This teen humor series attempted to draw in fans of British pop groups like The Beatles. The title character, Scooter, leaves one such group and lands in a small town in middle America on his scooter, where he settles and makes new friends. It did pretty well, lasting 36 issues. Gaspar Saladino lettered a few of the early covers like the one above, filling in for regular cover letterer Ira Schnapp, and he took over when Ira left DC in 1968, though some covers were lettered by others. He did no story lettering for the series. Gaspar’s wide, angular balloon lettering is the clue here, quite different from Ira’s balloon lettering.

As you can see on this cover, pop music was soon left behind for other kinds of crazy stories, as in the rest of DC’s teen humor line. I like Gaspar’s ZIP!

Saladino’s large and expressive cry for help really sells this gag.

The art style was about to change after this issue, to give the book a similar look to Archie Comics teen humor. This cover still has that British band fashion look for Scooter.

Now we’re into the Archie style, and any originality has been lost, but the book continued for a while, so some readers must have liked it. Saladino lettered most of the covers from this one on.

This issue was annual-sized with a fine new Saladino logo.

Another new Saladino logo tops this issue. Otherwise, the lettering on these was pretty easy, usually just one word balloon.

Gaspar’s big WOW makes this gag work. I’m not sure if he did the letters on the eye chart.

Toward the end of the run the book was longer, padded out with reprints and teen heart throb articles. I like the Saladino banner under the logo for a second feature.

To sum up, Saladino lettered these covers: 2, 7, 11, 13, 16-29, 31-35. That’s 23 in all. More articles in this series and others you might enjoy are on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.