Sergio Toppi

• Born 1932-10-11 · Died 2012-08-21

Sergio Toppi was an Italian illustrator and comics creator. Toppi devoted himself to an artistic career starting in the 1950s, creating illustrations for the UTET Children's Encyclopedia. Alongside this project, he began collaborating on a series of animated advertising films with Pagot as well as working as a cartoonist for the satirical magazine Candido. In 1966 he finished his first comic strip for Il Corriere dei Piccoli, written by Carlo Triberti. For the same title Toppi produced numerous war stories. In the seventies he also worked for comic magazines for children such as Il Giornalino from 1976 until the nineties, and Il Messaggero dei Ragazzi from 1977 to 1979, while also continuing in illustration. He also worked with other Italian comic magazines such as Sergeant Kirk, Linus, Alter Alter and Corto Maltese, publishing dozens of stories and illustrations. One of the best-known series was a comic-strip version of the Thousand and One Nights titled Sharaz'de, originally serialized on Alter Alter in 1979. In the eighties he published the series Collector, the only permanent character of his career, for the series The Protagonists of Orient Express, as well as comic stories for historic Italian comic magazines such as L'Eternauta, Comic Art and Orient Express. For the French market in the early eighties he collaborated on the Larousse series "L'Histoire de France en Bande Dessinées" and "La Découverte du Monde En Bandes Dessinées." In the nineties he collaborated again with Sergio Bonelli Editore, creating some albums of the Nick Raider, Julia, Martin Mystère, and Ken Parker Magazine series. His illustrations appear in various periodical publications, newspapers and book covers: from Famiglia Cristiana to Selezione from Reader's Digest, from Il Messaggero to Corriere della Sera, from Einaudi books to those of UTET. In 1989 he painted 22 pieces entitled Tarot of the Origins, published by Lo Scarabeo of Turin.