Tony Tallarico

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Lobo #1 (Dec. 1965), the first known comic book to star an African-American. Art by Tony Tallarico.

Tony Tallarico (born Brooklyn, New York, United States) is an American comic book artist, and children's-book illustrator and author.

Often paired as a team with his often-uncredited penciler, Bill Fraccio, Tallarico drew primarily for Charlton Comics and Dell Comics — including for the comic book cited as the first to star an African-American ^[1]. Under the pseudonym Tony Williamson and, later, Tony Williamsune, Tallarico and Fraccio also collaborated on many stories for Warren Publishing's horror-comics magazines Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.

1 Biography
2 Awards
3 Footnotes
4 References

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Tallarico attended New York City's High School of Industrial Arts, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and the School of Visual Arts. He got his start in comics in 1953, penciling and self-inking stories for such publishers as Charlton, Trojan, and the David C. Cook Publishing Company, for which he contributed to a newspaper Sunday-supplement comic book similar to "The Spirit Section".

[edit] The Silver Age

He drew the sole two issues of the little-known but groundbreaking Lobo (Dec. 1965 & Sept. 1966), also listed as Dell Comics #12-438-512 and #12-439-610 in publisher Dell Comics' s quirky numbering system. This Western comic chronicled the adventures of a wealthy, unnamed African-American gunslinger hero, called "Lobo" by the first issue's antagonists. On the foreheads of vanquished criminals, Lobo would leave the calling card of a gold coin imprinted with the image of a wolf and an "L".

While Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics had included "Waku, Prince of the Bantu" — a rare feature starring an African chieftain in Africa, with no regularly featured Caucasian characters — in Jungle Tales (Sept. 1954 - Sept. 1955), "Waku" was one of four regular features each issue. Aside from Lobo, there would be no Black star of his/her own comic until 1973 in Jungle Action, starring Marvel's Black Panther (introduced in 1966), and no African-American superhero title until shortly afterward.

Tallarico's work includes issues of the Charlton superhero comic Blue Beetle and its TV tie-in and teen idol comics Bewitched and Bobby Sherman. He also drew Dell's 1966-1967 Frankenstein superhero series and Harvey Comics' short-lived superhero title Jigsaw. His last recorded work in the comic book field is the story "Double Occupancy" in Charlton's Ghost Manor #15 (Oct. 1973).

[edit] Later career

In the 1970s, Tallarico began writing/illustrating children's books for such publishers as Kidsbooks, Tuffy Books, Modern, Simon & Schuster, Price Stern Sloan, Treasure Books, Concordia Publishing House, Putnam, and Little Simon. Still active as of the mid-2000s, Tallarico has created more than 1,000 children's books, including the Where Are They? series, which has sold over 15 million copies in a dozen languages.

[edit] Awards

On May 19, 2006, Temple University College of Arts and Sciences presented Tallarico its Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Comics and Books Industries, in recognition of his creating the first comic book to star an African-American.