Zerocalcare


Michele Rech, known as Zerocalcare, is an Italian cartoonist. His pen name, literally meaning "zero limescale", was inspired by an Italian TV commercial jingle for a descaler product because he had to choose a nickname to quickly join a discussion on Internet.

Biography

He was born in Cortona and grew up in France and then in Rome. He began his career in 2001, when he created a cartoon about the G8 summit in Genoa.
In 2003 he began working as an illustrator for the daily newspaper Liberazione and for several Italian periodicals such as Carta and La Repubblica XL, and for the online division of DC Comics, Zuda Comics.
In 2007 created the cartoon La politica non c'entra niente in collaboration with Push/R, inspired by the murder of Renato Biagetti. In October 2011 he published his first graphic novel, La profezia dell'armadillo, produced by the cartoonist Makkox.
In November 2011 he started a cartoon blog zerocalcare.it in which he published autobiographical strips. In September his blog won the Macchianera Award 2012 as Best draftsman-Cartoonist.
In the same month he won the Gran Guinigi Award at Lucca Comics for best short story.
On July 14, 2014 the editor BAO Publishing published the cover of the Zerocalcare's graphic novel Dimentica il mio nome. In April 2016 the stories published in the magazine Internazionale were collected in the volume Kobane Calling, a cartoon focused on the conflict between the Kurds and the Islamic State.
In 2017 Kobane Calling won the Micheluzzi Award as best cartoon at Naples Comicon. Kobane Calling was published in English in 2016.

Works