It was rare for Marvel to try to compete with DC Comics’ domination of the word SUPER, but they did it on this title which ran 17 issues from 1975 to 1980. Gaspar Saladino lettered the last two covers and quite a few story pages. I’ll look at the covers first. The treatment of SKULL ISLAND on the bottom blurb here is pure Gaspar.

If the bottom blurb were missing from this cover, I’d be unable to decide who lettered it, but his rough, textured style there again clinches it.

Now the page one lettering, which Marvel had Gaspar do on many books in the 1970s, I think to help sell comics to browsers, and it also gave the line a more cohesive look. The style of CHAPTER ONE and the rough lettering of SLAYERS are diagnostic.

More rough, strong brush-style lettering on this title. Gaspar always credited the letterer of the remaining pages, whose style was often quite different.

Interesting to see Henry Kissinger showing up on this page, and not a bad likeness. Gaspar knocks it out of the park with the style of SHROUD.

Even with such a dark color behind it, Saladino’s title jumps out.

Here SKULL dominates the page, made larger by tucking the second L into the first.

Two words in the title, great contrast between them. DEATH is one of the most common title words in comics, and Gaspar always played it up with scary styles.

One way to add gravitas and dignity to captions is with a scroll border, as Saladino did here on two of them.

Three styles in this title all working well together, and WINNING! has so much energy it runs off the title border in two directions!

To sum up, I found Saladino lettering on two covers: 16 and 17. He also lettered the first story page on these issues: 1, 3, 7-8, 10, 12-14, eight in all. Other articles in this series and more you might like are on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.