'Syndrome' #3.
Gabriel Tompalidis (Γαβριήλ Τομπαλίδης) is a Greek painter, cartoonist, translator and comic artist. Active in many segments of the comic industry, either as artist, event organizer, editor or teacher, his own comic books have been published by Comicdom Press.
Early life
He was born in 1968 in Nikaia, a suburb of the Athens agglomeration. He received his first drawing and painting lessons at the PLAKA Laboratory of Free Studies in 1986-1988, and then attended Angelo Antonopoulos' workshop at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1988-1990). He then graduated with honors from the Academies of Fine Arts of Venice (1991) and Milano (1995). Tompalidis is specialized in many fields, including art history, anthropology, human anatomy, and costume and industrial design, among other things. He has taken part in many exhibitions in Greece and Italy since 1992, organized and taught art seminars and has worked for Greek television on cultural and learning programs. One of the programs which featured his designs and animated shorts was 'Sas arései i mousikí? I istoría tis!' ("Do you like music? Its history!", 2000-2004), an educational program about the history and origins of musical genres.
Covers of 'The Epic of the Ruthless Scoundrels' and 'Multigrain Dough from Hell'.
Comics
While he has provided the cover illustrations to a variety of comic publications, he created plenty of stories himself. He was one of the artists for Elias Katirtzigianoglou's four-issue supernatural comic book series 'Syndrome' by Comicdom Press, contributing to the third issue in 2009. He also appeared in that publisher's annual 'In Ethria' anthologies between 2014 and 2016. Among his solo publications is the naïvely drawn funny horror comic book trilogy 'The Three Undead Bastards' (Jemma Press, 2010), 'The Epic of the Ruthless Scoundrels' (Comicdom Press, 2011) and 'Multigrain Dough from Hell' (Comicdom Press, 2012), as well as the collection 'Stories to be Discarded' (Kick Me Comics Productions, 2015). He was additionally present in the second 'Evol Tales from the Darkside' anthology by Kampos Publications (2012) and in issues of the cultural magazines Diavazo (ΔΙΑΒΑΖΩ, #531, 2012) and Comic Cultura (#4, 2019). In 2012-2013 his webcomic 'Behond History' ran on the music website wildthing.gr.
Other activities
Gabriel Tompalidis is the driving force behind 'En Aithria', the "Panhellenic Exhibition of Comics and Illustration" organized by Comicdom Press, the Hellenic American College (HAEC) and the Hellenic American Union. The first edition took place in 2003. Since 2019 Tompalidis is associated with Mikros Iros Publications of Leokratis Anemodouras, for which he has translated foreign comics such as like Hugo Pratt's 'Corto Maltese', Roger Langridge's 'Popeye', Bonelli's 'Mister No' and Joe Kubert's 'Fax from Sarajevo'. Tompalidis and Anemodouras also spearhead Blek ("Black"), a comics glossy that collects old and new work of internationally renowned comic authors.
'The Ballad of Ebenezer Scrooge' (ΔΙΑΒΑΖΩ, #531, 2012).