Early work Belardinelli was born in
Rome. His father was an amateur oil painter. painting backgrounds for films produced by the Sergio Rosi studio. He then moved into comics, again through the Rosi studio, drawing backgrounds for "
The Steel Claw" in the British weekly
Valiant in a team which also included Giorgio Cambiotti on pencils and Sergio Rosi himself on inks. In 1969 he moved to the Giolitti Studio, which got him work in Italy, Germany, the UK and the USA. and the rare honour of a byline, despite editor
Pat Mills' reservations: although he excelled at visualising aliens, alien technology and alien landscapes, Mills thought "the hero looked awful".
Later work His last major
2000 AD strips were "The Dead", written by
Peter Milligan (1987) - a philosophical yet psychedelic series set in a future where an evolved human race thinks it has conquered death, until demons start erupting from their bodies, and the hero, Fludd, has to travel to the land of the dead to save mankind Having suffered from heart problems, Belardinelli died on 31 March 2007. ==Bibliography==