Zerocalcare

Michele Rech Italian miˈkɛːle ˈrɛk born 12 December 1983 known as Zerocalcare ˌdzɛrokalˈkaːre is an Italian cartoonist His pen name meaning zero limescale is based from a TV commercial jingle for a descaler product that came to his mind when he had to quickly come up with a Internet nickname Rech was born in Cortona Tuscany Italy to an Italian father from Rome and a French mother He was raised in France and later in Rome RebibbiaPonte Mammolo area where he graduated at the Lycée français Chateaubriand In 2003 at the age of 20 he began working as an illustrator for several newspapers At the same time he worked on a webcomic for Zuda Comics the online division of DC Comics In 2004 he created a comic about the 2001 G8 summit protests in which he took part He published his first graphic novel The Armadillo Prophecy in October 2011 and in November he created zerocalcareit a website where he published autobiographical comic strips In September 2012 the blog won the Macchianera Award as Best draftsmanCartoonist and the Gran Guinigi Award at Lucca Comics for best short story with The Armadillo Prophecy In April 2016 his fourth graphic novel Kobane Calling Greetings from Northern Syria was published The work had been previously published in Internazionale and focused on the conflict between the Kurds and the Islamic State Kobane Calling won the Micheluzzi Award as best cartoon at Naples Comicon 2017 The same year he was invited to attend San Diego Comic Con following the English release of Kobane Calling but only obtained his US Visa last minute due to his travels to Rojava On September 2018 a liveaction adaptation of The Armadillo Prophecy was released In November the MAXXI museum of Rome hosted an exhibition of his works titled Zerocalcare Scavare fossati Nutrire coccodrilli which lasted until March of 2019 The same month a theatrical adaptation of Kobane Calling debuted at Teatro del Giglio in Lucca during the Lucca Comics Games and toured Italy as part of the 20192020 theatre season In 2020 he gained further exposure thanks to his animated short series Rebibbia Quarantine broadcast on LA7 inside the variety show Propaganda Live during lockdown due to the COVID19 pandemic in Italy On December 2020 he announced that he would be creating an animated series for Netflix titled Tear Along the Dotted Line The show premiered on 18 October 2021 at the Rome Film Festival On 16 November Ablaze Publishing announced that they would be releasing English translations of Zerocalcares first three graphic novels The Armadillo Prophecy 2011 Tentacles At My Throat 2012 and Forget My Name 2014 Tear Along the Dotted Line was released on Netflix on 17 November 2021 to positive reviews A followup titled This World Wont Tear Me Down was released on 9 June 2023 Description above from the Wikipedia article Zerocalcare licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia