Joe Orlando

Infobox Comics creator


imagesize = 200px
caption = Orlando painting for "Eerie" 11 (1967)
birthname = Joseph Orlando
birthdate = birth date|1927|4|4|mf=y
location = Bari, Italy
deathdate = death date and age|1998|12|23|1927|04|04
deathplace = Manhattan, New York
nationality = Naturalized American
(immigrated Italian)
area = Penciller, Publisher
alias =
notable works =
awards =

Joe Orlando (April 4, 1927, Bari, Italy — December 23, 1998) was an illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist. He was the Vice President of DC Comics for many years and also the Associate Publisher of "Mad".

The young Joseph Orlando arrived in the United States in 1929. He began drawing at an early age, attending art classes at a neighborhood boys' club when he was seven years old. He continued those classes until he was 14, winning prizes annually in their competitions, including a John Wanamaker bronze medal. In 1941, he began attending the School of Industrial Art (later the High School of Art and Design), where he studied illustration. This school was a breeding ground for a number of comics artists, including Richard Bassford, Frank Giacoia, Larry Hama, Carmine Infantino, Rocke Mastroserio, Alex Toth and future comics letterer Gaspar Saladino. Infantino and Orlando remained close friends for decades. While Orlando was still a student, he drew his first published illustrations, scenes of Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper" for a high-school textbook.

WWII

After his high school graduation, Orlando entered the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Military Police, doing stockade guard duty, followed by 18 months in Europe. From Le Havre, France, he was sent to Antwerp, Belgium and then to Germany, where he stenciled boxcars and guarded strategic supplies for the occupation forces.

After his 1947 discharge, he returned to New York and began study at the Art Students League on the GI Bill. He entered the comic book field in 1949 when the packager Lloyd Jacquet assigned him to draw for the Catholic-oriented "Treasure Chest". This was a "Chuck White" story that paid nine dollars a page for pencils and inks. At the Jacquet Studio he met the artist Tex Blaisdell, and the two teamed later on many projects.In the early 1950s, he was an assistant to Wally Wood on stories for several publishers, including Fox, Youthful, Avon and EC Comics, before becoming a regular staff artist with EC in the summer of 1951. He was earning $25 a page at EC, and shortly after his first EC stories under his own name were published that summer, he married his first wife, Gloria, in September 1951. His contributions to EC's "Weird Fantasy" earned him a ranking in "Entertainment Weekly"’s "Sci-Fi Top 100."

After EC, from 1956 to 1959, he drew "Classics Illustrated" adaptations, including "", "A Tale of Two Cities" and Rudyard Kipling's "Kim". In addition to many contributions to EC's "Mad" (from 1960 to 1969), Orlando also scripted the "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip beginning in 1964. He did covers for "Newsweek" and "New Times", and his work as an illustrator appeared in "National Lampoon", children's books and numerous comic books.

"Creepy" editor

For Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine "Creepy", debuting in 1964, Orlando was not only an illustrator but also a story editor on early issues. His credit on the first issue masthead read: "Story Ideas: Joe Orlando."

He also worked in toy design, packaging and advertising; sales of Harold von Braunhut's Sea Monkeys escalated considerably after Orlando drew a series of unusual advertisements visualizing the creatures' enchanted and peaceful undersea kingdom. In 1992, the short-lived live-action television show "The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys" used special effects make-up designs based on the character concepts Orlando drew in his Sea Monkeys illustrations.

DC Comics Vice President

After 16 years of freelancing, he was hired as a DC Comics editor in 1968, handling "House of Mystery", "Plop!" and other titles such as "Swamp Thing", "The Witching Hour" and "Weird War Tales", eventually serving as DC's Vice President while guiding the company's Special Projects Department. Orlando had a long working association with the prolific letterer Ben Oda, roughing out display lettering effects which Oda would finish.DC published a "Phantom" comic book from 1988 to 1990; the initial mini-series (dated May-August 1988) was written by Peter David and drawn by Orlando and Dennis Janke. At DC, during the 1990s, Orlando was pleased to discover that designer-typographer Rick Spanier, working on a Macintosh computer, could create polished Oda-like finishes of Orlando's roughs. These Orlando-Spanier collaborations were printed in DC's "Superman Style Guide" and other DC style guides.

Associate Publisher of "Mad"

During the 1980s, Orlando began teaching classes at the School of Visual Arts, continuing as an art instructor there for many years. After the death of "Mad" publisher William Gaines, Time Warner turned "Mad" over to DC Comics, and Orlando became the magazine's Associate Publisher in 1992. Although he retired from DC in 1996, he nevertheless maintained an office at "Mad" where he worked on "Mad" cover concepts and other projects for the next two years. At the time of his death in 1998, he was survived by his wife, Karin, and four children, and his family requested donations be made to the Joe Orlando Scholarship Fund at the School of Visual Arts (209 E. 23 Street, New York, NY, 10010-3994). His artwork for EC Comics has been reprinted extensively in recent years by publisher Russ Cochran, and Cochran's reprint of EC's Picto-Fiction line, containing more Orlando illustrations, was published in 2006.

Orlando made an appearance in Alan Moore's "Watchmen", as the illustrator of the fictional comic series "Tales of the Black Freighter".

External links

* [http://www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/01orlando.html 1998 interview with Jon B. Cooke]
* [http://popfiction.com/hotad/html/monstermania/mummycomic/ "Mummy's Hand," complete story by Russ Jones and Joe Orlando]
* [http://popfiction.com/hotad/html/monstermania/creepy/index.html Russ Jones and Joe Orlando and the Genesis of "Creepy" Magazine]