Francesco Veròla
| Francesco Veròla | |
| Biographical information | |
| Born: | May 19, 1936 |
|---|---|
| Died: | |
| Nationality: |  Italian
|
| Occupation: | Artist |
| Website: | francescoverola.com |
Biography
Francesco Veròla was born in Lecce and moved to Rome when he was very young. He later graduated from the "Magistero d’Arte" in Florence, where he focused on furniture but also took other courses like architecture and anatomy lessons. After his graduation his military service was in Rome where he served in the technical office dealing with topography, planimetry and so on.
According to himself, he met Dino Leonetti when he was trying to get into the business of drawing movie posters. Veròla then started to help Leonetti with text and drawings on stories with "Mandrake" and the "Phantom" for Fratelli Spada. The studio consisted only of Leonetti and Veròla but they did have external collaborators who helped with pencil or inking (background). In 1965 Veròla made some covers and stories for Editrice Cofedit's "Demoniak" series, and the studio continued working on the "Alika" and "Fantasm" series until Cofedit closed down their magazines in August 1967. Afterwards they began working on Editoriale Corno's "Kriminal" and "Satanik" series.
Veròla share the studio with Leonetti for three or four years, and then took one on his own and continued to collaborate with Corno with stories with "Kriminal" and "Satanik" as well as horror stories in the Eureks magazine. In 1975 Veròla created "Daniel" and drew it until the title closed in July 1978. For Edifumetto he did several stories and created the "Mafia" series in 1979.
As the market for comics faded, Veròla began to focus more on his career as a painter.
Fratelli Spada stories by Francesco Veròla
1967 - 1969
The Phantom and Mandrake
The stories "L'isola condannata" and "La città proibita" are a collaboration between Veròla and Dino Leonetti.
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"I cacciatori di teste" (fr) -
"L'isola condannata" (fr) -
"La città proibita" (fr) -
"Il nido dei falchi neri"
According to Felmang's old list of Italian Phantom stories, Verola is said to have drawn and inked the two stories "I cacciatori di teste" and "Il nido dei falchi neri". Both of these stories have several panels with landscape motifs where the moon is drawn if this is a nocturnal scene. Often, flying birds are also drawn, occasionally a small bird may be placed sitting in the foreground.
Such panels are found to a slightly lesser extent in the stories "L'isola condannata" and "La città proibita" which are stated to be a collaboration between Veròla and Leonetti. But can also be found in stories by Leonetti as in "I falchi della montagna bianca", "Retaggio di vendetta", "La valanga di pietra", "Minaccia microscopia and "Un sovrano tranquillo". And stories by Studio Silio Romagnoli like "La roccia rilucente", "Volo 409", "I cacciatori di frodo" and "Diamanti che scottano". So Veròla probably started drawing comics as early as 1965 as part of Studio Romagnoli.