Born in Rome, Italy, in 1935, Alessandro Biffignandi developed an interest in drawing and cartoons at a very young age. After school, he attended art college, where he became fascinated by cinema posters, and on graduating he became an apprentice with the great Italian poster illustrator Averardo Ciriello. At the age of 20, Biffignandi was head-hunted by the studio of Augusto Favelli, which at that time was Italy's biggest producer of film posters. In the 1960s, he moved to Milan and created cover artwork for the D'Ami studio, an art agency that produced comic strips for the UK market, including the famous Fleetway war comics. From 1970 until the early '80s, he produced hundreds of high-quality covers for the adult comic titles published by Edifumetto - including Zora la Vampira, Cimiteria, and Biancaneve, after which he left the world of comics to concentrate on magazine and book illustration. He died in 2017, not long after the publication of this book.