Dago - 'La Marcia Degli Esuli' (2024).
Ediberto Messina, who uses the pen name Edym, is an Italian comic artist, and a regular contributor to LancioStory magazine. After drawing the steampunk western 'Wild' (2013-2015), he became the regular artist of the historical feature 'Dago' (2017- ), a comic created originally in Argentina.
Early life and career
Ediberto Messina was born in 1974 in Enna, a city in the center of Sicily, where he spent the first twenty years of his life. Between 1988 and 1993, he studied Applied Arts at the Regional Institute of Art M.Cascio. In 1994, he moved to Rome, where he enrolled at the International School of Comics for a three-year course. During that same period, he also attended the city's Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied painting. Immediately after art school, Messina fulfilled his military service, and between 2001 and 2009, he worked for an American multinational company in the commercial sector. Among his main graphic influences are Al Williamson and Claudio Villa.
'Wild' (2015).
Early comics
Messina's earliest comic artwork appeared in amateur comic magazines like Comic Book (1989) and Ganesh (2001). Assuming the pen name Edym, his career in comics took off in 2010, when he contributed to the western anthology '30 Pistole per un Sacco d'Oro' by publisher Cagliostro. For Star Comics, he was subsequently assigned to work on an online version of Alessandro Bottero's comic 'NOX', a project that however didn't get off the ground. In late 2011, Edym contributed a comic story to I-Comics magazine, and also drew a horror story for the 'Gotika' comic book by 7even Age Entertainment.
Shortly afterwards, Edym began a fruitful collaboration with Editoriale Aurea, the successor of Eura Editoriale, and became a regular contributor to the weekly comic magazine LancioStory. Working with scriptwriters Alessandro Di Virgilio and Davide Morando, he first drew the comic series 'Wild' (2013-2015), a mix of steampunk, western and horror.
Dago - 'Alla Corte Degli Intrighi' (2023).
Dago
Since its start in 1975, LancioStory ran a great many comics that originated from Argentina. One of these comics was 'Dago', about a 16th-century Venetian nobleman, who becomes a janissary in the Ottoman army. Created in 1980 for the Argentine market by scriptwriter Robin Wood and the artist Alberto Salinas, the comic has been a regular fixture in LancioStory in Italy since 1983. Over the years, scriptwriter Wood collaborated with several other artists on the comic, notably Carlos Gomez, until the Italian publisher set up a collective of Argentine artists known as the Equipo Dago to maintain production.
Dago - 'Una Piccola Guerra Fatale'.
When in September 2017 Edym was appointed the new 'Dago' artist, he was in fact the first Italian artist working on the comic. His first job was concluding an ongoing story, the last one scripted by Robin Wood, and he has since then worked on new episodes with scriptwriters like Gustavo Amezaga (Manuel Morini) and Francesco Matteuzzi.
Graphic contributions
On 25 October 2018, Edym was one of the artists in the newspaper La Repubblica paying homage to western comic character Tex Willer, on the occasion of the 70th birthday of this series, originally created by Aurelio Galleppini and Gian Luigi Bonelli.
Cover illustrations for 'Dago' collections.
Recognition
Over the years, Edym's 'Dago' artwork has become the main graphic reference for this comic, and as an Italian his work has also been recognized in the comic's country of origin, Argentina. On 3 February 2018, during the Fumetto e Arte event in Rome, Edym received the plaque "When The Dream Becomes Reality And Technique Becomes Art" from the cartoonist Pino Rinaldi. In April 2022, Edym received the special "Italian Author" award during the Cassino Fantastica festival in the city of Cassino.
Edym in 2019.