AkaB (the pen name of Gabriele Di Benedetto) was an Italian comics artist, illustrator and filmmaker. He was born in Milan on 26 July 1976 and died there on 14 August 2019, at the age of 43.
In 1993 he was a co-founder of the Shok Studio collective, whose influential output included Morgue, Egon and Ragno. From the 1990s onward he produced unsettling, irreverent work on the human condition, moving between the underground scene and major publishers. Alongside American houses such as Marvel, Dark Horse and DC Comics, he worked for Italian publishers including Sergio Bonelli Editore, Logos and Shockdom. In 2017 he launched the Progetto Stigma imprint, which partnered with Eris Edizioni the following year.
His instantly recognisable style — a dry, decisive line populated by distorted faces and mutilated bodies — ran through acclaimed books such as ReVolver (2003), Le 5 fasi (2011), Monarch (2013) and Arca vuota (2016). He was also active as a director and video artist, and received the Attilio Micheluzzi Prize (2013) and, posthumously, the Carlo Boscarato Prize (2019).
