Dino Battaglia (1925 – 1983) first entered the comic book profession in 1946 co-founding and producing work for the Italian magazine Asso di Picche, where he drew some pages of the Junglemen series. Here he worked with other Venetian artists, among them Hugo Pratt and Alberto Ongaro. He was not attached to one character in particular and thus drew a lot of different stories in different styles. The magazine Sgt. Kirk published an adaptation of Moby Dick, a work that marked Battaglia's artistic maturity: his drawings achieved the unique, distinctive style that characterised all his later productions. From then on, Battaglia focused on adaptations rather than on original series: he was particularly interested in classic novelists like Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Stevenson, Maupassant and Hoffmann. His way of writing and his drawing style became a reference for a lot of artists. In 1982 he created his only original series, L'Ispettore Coke (Inspector Coke). Only two album publications were completed before the work was interrupted by Battaglia's unexpected death in 1983.