Zerocalcare

Zerocalcare is the pen name of Michele Rech, an Italian cartoonist born in Arezzo in 1983 and raised in Rebibbia, on the north-eastern edge of Rome. He came out of blog comics and draws his neighbourhood, his friends and his own anxieties in a talkative, self-deprecating line — "The Armadillo Prophecy" (2011), "A Octopus in the Throat" (2012), "Macerie prime" (2017) — and reported from Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan in "Kobane Calling" (2016) and "No sleep till Shengal" (2022). He wrote and directed the animated Netflix series "Tear Along the Dotted Line" (2021) and "This World Can't Tear Me Down" (2023).