Filipe Melo

Filipe Melo was born in 1977 in Lisbon, Portugal. He began playing piano at the age of 14, developing an interest in jazz music and improvisation. He studied at the Hot Clube music school in Portugal before getting a degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA. He has been honored with the Villas-Boas Award, as well as the best new talent award from the »JazzPortugal« website. Melo has worked as an arranger and musician with artists such as Benny Golson, Peter Bernstein and Donald Harrison, as well as with several orchestras in Lisbon, and has recorded more than twelve albums.

His interest in horror and fantasy films led him to set up a production company in 2003 that specialized in those genres. Melo produces, writes screenplays, and directs for the company, called O Pato Profissional, whose productions include Portugal’s first Zombie short film, »I’ll See You in My Dreams« (2003) which won several fantasy film festival prizes and has achieved cult status, as well as the TV series »Um Mundo Catita« (2008) (tr: A Fine World). The 2010 graphic novel »As Incríveis Aventuras de Dog Mendonça e Pizzaboy« (Eng: »The Incredible Adventures of Dog Mendonça and Pizza Boy,« 2012) was also originally slated to be a screenplay, paying tribute to film and computer games classics from the 1980s, such as »Gremlins« and »The Secret of Monkey Island,« but evolved into its current form when Melo began working on it with Portuguese and Argentine artists such as Juan Cavia. It’s the story of Eurico Catatau, a pizza deliveryman whose scooter is stolen by a gargoyle. He enlists the help of occult investigator João Vicente AKA »Dog« Mendonça, and soon ends up embroiled in the phantasmagorical underworld of Lisbon’s sewers. The foreword was written by Hollywood director John Landis, who helmed, among other things, Michael Jackson’s famous »Thriller« video. Via his connections, a copy of the original reached Dark Horse Books[RMS2], who published it in the U.S. Melo and Cavia also produced four more episodes for a volume of the »Dark Horse Presents« collection in 2011, the 25th anniversary of the collection, which has boasted the work of such artists as Frank Miller (»Sin City«) and Mike Mignola (»Hellboy«). A prequel to the first story appeared in a comic called »The Untold Tales of Dog Mendonça and Pizza Boy« (2012). The series, which won Melo the prize for best script (2011) and best comic book (2012) at the Amadora Festival of graphic novels, has been continued into two further volumes and is currently being turned into a computer game.

The author teaches at the ESML – Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa.

As Incríveis Aventuras de Dog Mendonça e Pizzaboy

[Mit Juan Cavia]

Tinta da China

Lissabon, 2010

As Extraordinárias Aventuras de Dog Mendonça e Pizzaboy – Apocalipse

[Mit Juan Cavia]

[Vorwort: George A. Romero]

Tinta da China

Lissabon, 2011

The Untold Tales of Dog Mendonça and Pizzaboy

[Mit Juan Cavia]

[Vorwort: Tobe Hooper]

Dark Horse Comics

Milwaukie/Oregon, 2012

As Fantásticas Aventuras de Dog Mendonça e Pizzaboy – Requiem

[Mit Juan Cavia]

Tinta da China

Lissabon, 2013

www.dog-pizzaboy.com/filipe-melo