Akim 97

Augusto Pedrazza was born in Milan and studied at the Ambrosania academy between 1938 and 1940. He published his first professional work with the publishing house Édital in 1942 and he made portaits of cinema stars for the magazine Cinevita. In 1945, he made his first comics for the collection Éroico, before embarking on a longtime association with scriptwriter Roberto Renzi. Together with Renzi, Pedrazza created numerous small format comic books for publisher Tomasina from 1948 throughout the 1950s, including 'Kid Meteora', 'Tanks', 'Pierino Atom', 'Il Principe Nero', 'Scugnizzo', 'Lazo Jim', 'Igor il Gigante', 'Il Piccolo Corsaro', 'Birba', 'Virgola', 'Tabor', 'Tony Comet' and many, many more. His most famous creations were the 'Tarzan'-like 'Akim' (1950) and the science fiction series 'Fulgor' (1952). 'Akim' gained him and Renzi international fame and ran until 1991. Pedrazza additionally made back-up features like 'Dinamite Kid' and Giungla Bill' for the publishers Molinari and Alpe. In the 1960s, Pedrazza worked for the French market on series like 'Billy London' (Ed. des Remparts) and most notably, 'Zembla' (Lug). However, Pedrazza left the latter after only four episodes to Franco Oneta because of the resemblance to 'Akim'. Text (c) Lambiek