Early life Nicola Cuti was born on October 29, 1944, in Brooklyn, New York, the first of two sons of Alphonso Gitano Cuti, a darkroom technician, and Laura Antoinette Sica, a housewife. His grandparents had emigrated from Italy in the 1930s to make a home in America. His brother, Emil, was a medical technician and later sold medical supplies to hospitals. He served in the
United States Air Force as an air policeman from 1966 to 1972, stationed at Toul-Rosières Air Base, France;
Çiğli, Turkey; and
Bangor, Maine. His first published work, a comic strip, was published in a French magazine,
Singular-Plural, and his first published story, “Grub” was published in
Creepy magazine while he was on active status in Bangor. After leaving the service, his first employment was at Krantz Animation Studio in New York City, which was under the direction of the legendary filmmaker
Ralph Bakshi. She was also featured in Mark Estren's book
A History of the Underground Comics, in the first underground comic in full color,
Weird Fantasies and in several issues of
Cheri magazine. The character was then published as a three issue
limited series, under the name
Moonie, Moonchild the Starbabe, by
MU Press with covers, writing, editing, pencils by Cuti and inks and lettering by Dave Simons. Cuti had long admired the work of comic artist
Wally Wood and asked if Wood would look at his portfolio. Cuti did a single-page comic strip featuring Moonchild but it was never published in Wood's magazine
Witzend; however, Cuti eventually became Wood's studio assistant at the Wood Studio in
Valley Stream,
Long Island. He worked on the strips
Cannon and
Sally Forth for Wood. at
DC Comics, handling various superhero and children's titles and scripting his own six-part space opera, ''Spanner's Galaxy
, illustrated by Tom Mandrake. He also scripted the final two Creeper back-up stories that appeared in The Flash''. Cuti moved to California in 1986 to begin work for animated TV series, producing background and prop designs for a dozen different studios, including
Disney,
Sony Pictures and
Universal Studios. At the same time, he continued to write comic book scripts and create magazine and book art in both scratchboard and paint. (2009) (inks by Dave Simons),
Moonie in the Slave Market of Opuul (2010) (inks by Mark Stegbauer),
Moonie in Too Many Moons (2010) (inks by Mark Stegbauer) and
Moonie Moonie Goes to War. A fifth novel,
Moonie and the Space Pirates, was written by a friend of Cuti's, Vic Stonecypher. Eventually, Cuti decided he had done all he could with Moonie, the Starbabe, and sold the series to DeMitro in order to concentrate on his newest creation, Starflake, the Cosmic Sprite. A contest was initiated to find a model for Starflake and Alicia Sage won the title. He wrote seven Starflake novels including,
Starflake rides with the Galactic Bikers, Starflake hunts the Power Beast, and
Starflake picks the Junkyard Planet. A Starflake Comic series was also created and published by his good friend Kevin Glover. He was working on a young adult series of
Starflake titled
Starflake, Deep Space Ranger. ==Awards==