture. After studying at Osaka University of Arts, he entered the world of animation art and continues to the present.
His representative works include "Neon Genesis EVANGELION", "THE 5TORY OF THE 5ECRET 5TAR 5YSTEM", "Ayakashi - Yotsuya Kaidan", "Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods", "Asura" and "Star Wars: Visions The Village Bride".

Jay Kristoff is the author of many fantasy and sci-fi international bestsellers.

He won eight Aurealis Awards as well as one ABIA and published his books in more than 35 countries, many of which he never even visited: he is just as amazed as you are!

More than 2 metres tall, he's got about 11,500 days left to live. He doesn't believe in happy endings

Author of the Lucca Comics & Games 2022's poster, Ted Nasmith is one of the most talented contemporary illustrators, and we can't talk about fantasy art without mentioning him. In fact, he's been the one who materialized the fantasy of all Tolkien fans. He creates enchanted landscapes with the precision of a neoclassical painter, reproducing unique worlds and settings that earned him the esteem and encouragement of Tolkien himself. 

In the epic of the English writer Nasmith finds the inspiration for his future as an artist. These are his own words: “Tolkien and C.S. Lewis reached the conclusion that they needed to write books they wanted to read; In that moment I decided that someone ( myself ) should have drawn the kind of illustrations of Tolkien's books that I wanted to see!”

Passionate about history and ancient religions, he has a very personal eclectic style that pulls from both the atmospheres of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and mid-19th century American luminism. Thanks to his passion for neoclassical architecture, he brings some kind of magic realism into his works, recreating atmospheres and landscapes that, despite being full of esthetic and geographical details, maintain an enchanted aura dictated precisely by a skilful use of light and the graphic rendering of the four natural elements. 

His works have appeared in the famous Tolkien calendars since 1987 ( subsequent editions will be 1990, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2009). In 1997, the first issue illustrated by him of “The Silmarillion” was published, a  posthumous work by Christopher Tolkien that represents the genesis of his father's narrative corpus.  The Italian edition of 'The Silmarillion' with illustrations by Ted Nasmith was published in 2004 by Bompiani.

Considered one of the greatest Tolkien experts, Nasmith is also a member of some “Tolkenian” societies, such as “The Tolkien Society” and the “Mythopoeic Society”.

Not everyone knows that Nasmith is also a musician, a tenor and a guitarist: “The Hidden Door: Songs in the Key of Enchantment” is the name of his first album inspired by the atmospheres of “The Lord of the Rings”

Marcello Quintanilha is one of the best-known and most awarded Brazilian contemporary cartoonists. He was born in 1971 and has been living and working in Barcelona since 2002. He experimented different genres during his career: from thriller (“Tungstênio”, 2015, winner of the Fauve Polar award and adapted into a film) to psychological novel (“Talco de vidro”, 2016), up to choral biography (“Luzes de Niterói”, 2018) and fiction without pictures (“Deserama”, 2020). Works that differ in graphic choices, but that are linked by an identical focus on human relationships and social context, as well as by a masterful use of suspense. At Lucca Comics & Games 2022 he will present his latest graphic novel “Listen, pretty Márcia” (Coconino Press), that won the Prize for Best Album at the Angoulême Festival: it’s a moving story about the relationship between a mother and a daughter in the difficult scenario of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas: an amazing graphic novel set in an explosion of colours which links thriller, social drama and acute psychological investigation.

Chris Riddel is one of the greatest, most cultured and sophisticated contemporary authors and illustrators for children and adults, as well as the political cartoonist of the “Observer”. He lives in Brighton with his family. He was appointed Waterstones Children’s Laureate, the most significant and prestigious English award conferred every two years to those who have distinguished themselves with their extraordinary contributions in the field of children’s literature. He was honoured with the OBE (Order of the British Empire) in recognition of his services to illustration and charity.

He wrote more than 100 books and won several awards. Among all of them, he received the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal three times.

He has made many illustrations and collaborated with various authors such as Neil Gaiman, Paul Stewart, Kathryn Cave and Richard Platt, also working on the reinterpretation of great literary classics such as Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”, Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”, Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking” and many more.

