Fernando Bento, born in Lisbon, began his career in the late 1930s, drawing for the comics supplement of the paper República, as well as Pim-Pam-Pum! magazine. In the 1940s, Bento was the principal artist of the Portuguese magazine Diabrete. His oeuvre contains some of the best Portuguese literary comic adaptations. All through the 1940s, his production for Diabrete was immense. He made comic adaptations of work by writers like Jules Verne, John Louis Stephenson and James Fenimore Cooper, and biographies of famous historical people and stories like 'O Romance do Oiro'. His Jules Verne adaptations also appeared in translation in the Belgian comic magazine Ons Volkske ('Het Geheimzinnige Eiland', 1951).
One of his most famous adaptations was 'Mille et une Nuits'. He made his most sophisticated work for Cavaleiro Andante. His comic adaptations of P.C. Wren's 'Beau Geste' is considered one of the best comic adaptations of literature ever made. He returned to making comics at age 80 with 'Regressa à Ilha do Tesouro', which unfortunately remained unfinished. Bento passed away in 1996 at age 85.
