About the Author

An Amazon and NY Times bestselling level author, Matteo Pizzolo was named Wired Magazine's World's Most Wired Comics Creator and has appeared on CNN, NPR, and FOX News. While living out of a backpack as a teenager in NYC's Lower East Side, Pizzolo got his start as a playwright in Hell's Kitchen's Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood program. At 19 he wrote THREAT, an independent feature set in NYC's hardcore punk & underground hip hop scenes. He went on to direct the film, shooting it on 16mm discarded "short ends" using free equipment rentals earned by cleaning up after classes at non-profit co-op Film/Video Arts. THREAT was eventually distributed by Sony (after touring skateparks and hip hop clubs across the US and Europe), garnering a Best First Time Filmmaker award at the Rome Independent Film Festival, Grand Prize at the Lausanne International Film Festival, and a theatrical release following its US premiere at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. He then wrote and directed the animated feature GODKILLER, distributed by Warner Brothers, which led to writing the comic books YOUNG TERRORISTS and CALEXIT. Since then, THREAT enabled him to support emerging filmmakers with Halo-8, GODKILLER enabled him to focus on new creator development with Black Mask, and most recently CALEXIT made it possible for him to support first-time political candidates and also to bring new voices into TV. Pizzolo lives in Los Angeles writing and producing television, comics, and film.

Reviews

(Starred) Best Books Of The Year List: "In Pizzolo's stellar graphic novel, an orphan boy braves a desolate, post-apocalyptic land in search of a heart for his sister.
There's a lot going on in Pizzolo's wonderfully bizarre story, but its most distinctive feature is a barren, nearly dead world.
The outside world is filled with decrepit, abandoned buildings, and even characters' bodies are in disrepair, adorned in lacerations and stitches. The people, too, are lost souls: Tommy defies the reputedly civilized Republic in Silver City and swears an oath to the Burnt, an order he's only read about in comic books (he took a hot iron to the face, the corresponding bandage serving as a constant reminder of his want for independence).
The decidedly adult novel features a good amount of sex and violence, though never in a typical fashion. Muckcracker and Templesmith's artwork is enchanting and a true visual companion to Pizzolo's story. Characters are etched in chaotic scratches as if carved in stone, and pages are saturated in a rusty hue, like the soot and dirt corroding the atmosphere.
Deftly unorthodox and wickedly delectable; not so much a story as an experience."-- "Kirkus Reviews"