He is the author and illustrator of the “Ottoline” and “Agata De Gotici” series for the publisher “Il Castoro”, and the illustrator of the “Don Quixote” adaptation by Martin Jenkins and “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” by Russell Brand. With “Il Castoro” he also published “100 Hugs” and the picture book “Gigio folgore inventore”.

His most recent publication is his wonderful tribute to his childhood book, a reinterpretation of “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland”.

Chris Riddel will be a guest at Lucca Comics & Games 2022 in collaboration with the publisher “Il Castoro”.

John Romita Jr. is coming back to Lucca after 14 years. Son of John Romita Sr., Marvel's former artistic director and living legend of comics, he is one of the modern masters of the comics industry.

At the age of 13, he created Prowler for a “The Amazing Spider-Man” story drawn by his father. His first official assignment dates back to 1978 and concerns the “Iron Man” series. After that, he started working for “The Amazing Spider-Man”. He illustrated the historic miniseries “Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions” and several “The Uncanny X-Men” issues, shaping a unique and personal style.

In collaboration with Frank Miller, he produced the miniseries “Daredevil: The Man Without Fear”, which made him the symbol of the Marvel style for three decades. His long career includes collaborations with major authors such as J. Michael Straczynski on the award-winning series “The Amazing Spider-Man”, Neil Gaiman on the miniseries “Eternals”, and Mark Millar, first on “Wolverine” and then for the praised “Kick-Ass”. He worked as the co-creator of this famous series and for which he co-produced its following blockbuster movie adaptations.

In 2014, after a respectable 36-year long career at the House of Ideas, he signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics and started illustrating “Superman”, based on texts first by Geoff Johns and then by Brian Bendis, and “All-Star Batman”, along with Scott Snyder. He once again worked with Frank Miller on “Superman: Year One” and "Dark Knight Returns: The Last Crusade".

In 2021, his comeback in Marvel is announced with the relaunch of "The Amazing Spider-Man" #1 (2022), in collaboration with Zeb Wells, for the 60^th anniversary of the character’s birth.

John Romita Jr will be a guest at Lucca Comics & Games 2022 in collaboration with Panini Comics.

Roberto Saviano (Naples, 1979) is the author of the international bestsellers “Gomorrah” (Mondadori, 2006), “ZeroZeroZero” (Feltrinelli, 2013), “The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples” and “Savage Kiss: A Novel” (Feltrinelli, 2016 and 2017). In 2019, he published “In mare non esistono taxi” for Contrastobooks, while in 2021 he released the autobiographic graphic novel “Sono ancora vivo” for Bao Publishing, illustrated by Asaf Hanuka. Between 2021 and 2022, he published “Le storie della paranza”, a comic series featuring the characters from “The Piranhas” and “Savage Kiss”. He is the creator and author of the TV series “Gomorrah” and “ZeroZeroZero”, which Variety and the New York Times consider to be the two best Italian series. He won the Grand Prix du Jury in Cannes for the film “Gomorrah” in 2008 and the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in Berlin with “The Piranhas” in 2019. In 2020, he published “Gridalo” for Bompiani, a “guide” to navigate the contemporary world; in 2022, on the occasion of the 30^th anniversary of the Capaci and via D'Amelio massacres, he released “Solo è il coraggio”, a novel about Giovanni Falcone. He also directs the Munizioni series for Bompiani. He is a columnist for Corriere della Sera, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Die Zeit. Since 2006, he has been living under police protection due to his investigative work.

Character Design, General Animation Director & Animator. Born in Fukushima Prefecture. As a character design and animation director, he worked for the "ONE PIECE FILM" movie series, including "ONE PIECE FILM STRONG WORLD", "ONE PIECE FILM Z" and "ONE PIECE FILM GOLD".
Also, he worked for "ONE PIECE STAMPEDE", released in 2019. He also participated in the "Pretty Cure" series.

Born 1966. Director, animation director and producer. After working as an episode director for "Eldoran Series" and "Gundam Series", he made his debut as a director with "One Piece: Defeat Him! The Pirate Ganzack!" in 1998.
Since then, he has directed many original-based works and own productions, including "PLANETES", "CODE GEASS", "Jungle Emperor: The Brave Can Change the Future", "Revisions", "Maria the Virgin Witch", "Back Arrow" and "Skate-Leading Stars".
This time, Gorō Taniguchi worked on his first directorial work "ONE PIECE" again.

