Dick Giordano - The Last Action Hero!

Dick Giordano has passed away at the age of 77. Born in 1932, he has had a most influential career in comics. Longtime artist and art director at Charlton Comics, he rendered scores of comic book covers. Later he took over as editor of the comic book line and gave us the fantastic "Action-Heroes". He unleashed some great talent to do some great work. He and Joe Gill created Sarge Steel, one of the toughest mugs in comics history.


He did so well with this stint at Charlton that when DC comics wanted to boost their flagging sales in the face of Marvel's onslaught, tipped by Steve Ditko, they plucked Giordano to come over from his post at Derby and he brought with him much of his Charlton talent like Jim Aparo, Steve Skeates, and Denny O'Neil.


Giordano went on to produce some memorable work at DC, including becoming arguably the finest inker in the industry over the work of his longtime business partner Neal Adams. I especially was fond of his effect on the pencils of Dick Dillin on the Justice League of America and elsewhere. His favorite character was Batman, and Giordano did some fabulous work on him. He was editor of DC during the momentous "Crisis on Infinite Earths", and later still became an important figure in much of the 90's independent movement.


He and protege Bob Layton even started up their own company, