This article covers two series about the New Teen Titans, first the four issue miniseries as seen above from 1982, then TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS, a spinoff book running from 1984 to 1988. Gaspar Saladino lettered no stories for either, but many of the covers. For the miniseries, Gaspar contributed the burst blurb on each cover, like the one here left of the logo. I did the logos for the characters and the Titans logo. The great George Pérez artwork takes up most of the cover space, so the blurb is small, but works fine.
The same pattern is followed on all four covers, but Gaspar finds ways to make each of his bursts different by using subtle varieties of style.
The blurbs should have been bigger, but there just isn’t room.
The final Saladino blurb is more rectangular and not angled, the only real difference.
THE NEW TEEN TITANS, begun in 1980 by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, was a revival of the kid sidekick team from the 1960s, but with some appealing new characters added to the familiar ones. It was DC’s biggest hit of the early 1980s. In 1984 it became part of an experiment where a new higher priced title was launched on better paper with better quality printing, while the original title continued in the cheaper format under a revised name. That was TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS here, which picked up the numbering with issue #41 and continued to run new stories for about a year before becoming a reprint book for stories from the other title. It was a “hardcover/softcover” marketing idea. It worked for a while. The book lasted 51 issues, until 1988. The first cover has a fine arrow blurb and dramatic word balloon by Gaspar.
This storyline, one of the most popular of the series, ran several issues and into an Annual, all with similar lettering by Saladino.
A dramatic cover made moreso by Saladino’s balloons filled with effective display lettering.
The series had this fun unofficial crossover, pitting the team against another team much like The DNAgents from Eclipse, which ran a similar storyline.
Gaspar had begun experimenting with almost rectangular balloons in the late 1960s, and would go back to it occasionally, as here.
Two effective blurbs using arrows on this cover, though the one on the left is subtle.
Now we’re into the reprints from the other title. Gaspar’s bottom blurb adds appealing style choices to his block lettering: some lower case letters, joined letters, and extended strokes all add interest.
On this cover, Gaspar also did the logo so it could follow the perspective of the balloon, not an easy task, but he makes it work well.
Saladino’s blurb here has the same words as the one he did for issue #12 of the other title, and while the style is similar, it’s clearly different. The other blurb could have been reused, but DC chose to have him do a new version.
Saladino’s scroll caption is elegant and effective, with serif open letters.
Usually Gaspar’s burst balloons used straight-edged points, but this one uses rounded scoops for variety.
To sum up, I found Saladino lettering on these covers:
TALES OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS (1982): 1-4
TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS (1984): 41-45, 48-49, 51-58, 60-62, 64-80, 85-87, Annual 3-4
That’s 44 in all. Other articles in this series and more you might like are on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.