User:Mikeross22/Sandbox/Gaspar Saladino

Gaspar Saladino (born c. 1926) is an award-winning letterer and logo designer who worked for over fifty years in the comic book industry, mostly for DC Comics. Veteran award-winning comic book letterers Todd Klein and Tom Orzechowski both claim Saladino was the best letterer they ever saw.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Saladino did the titles, lettering, and sound effects for all DC Comics covers. For a period in the 1970s, he was also "page-one letterer" for many Marvel Comics books. Saladino is widely celebrated for the distinctive lettering work he did for for Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, giving characters their own fonts, and lending the Joker's dialogue a wild, ink-spattered manic intensity.

Lettering style
Saladino's default dialoguing style was curvy and naturally enmeshed with the artwork. His trademark was his big, bold exclamation marks, which he adopted for "effect. . . . They got attention and sales at the newsstand." Saladino always lettered by hand, even in the era of computers, which he never used. Likewise, his word balloons were done freehand, never with a template.

Eventually Saladino went by one name, "Gaspar," which he wrote in his trademark calligraphy.

Career highlights
Saladino has over 3,000 credits on the Grand Comics Database, ranging from 1951 to 2002. His lettering career began in 1951 when he left the fashion industry, where he had worked as an illustrator. His first job was on Jimmy Wakely #9, a "cowboy romance" comic published by DC. He did much of the lettering for the humor strips of Henry Boltinoff in Action Comics. In the the late 1950s and 1960s, Saladino was a mainstay on DC editor Julius Schwartz's books, like Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, Justice League of America, The Flash, Showcase, and many more. By 1977, Saladino was lettering most of DC's war comics, in addition to plenty of superhero and mystery stories.

In the 1970s, Saladino did some work for Marvel, including The Avengers and Tales to Astonish, using the pseudonymn "L.P. Gregory," possibly to avoid getting in trouble for working for both Marvel and DC simultaneously.

DC cover letterer
When Carmine Infantino came on as DC's editorial director in 1966, Saladino was taken off interior lettering, and took on the lettering for virtually every cover DC published. This changed the whole line's look, from long-time cover letterer Ira Schnapp's sedate style to Saladino's more dynamic, organic look.

Marvel page-one letterer
In the mid-to-late 1970s Saladino became the uncredited "page one letterer" for many Marvel Comics titles. For some reason during this time there was a shortage of qualified comic book letterers. Marvel was forced to hire some letterers who they felt were acceptable for lettering the captions and dialogue balloons of a normal interior page, but unable to do good "display lettering": the story title lettering and other special captions and credits that usually went on a story's first page. So the company began the practice of having Saladino letter opening pages whenever possible. The rest of the book was completed by one of the less-qualified letterers.

Logos
Saladino designed the logos for DC's Swamp Thing, Metal Men, and Vigilante, among others; as well as some titles published by Eclipse Comics.

Awards
Saladino was recognized for his work with the Shazam Award for Best Letterer in 1971 and 1973.

Sources consulted

 * B.D.S. Interview with Gaspar Saladino in "Silver Age Sage," The Silver Lantern: A Tribute to the Silver Age of DC Comics (May 25, 2007).
 * Grand Comics Database
 * Reed, Bill. "365 Reasons to Love Comics: #234," Comics Should be Good, Comic Book Resources (Aug. 22, 2007).