Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio (born June 8, 1927, Bari, Italy;[1] died 1968), who sometimes signed his work "Rocke M.", was an American comic book artist best-known as a penciler and inker for Charlton Comics.
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Biography
Early career
Mastroserio's first confirmed comics work appears in Avon Comics' Famous Gangsters #2 (Dec. 1951), inking penciler Mike Becker on the seven-page crime fiction story "Waxie Gordon". (Comic-book writers and artists of that period were not regularly given published credits, making a full bibliography highly difficult.) With his first name variously credited as "Rocco" or "Rocke", he inked stories for a variety of publishers and titles, including Prize Comics' Prize Comics Western; American Comics Group's Adventures into the Unknown and Operation: Peril; Key Publications' Mister Mystery; and the Harvey Comics' horror anthologies Black Cat Mystery, Chamber of Chills, Tales of Horror, and Tomb of Terror, and Comic Media's Horrific.
Charlton Comics
His first known work at Charlton, where he would spend the bulk of his career into the 1960s, was the four-page humor story "The Ride Of Paul Revere!", penciled and inked by Mastroserio and Dick Ayers as, respectively, "Rock" and "Rye", in the Mad-like satiric comic Eh! #4 (June 1954).
Mastroserio's work for Charlton included such Western series as Billy the Kid, Black Fury, Jim Bowie, Rocky Lane's Black Jack, Sheriff of Tombstone, Six-Gun Heroes, Texas Rangers in Action, and Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal; crime fiction such as Public Defender in Action, Racket Squad in Action, Rookie Cop, and Scotland Yard; science fiction/fantasy titles such as Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, Outer Space, and Strange Suspense Stories; jungle title such as Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Nyoka the Jungle Girl, and Ramar of the Jungle; the historical-adventure titles Long John Silver & the Pirates and Robin Hood and his Merry Men; war comics such as Army War Heroes, Fightin' Army, The Fightin' 5; and such supernatural anthologies as Ghostly Tales, Unusual Tales, and The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves.
His most notable comics work, later appearing in a hardcover collection, was inking all but the last two issues of Captain Atom (numbered #78-89, Dec. 1965 - Dec. 1967),[2] penciled by legendary comics artist Steve Ditko, co-creator of Marvel Comics' Spider-Man, who almost invariably inked his own work. As well, Ditko, for unknown reasons but around the time of Mastroserio's death, signed his self-inked stories in Charlton's Mysterious Suspense #1 (Oct. 1968) as "Rocke Mastroserio".
Other work in Charlton's occasional superhero titles including co-creating Mercury Man, with an unknown writer; the character appeared only twice, in Space Adventures #44-45 (Feb. 1962), with Mastroserio drawing only the debut. Other Charlton superhero work includes one-page fillers in some issues of Blue Beetle In 1956 and '57, he drew the second and part of the final issue of Charlton's three-issue superhero series Nature Boy, co-created by writer Jerry Siegel (Superman's co-creator) and artist John Buscema. Mastroserio also pencilled and inked stories of the masked Old West hero Gunmaster.
Later career
In the late 1960s Mastroserio drew stories for Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror magazines Creepy and Eerie, often working with writer Archie Goodwin. Both penciling and inking, he made his Warren debut with the six-page "Monsterwork" in Eerie #3 (May 1966). He later helped his friend Pat Boyette, a fellow Charlton artist, join the stable of Warren creators, initially having him ghost-pencil, uncredited, "The Rescue of the Morning Maid" in Creepy #18 (Jan. 1968), which credited artist Mastroserio inked. Mastroserio's final Warren work was inking Boyette on "The Graves of Oconoco" in Eerie #15 (June 1968). Mastroserio died shortly after completing that story, and the following issue ran a memorial page.
His final published comics work was the full cover art and nine inked story pages, over penciler Mo Marcus, of Charlton's Ghost Manor #3 (Nov. 1968). Mastroserio lived in the New York City borough of Staten Island at the time of his death.
Reprints
In modern times, Mastroserio's first known comics work, from Famous Gangsters #2 (Dec. 1951), was reprinted in Skywald Publications' black-and-white comics magazine The Crime Machine (May 1971). His Mercury Man story appears in reprint specialist AC Comics Men of Mystery #32 (2001).
Mastroserio stories appear in the DC Comics hardcover collection Action Hero Archives Volume 1, the company's first archive of Charlton material. The book collects penciler Steve Ditko's 1960-66 Captain Atom stories.
Footnotes
- ^ Erroneously given as "Barre, Italy" in DrewGeraci.com: "Autumn with Captain Atom" (Nov. 9, 2004), which cites the DC Comics hardcover collection Action Hero Archives Volume 1
- ^ The series had taken over the numbering of the science-fiction anthology Strange Suspense Stories, in which the superhero Captain Atom had debuted, in #75.
References
- The Grand Comics Database
- "The Warren Magazines", by Richard Arndt
- Eerie #16 (July 1968): "Eerie Fanfare: In Memoriam, Rocco Mastroserio 1927-1968", by Bill Parente
- Charlton Personnel
- Comicartville Library: "A Tribute to Pat Boyette", by Don Magus (2003)
- Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Captain Atom
External links
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