Rino Albertarelli

Rino Albertarelli (Cesena, 8 June 1908 - Milan, 21 September 1974) was an Italian comics artist and illustrator widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Italian comic strip. He moved to Milan in 1928 and, after early work for publishers such as Paravia and Vallardi, debuted his own continuing comics in the mid-1930s.

From 1937 he worked for Mondadori, where in 1937-1938 he created his most famous character, the western hero Kit Carson (on scripts by Federico Pedrocchi) for the weekly Topolino, alongside series such as Il Dottor Faust and Gino e Gianni. His demythologised, middle-aged western antihero is considered a precursor of the modern Italian adventure comic.

From the early 1950s Albertarelli devoted himself almost entirely to illustration for over twenty years, working for magazines such as Grazia, Grand Hotel and La Domenica del Corriere. In 1973 he returned actively to comics with I protagonisti, a series of biographical western stories promoted by Sergio Bonelli, which his death in 1974 left unfinished.