
Here we go with one of the most important DC Comics series. I’m dating this post 1939 for the original run of 423 issues because there will be another for the 1987 revamp. The letterer most associated with Superman’s first few decades is Ira Schnapp, and he lettered many Superman stories and covers until 1968, but when he was unavailable, Gaspar Saladino occasionally filled in for him, and that happened on the cover above. This is very early for Saladino cover lettering, and it may be his first. Despite the fact that he’d been lettering stories at DC since late 1949, Gaspar was not used to doing covers, and made a rookie mistake on this one by underlining the emphasized words in the balloons. It may have been in the script that way, but in comics scripts, underlining is one way to indicate bold italic display lettering, and that’s what he should have done. In general the lettering is trying to imitate Ira Schnapp’s cover work, but Gaspar’s lettering is more angular and often wider than Ira’s. I don’t know what the editor thought, but his next cover lettering on this title was about 14 years later! When Schnapp retired, Saladino became the regular cover letterer for many years, and he also occasionally lettered stories and inside pages, but was never a regular. I’ll look at covers first.
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