Sergio Toppi (11 October 1932, Milan – 21 August 2012, Milan) was an Italian illustrator and comics author. Career Early career Sergio Toppi was born in Milan, Italy. Initially enrolled as a medical student, Toppi devoted himself to an artistic career starting in the 1950s, creating illustrations for the UTET Children's Encyclopedia. Alongside this project, he began collaborating on a series of animated advertising films with Pagot as well as working as a cartoonist for the satirical magazine Candido. In 1966 he finished his first comic strip for Il Corriere dei Piccoli ("The Children's Gazette"), written by Carlo Triberti. The character was the Mago Zurlì ("Zurli Wizard"). For the same title Toppi produced numerous war stories . Subsequently, Toppi worked mainly for one-shot titles, with the exception of the eccentric Collezionista ("Collector") of 1984. He produced adventure/historical titles for CEPIM's Un uomo un'avventura and, for the French publisher Larrousse, some episodes of Histoire de France en bandes dessinées and La Découverte du Monde. Later he collaborated with Il Corriere dei Ragazzi ("The Boys' Gazette"), and the Messaggero dei Ragazzi, the comics title of a popular Rome's newspaper, with historically set stories. Toppi's works appeared on a host of titles in Italy and abroad: an incomplete list could include Linus, Corto Maltese, Sgt. Kirk and Il Giornalino in Italy. His strips were collected in several books. He last worked with the French publisher Mosquito, with which he made 22 books since 1994. He also made a series of western and medieval paper toy soldiers. In 1972 the Corriere dei Piccoli became the Corriere dei Ragazzi for which he illustrated series such as "Dal Nostro Enviato", "Comics-Truth", "Men Against" and "I Grandi nel Giallo". In the seventies he also worked for comic magazines for children such as Il Giornalino from 1976 until the nineties, and Il Messaggero dei Ragazzi from 1977 to 1979, while also continuing in illustration. He also worked with other Italian comic magazines such as Sgt. Kirk, Linus, Alter Alter and Corto Maltese, publishing dozens of stories and illustrations. For Bonelli he made the tenth volume of the series The protagonists in 1975 and, between 1976 and 1978, three volumes for the series Un uomo un'avventura published by Cepim: "L'Uomo del Nilo", "L'Uomo del Mexico" "and" The Man of the Marshes ". One of the best known series was a comic-strip version of the Thousand and One Nights titled