From graphic novel to graphic review: the Italian cartoonist Zerocalcare

In the last ten years Michele Rech (b. 1983), better known as Zerocalcare (a nickname taken from a remover advertising: it actually means “No limescale”) has become famous in Italy thanks to his comic stripes published at first on his own website and then expanded and printed as graphic novels. His cartoons follow the path drawn by French colleague Boulet, depicting people’s thoughts as real talk by worldwide known characters from movies, videogames or tv series (e.g. Star Wars' Darth Vader). Zerocalcare has recently ventured into graphic journalism, publishing reportages from Kobane (Syria) and reviews for a film magazine. This last move highlights the cross-medial nature of much of his output. The old genre of film review, now saturated by free comments on the web, gets new life from cartoons, thus securing the sales of the paper magazine hosting them. As for the cartoonist, he gets paid as a journalist/editorialist, which was often the case for writers before the internet age, while maintaining a huge fan base on the web.