Editing Andrea Pazienza (section)

===Career===
{{Unreferenced section|date=March 2021}}

He made his debut in the spring of 1977 in the magazine ''Alteralter'' with his first comic story, "Le straordinarie avventure di Pentothal" (Pentothal's extraordinary adventures), the [[surrealistic]] and [[psychedelic art|psychedelic]] story of an alter ego named after the sedative [[Sodium thiopental|Penthothal]]. He later participated in such editorial experiences as ''Cannibale'', ''[[Il Male]]'', and ''[[Frigidaire (magazine)|Frigidaire]]'', of which he was one of the founders.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Federico Pagello|title=Cannibale, Frigidaire and the multitude: Post-1977 italian comics through radical theory|journal=Studies in Comics|date=December 2012|volume=3|issue=2|pages=231–251 |url= https://doi.org/10.1386/stic.3.2.231_1|doi=10.1386/stic.3.2.231_1|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Simone Castaldi|title=Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qE9jl8PlHYEC&pg=PR8|year=2010|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-60473-777-6|page=8}}</ref> In these publications, he created hundreds of comics, influenced by American [[underground comics]] and [[Walt Disney]]. He was especially fond of the character [[Goofy]], which he appropriated for a humorous spoof on Italian hippiedom of the 1970s entitled ''Perché Pippo sembra uno sballato'' ("Why Goofy Looks Like a Pothead"), and a later, unfinished story entitled ''La leggenda di Italianino Liberatore'' ("The Legend of Italianino Liberatore", referring to his old friend [[Tanino Liberatore]]).

Pazienza developed a personal body of work, alternating between playful comic cartooning—at times politically charged–and much more elaborate, dark, disturbing [[graphic novels]], often dealing with drugs and wanton violence, with a scattering of [[black humor]] throughout.

In 1980, he created the character [[Zanardi (comics)|Zanardi]] and collaborated with the magazines ''[[Corto Maltese (magazine)|Corto Maltese]]'' and ''[[Comic Art]]'', while also producing movie and theatre posters, scene designs, record covers, and advertising. He was extremely prolific through the 1980s, penning hundreds of single-panel cartoons as well as longer, intricate stories usually centred on Zanardi. ''Pompeo'', his last graphic novel, which depicts the gradual downfall of a heroin addict (a largely autobiographical character) up to his eventual suicide, is generally considered his masterwork; the post-face to this work testifies that Pazienza tried to start a new life and, for a while, quit drugs.