Mario Alberti (born May 7, 1965) is an Italian comic book artist and writer known for his works on the collections Nathan Never, Legs Weaver, Morgana and Redhand, and for his cover work, in particular for DC Comics.
He started creating comics before he could even write. His first comic character, Polip, king of the seas, had random letters in his speech bubbles because Alberti couldn’t spell words properly yet.
Alberti graduated in Economics with a thesis on distribution in the comics market. But during his studies, he was impressed by “Laputa: Castle in the Sky” by Hayao Miyazaki and realized he wanted to become a storyteller and an artist. He began working as a professional illustrator and writer in 1990 with “Holly Connick”, a short story published in the magazine Fumo di China.
In 1991 in the magazine Intrepido he started collaborating with writer Michelangelo La Neve, signing some episodes of the series Dipartimento ESP among others.
In 1993 Alberti joined Sergio Bonelli Editore, working on the series Nathan Never and in 1994 won the Albertarelli prize with the episode “Il canto della balena”. Since 1995 he’s also been working on the series Legs Weaver, again for Sergio Bonelli Editore, and in 1999 debuted in script-writing with “L’immortale”, of the same collection.
In 2000 Alberti teamed up with Luca Enoch to co-write a project for the French market: Morgana, published since 2002 by Les Humanoides Associes. Morgana is translated in France, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Spain and the first issue was also released in the US. Again for Humanoides, in 2004, he joined writer Kurt Busiek to create a new series, Redhand.
Alberti has also illustrated covers for Federico Memola‘s series “Jonathan Steele” and since 2006 he has been collaborating with DC Comics, doing covers for Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate and Shadowpact.
From 2008 he has been doing covers for Marvel, among which “Skrull Kill Krew”, and for Wildstorm the covers for the mini-series “Push”. In 2008 and 2009 Marvel published the limited series ”X-Men & Spider-Man” in four episodes, written by Chris Gage. In 2009 he joined “Amazing Spider-Man” # 600 with a five-pager written by Bob Gale. Again for Marvel, Alberti did inside art for #601 of “Amazing Spider-Man”. In 2010 Marvel published the limited series “Spider-Man & The Fantastic Four”, in four episodes, written by Chris Gage.
In 2011 Glenat published in France “Les Chroniques de Légion”, written by Fabien Nury. Alberti is here in amazing company: Matheiu Lauffray, Tirso e Zhang Xuaoyu. In 2013 the first book of “Cutting Edge”, written by Francesco Dimitri, is published by Delcourt in France.