Laini Taylor was born in 1971 in Chico, California. With the trilogy “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” she has won the hearts of millions of readers and convinced the most demanding critics, establishing herself as America’s finest adult fantasy writer. “Muse of Nightmares” is the sequel to “Strange the Dreamer” (Fazi Editore, 2018), the first chapter of the dilogy. Laini Taylor lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, illustrator Jim Di Bartolo, and her daughter Clementine.

Born in Milan, Dario Tonani is a professional journalist. Graduated from Bocconi, he published about 10 novels in Italy and abroad, as well as more than 120 stories onanthologies, national daily newspapers and on the most important Italian magazine collections (“Wired”, “Urania”, “Giallo Mondadori”, “Segretissimo”, “Millemondi”, “Robot”). 

The novels “Infect@”(2007), the diptych “ L’algoritmo bianco” (2009) and “Toxic@” (2011) were published on Urania, but his most popular work, partially translated with success in the USA, Japan and Russia, is the “Mondo9” saga, whose initial chapters appeared combined in 2015 in “Cronache di Mondo9”, the first “Millemondi” completely dedicated to an Italian author. “Mondo9” entered the top 10 Western science fiction titles of the year in Japan.

In 2018, Tonani was the first Italian sci-fi writer to be published with an original novel – “Naila di Mondo9” – in the prestigious book series “ Oscar Fantastica” by Mondadori. The book was thenpublished in a different edition for newsstands on “Urania Jumbo” in 2021 and the complete collection will be available soon in audiobooks. 

The book was then published with a new issue for newsstands on “Urania Jumbo”, and the complete saga will soon be available in the form of audiobooks.

The third chapter of the saga “Mya di Mondo9” was released in July 2022, in a special, out of format, unpublished work to celebrate 70 years of “Urania”. In addition, “Cronache di Mondo9” will again be available on newsstands on 2^nd November, right around the time of Lucca Comics & Games. The first book of the series, whose paper edition has been out of print for years now, will be attached to the two leading newspapers of the Rcs Group: “Il Corriere della Sera” and “La Gazzetta dello Sport”.

Among the many recognitions, Tonani received the ESFS Award as best author of the year in Dortmund in 2017.

​​Licia Troisi is a beloved guest of LC&G. Born in 1980, she is the best-selling Italian fantasy author in the world thanks to the extraordinary success of the “The Emerged World” and “The Dragon Girl” sagas, as well as the first volumes of “The Kingdoms of Nashira” (Mondadori).

She graduated with a thesis on dwarf galaxies and now collaborates with the University of Rome Tor Vergata as an astrophysicist. She wrote “Dove va a finire il cielo e altri misteri dell’universo” (Mondadori) on this subject.

In 2020, in collaboration with Star Comics, Licia Troisi announced the release of “Strix”, a multimedia story divided into live action and manga mini-series. Also in 2020, she published the popular science paper “La Sfrontata bellezza del cosmo” with Rizzoli.

Born in 1975 in Switzerland, Philipp Urlich started drawing early at age 6 mostly inspired by his mother. Later In school, he found that his passion for drawing and creativity could become more than just a hobby. With his first computer an Amiga 500 he made his first experiences with digital art and was also fascinated by programming. After school, he went to a one year design school, in preparation for a creative career.

To pursue his creative path, he studied graphic design in Zürich in 1992. It turned out it wasn’t his real passion to work as a graphic designer, but instead was fascinated by the Internet which was on a rise at that time. He learned how to create websites and combine his design and programming skills. During that time he also began to work a lot with 3D tools and games and would create a lot of content for games in the modding scenes. After 20 years of working for the web, he finally came back to his passion for art and illustration. Always a big fan of the fantasy genre, he started painting again digitally in 2019. His inspirations and influences are visibly from the old masters of romantic landscape artists in the 19 century, as well as many of the impressionistic era. 

He’s well known for his atmospheric epic mountain landscapes with a touch of fantasy. Since a child he was humbled and inspired by the beautiful landscapes of Switzerland and its vast mountain range the Alps, which have a big influence on his art. He loves light and dramatic epic settings with lots of clouds and sometimes structures like castles and dragons. He began to gain interest in the TTRPG scene and had the chance to work on a few illustrations and book covers. His currently working on concept art for games and on the new Dragonlance trilogy book.

