Dalibor Talajic

Dalibor Talajić was born to the family of opera singer Ljiljana Molnar-Talajić. To this date he lives and works

in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated from the Music Academy in Zagreb , earning the title of Academic

Musician and Professor of Clarinet. He spent the next eleven years as a professor at the

elementary and secondary music school. However, since 1992, he joined the comic fanzine

ENDEM. Gradually, he came to the situation of publishing his own comics in school magazines.

The magazine LOADED, following the example of PLAYBOY, wanted a page of erotic comics and

trusted Talajić's character DOCTOR VAGABOND. Pretentious, as he himself declares, Talajić

imagined the comic to be unique. Each page was to be uniquely designed, while the drawing

style would change from episode to episode. Unfortunately, in the flood of similar magazines,

LOADED lost the market battle and closed after the fifth issue. In 2005, when he finally came to

the situation that comics, his hobby until then, began to take up more and more of his time,

Talajić had to choose between two careers, which, considering his first and eternal love, was

not a big problem.

Talajić got his first professional engagement on the American market in the small publishing

house DESPERADO, for three short comics, after which he got his first series; reboot of the

eighties horror classic, DEADWORLD. After the end of that series, the then young BOOM

STUDIOS worked on the title HUNTER'S MOON. But after the first episode, he leaves the series,

because the possibility arose that he is doing an adaptation of THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW for

the French DELCOURT as part of DELCOURT's EX LIBRIS edition, for which it is planned to adapt

the entire Bible. Although the collaboration with the official script writer was painful, after 49

pages, out of the planned 120, Talajić completely took over the adaptation of the biblical text

and finished the comic by himself, the comic he is still proud of today. After DELCOURT, he

finally came to the great MARVEL. He worked for nine years at MARVEL almost without a break,

where he worked on numerous titles, such as INCREDIBLE HULK, GHOST RIDER, PUNISHER, X-

MEN, AVENGERS, MASTER OF KUNG FU, FOOL KILLER, RED WOLF, LUKE CAGE, X-FORCE,

DEXTER… He is the co-creator of the character HIT-MONKEY, who has since gained cult status,

and has also expanded his life into a video game and a cartoon series at HULU. He achieved his

greatest commercial success, as well as recognition among the audience, with his work on

DEADPOOL. The series DEADPOOL KILLS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE is the best-selling MARVEL

mini-series in the last 20 years and is the fifth best-selling title of all time on the NEW YORK

TIMES list. Whenever he has the opportunity, he likes to return to Croatian comics. Thus, he

participated in comic strips for the political magazine GLOBUS, as well as in the comic series

intended for schools HRVATSKI VELIKANI (Croatian Legends). His work for CROATIA FILM should

also be included among Croatian projects. On the animated series GOOD NIGHT, CROATIA he

worked as a storyboarder, but also as a writer of individual episodes and as an actor, giving his

voice to almost 20 characters. Then as an actor, in the children's series DUĆAN MOPATOP (The

Mopatop Shop), he gave voice to all the characters. For the same series he also translated and

adapted the songs that appear in the series.

His greatest artistic and personal success is the webcomic MADAYA MOM, for ABC NEWS. It is

an eleven-page non-classical comic strip, which is actually a series of seemingly unrelated

scenes from the everyday life of a family in the war-torn city of Madaya in Syria. 2018 was the

year of independent publishers in Talajić's career. Thus, for AFTERSHOCK he drew WITCH

HAMMER, his first graphic novel, based on a script by Cullen Bunn, with whom he successfully

collaborated on DEADPOOL. Always, almost suicidally, rushing to new challenges, he accepted

with exceptional joy the staging of the picture book THE UGLIEST MAN IN THE KINGDOM,

published by VRATA U PODRUM (Door Into Basement). From the very beginning of his drawing

career, he has collaborated with the Zagreb City Theatre Komedija on creating posters for their

performances. Titles for which he has worked for the salary are CHARUGA, MALI DUČAN

STRAVE, KOSA, MOTEL MRAK, KNEGINJA ČARDAŠA, BYRON, BRAT BRATU. He created the entire

scenography for the play 39 STAIRS. Also in 2018, Talajić's book, MOST PONAD BURNE RIJEKE

(Bridge Over Troubled Water), will be published. It is an autobiographical diary novel about the

struggle with autism. After collaborating with AFTERSHOCK, he moved to AWA STUDIOS, where

he worked on the horror anthology HOTELL with John Lees. He worked on the erotic thriller

CASUEAL FLING with Jason Starr for the same publisher. This title is to be adapted into TV show.

In the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, through the cooperation of AWA STUDIOS and NBC

NEWS, he worked with Ethan Sachs on COVID CHRONICLES, a web series about small people

and their struggles with the pandemic. Again for ATERSHOCK, he collaborated with the script

writer of DEADPOOL on the graphic novel EDEN, a love story set in the horror genre. In

February 2021, his second book waspublished. LA MOLNAR is an unusual monography that he

worked on together with Jagoda Martinčević, dedicated to his mother Ljiljana Molnar – Talajić.

HOTELL has meanwhile reached the top 20 comics on the American charts, and here is Talajić

buried in sketches and papers on the HOTELL vol 2 series. After finishing that series, he again

created the journalistic illustrated series CLIMATE CRISIS CHRONICLES for NBC with Ethan Sachs.

Almost at the same time, with Dan Panosian, he was working on the horror BLACK TAPE for

AWA. At the end of 2022, his third book TREPTAJI was published, a kind of

sequel to the book MOST PONAD BURNE RIJEKE, and there are rumors circulating that he has

completed the libretto for a musical. In the meantime, he is working again for MARVEL,

precisely on DEADPOOL, which he made famous, as well as for the first time for IMAGE COMICS

with the great Garth Ennis. Currently he is preparing the working materials for children within the autism

spectre in order to help them learn easier in school…