Rocke Mastroserio

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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.

1 Biography
2 Reprints
3 Footnotes
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.