The 28th edition of Noir in Festival unspooling in Milan and Como from December 3 to 8, 2018 will be paying tribute to zombies and Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero with a special poster designed by one of Italy’s most promising and most gifted comics illustrators on the current scene: Gigi Cavenago. 

Cavenago specializes in comic book nightmares - since 2016 he has designed the covers for Dylan Dog for publisher Sergio Bonelli Editore, with whom he has worked since 2008 - and on this occasion the artist has revisited the theme of the undead in ways that are quintessentially Noir, from the Victorian setting to the costumes inspired by a vast repertoire of filmic images. In fact, the final image shows a menacing set in which the book and the clapperboard wielded by two zombies in the foreground become blunt instruments for striking the viewers’ imaginations and sensibility.

"The challenge," declare directors Giorgio Gosetti and Marina Fabbri, " was to represent zombies in their collective sense, as a group, a disoriented crowd that has lost its way and seeks a center of gravity that contemporary life seems to deny us. Cavenago interpreted our idea to perfection and enhanced it with his own unique illustration style. This year’s poster thus becomes the point of departure for broader considerations on the nature of zombies, who, in a century of transformations, in their most recent incarnations still have much to say about the society in which we live. They embody that unstable, swirling flow of meanings that represents the strong suit of the noir genre."

The image selected for Noir 2018 joins a long line of marvelous illustrations that have adorned the posters for Noir in Festival, designed by the likes of Hugo Pratt, Winston Smith, Mario Schifano, Lorenzo Mattotti, Bill Plympton, Mojmir Jezek, Valentina Vannicola, Giacomo Costa, Alessandro Baronciani and many others.

After graduating from high school, Gigi Cavenago (1982) spent two years studying at Milan’s School of Comics and attended a course in graphic design for advertising at the Rizzoli Institute for Graphic Arts. After working as an illustrator and cartoonist for several years, in 2008 Cavenago became part of the Bonelli team and made his debut with Cassidy, the miniseries created by Pasquale Ruju, for which he illustrated the sixth and eleventh issues.

He would go on to illustrate the first Bonelli miniseries published entirely in color: Orfani by Roberto Recchioni and Emiliano Mammucari, for which he illustrated the third issue and half of the fourth, ninth and eleventh issues. In early 2014 he was entrusted with doing the covers for the quarterly Maxi Dylan Dog - Old Boy. The same year, Cavenego received two awards for best comic book artist: the Carlo Borcarato Prize at Treviso Comics and the Gran Guinigi Prize at Lucca Comics&Games. He would return to Orfani to illustrate the first issue of the third season entitled Orfani: Nuovo Mondo, after which he got straight to work on Mater Dolorosa, a special issue celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Dylan Dog. Since December 2016 he has been the official cover artist for this historic series devoted to the Detective of Nightmares.