Philipp is not working yet as a full-time artist but he’s pursuing his path to create art for his community and fans. He’s very active on social media and also always working on his skills to improve. He’s still doing art as a hobby and hopes to be able to make the switch to a full time artist.

Chris Ware was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and lives in Chicago. Unanimously considered one of the greatest comic book writers of all times, he received some of the greatest literary and artistic awards during his career. He was the first comics author to showcase his works at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

His graphic novel “Jimmy Corrigan”, serialised from 1993 and then published as a volume in 2000, has won the Guardian First Book Award, the American Book Award and the “Best Comic Book” Award at the Angoulême International Festival.

In 2012 he published “Building Stories”, a one-of-a-kind graphic novel which pushes the boundaries of books as objects: it is a box containing a story narrated in 14 comics of various types and sizes, ranging from hardback volumes to posters, from tabloid newspapers to comic strips and books, which were designed to be readable in any order.

His following book “Rusty Brown” has also received the most prestigious awards, including the Yellow Kid award as “Comic of the Year” at the 2021 Lucca Comics Awards. In the same year the Angoulême International Comics Festival awarded him with the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême lifetime achievement award.

Ware serialises his stories in the magazine “The ACME Novelty Library” and contributes to the acclaimed weekly magazine “The New Yorker” with his illustrations and covers.

Chris Ware will be a guest at Lucca Comics & Games 2022 in collaboration with Coconino Press, which will celebrate the occasion by publishing his highly anticipated “Building Stories”, a milestone in comic book storytelling.

Born in Okinawa in 1969, Norihiro Yagi is a Japanese cartoonist. In 1990, he won the 32^nd edition of Akatsuka Awards with “Undeadman” and debuted in the magazine “Monthly Shonen Jump” by Shueisha in the same year.

In 1993, he grappled with his first series “Angel Densetsu” published in the same magazine. The great success came thanks to “Claymore”, an epic dark fantasy work made from 2001 to 2014, which was also animated in 2007.

In 2017, he got back into the game and worked on “Ariadne In The Blue Sky” for the publisher Shogakukan, serialised first in the magazine “Weekly Shonen Sunday” and then - from September 2022 - on the manga app “Sunday Web Every”. The work is still in progress.

Color Designer. Born in Kanagawa prefecture. Her representative color design works include "OVERMAN KING-GAINER", "PLANETES", "Love Live!" series, and "Captain Tsubasa" which began broadcasting in 2018.

Zerocalcare - one of the public’s most beloved cartoonists - was born in Arezzo and currently lives in Rebibbia (Rome), a district to which the author is very close. Always very active in the world of community centres, in 2011 he published his first comic book “The Prophecy of the Armadillo”, which was adapted into a film in 2017. Between 2012 and 2014, he published “Tentacles at My Throat”, “Ogni maledetto lunedì su due” (Every damn Monday out of two), “Dodici” (Twelve) and “Forget My Name”, which was nominated for the Strega Prize. In early 2015, in “Internazionale” weekly magazine, he published a comic book reportage titled “Kobane Calling: Greetings From Northern Syria”, in which he tells his own experience on the Turkish-Syrian border in support of the Kurdish people. The reportage, which became a book in 2016, sold more than 120,000 copies and was translated into eight languages. In 2017 he published “Macerie Prime” and “Macerie Prime – Sei mesi dopo”, while in 2019 he released “La scuola di pizze in faccia del professor Calcare” (Professor Calcare’s school of slaps in the face). In 2020, he published “Kobane Calling Oggi”, an updated edition, while creating and releasing “Rebibbia Quarantine”, a series of animated shorts, and then the graphic novel “Scheletri” (Skeletons), and the Christmas story “A Babbo morto” (To dead Santa). In 2021, his first animated series “Tear Along the Dotted Line” debuts on Netflix, produced by Movimenti Production in partnership with BAO Publishing. “Niente di nuovo sul fronte di Rebibbia” (Nothing new on Rebibbia’s front) and his new book “No sleep till Shengal” will come out on 25^th November and on 4^th October 2022, respectively.