In addition to all his work at DC Comics, Gaspar Saladino was also busy lettering covers and stories for Marvel, though his DC work was far larger in volume. Nearly every Marvel title in the 1970s had some Saladino work, this article collects smaller amounts of it for a variety of titles. NIGHT NURSE ran just four issues in 1972-73. Gaspar lettered the cover above and one more. Note the very angular NO in the second balloon and the angular open lettering in the bottom blurb, typical for him.
The bottom blurb on this cover reminds me of ones he did for DC titles like SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE.
The original Ghost Rider at Marvel was a western supernatural character. Marvel wanted to reprint some of those stories, but was now using the name for a different character riding a motorcycle, so they went with this name. Saladino lettered just this cover, paired with his friend Gil Kane.
Gaspar lettered the first cover for this superhero series that ran ten issues in 1976-77, and some first story pages.
Gaspar was often hired to letter the first page of stories otherwise done by others. I think Marvel believed his skills might help sell comics to buyers. He always added the name of the person lettering the rest of the story if he knew it, as here, and their work was often quite different.
This title has a rare circular shape, not sure why, but it’s cleverly done and grabs attention.
This story title reminds me of Sam Rosen’s work, one of Marvel’s mainstays in the 1960s, but he stopped lettering in 1972.
The title of this story doesn’t work well for me, it’s in a Las Vegas marquee style, but that clashes with the funeral scene in the art. They can’t all be equally good, after all.
In the mid 1970s Marvel was trying a line of magazine-sized comics with black and white interiors, similar to Warren’s VAMPIRELLA. This one, based on the films, was quite successful, running 29 issues from 1974-77. Saladino lettered the main story in this first issue, though no lettering credit was given.
He also lettered the second story in this issue, though the story title doesn’t look like his work and may have been done by artist Mike Ploog.
Another black and white magazine-sized book, Gaspar’s only work for it was this five page gallery where he lettered the title and character names.
I didn’t read any of the expansive 2099 line at Marvel, so I don’t know this character, but Gaspar lettered this entire issue about him.
This Conan character had a successful seven-issue run in MARVEL FEATURE, then went immediately to her own title that ran 15 more issues from 1977 to 1979. Saladino lettered several covers, this is the first. His angular, uneven display lettering in the caption is a clear style signal.
The lower case lettering in the small words in both these blurbs are typical for Saladino, and not something other Marvel cover letterers like Danny Crespi were doing.
There are also some in this bottom caption along with artfully creative display lettering.
I love the style of this scary balloon full of Gaspar’s familiar work.
Original series artist Frank Thorne also lettered his stories, but had moved on by this issue. Saladino provided the lettering for the first story page. The decorative initial T in the first caption is great, but it gets lost in the poor printing and dark coloring.
Red Wolf, a Native American character, starred in his own series for nine issues in 1972-73. Saladino again joined Gil Kane on this cover.
Gaspar’s only other work on the book was this cover with an impressive flaming word balloon/story title.
To sum up, I found Saladino lettering on these covers:
NIGHT NURSE 3-4
NIGHT RIDER 6
OMEGA THE UNKNOWN 1
RED SONJA 3, 5-6, 14
RED WOLF 5, 8
That’s ten in all. Below are the details of his story lettering.
OMEGA THE UNKNOWN #2, 4, 9-10: page 1 only
PLANET OF THE APES #1: 25pp
PLANET OF THE APES #2: 13pp
RAMPAGING HULK #8: 5pp
RAVAGE 2099 #1: 23pp
RED SONJA #14: page 1 only
That’s a total of 71 pages. Other articles in this series and more you might like are on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.