| Rocke Mastroserio | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rocco Mastroserio June 8, 1927 Bari, Italy |
| Died | November 9, 2004 (aged 77) Staten Island, New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Penciller, Inker |
| Pseudonym(s) | Rocke M., RM, Rocke or RAM |
Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio (born June 8, 1927, Bari, Italy;[1] died 1968),[2] who sometimes signed his work "Rocke M.", "RM", "Rocke" or "RAM",[2] was an American comic book artist best known as a penciler and inker for Charlton Comics.
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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.[3]
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).[3]
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.[3]
He inked all but the last two issues of Captain Atom, the full run of which numbered #78-89 (Dec. 1965 - Dec. 1967),[4] penciled by comics artist Steve Ditko, co-creator of Marvel Comics' Spider-Man, who almost invariably inked his own work.[3]
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 and artist John Buscema. Mastroserio also pencilled and inked stories of the masked Old West hero Gunmaster.[3]
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).[5] Mastroserio died shortly after completing that story, and the following issue ran a memorial page.[6]
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).[3] Mastroserio lived in the New York City borough of Staten Island at the time of his death.
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.