Roberto Civita was born on 9 August 1936 in Milan, Italy to Sylvana and Victor Civita, who worked in publishing. He had a younger brother Richard. His family moved to New York City in 1938 after passage of the Race Laws in Italy. In 1949, the family moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where his Father, Victor Civita, had founded the Editora Abril, first publishing comic books under license from the Walt Disney Company. (Donald Duck was the first title, released in 1950).