Here’s one I missed earlier. Hellraiser began with the novella “The Hellbound Heart” by horror writer Clive Barker, then quickly became a long series of horror films. Marvel published this horror anthology comic through their Epic imprint, and it ran 20 issues from 1989 to 1993. Most issues had several stories usually with painted art by different creative teams. Gaspar Saladino lettered quite a few of the stories. The first one, above, has a very Gaspar story title. These were all likely lettered on vellum overlays either placed on the painted art if it was available, or more often on photocopies of the art. The lettering was then combined with the art photographically, or possibly digitally toward the end of the run, I’m not sure when Marvel started doing that.
I’m showing two pages from this story. It again has a fine Saladino title and a credit using his full name.
Another page to show more typical lettering. As you can see, some stories began with comics line art and then were colored in a painterly way perhaps using the blueline method. I think the art was often done larger than standard comics art, so when Saladino lettered it at his regular size it made that lettering seem a little smaller than usual, and there was usually plenty of room for it.
For this story Gaspar used just his first name in script in the credits, as he liked to do. The title was probably at least penciled by artist Mark Chiarello.
By issue #10 the credit boxes were set in type in a standard way, but here Saladino’s story title still grabs attention. The series title has been held in yellow, a poor choice and hard to read, but I think it’s also by Gaspar.
The first of two stories lettered by Gaspar in this issue, the story title doesn’t look like his work, and I doubt it’s by artist Paris Cullins. Perhaps Gaspar did one they didn’t like, so someone else made this version.
I think all the signs are by the artist here, but the title is certainly by Saladino.
This title again doesn’t look like Gaspar’s work, but it could be. I never read any of these, interesting to see art by Colleen Doran on this story.
The clock at upper left is by the artist, Saladino did the story title. I’m not sure about the series title now, could be by him, or someone else.
There’s no mistaking Gaspar’s scary lettering style on this title.
Some interesting special styles by Saladino on this page for a story with art by Alex Ross before I knew who he was. His impressive MARVELS series with Kurt Busiek came out two years later.
The title of this story is straight from a soap opera and film, and Saladino has lettered it as he would have for a romance comic. It works well.
One of two stories lettered by Gaspar for this issue, and there’s lots of his handsome script on it representing a letter written by the character. I doubt many could have penned it so well even back in the day. The story title doesn’t look like his work, and is unfortunately cut off at the right side.
The other story has a fine Saladino title, and all his lettering is effective.
To sum up, here are the details of his story lettering.
#2 17pp
#3 24pp
#4 21pp
#10 15pp
#11 6pp, 15pp
#14 8pp
#15 17pp
#16 13pp
#17 38pp
#18 7pp
#19 14pp, 15pp
That’s a total of 210 pages, a lot for Saladino on a Marvel series! More articles like this one are on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.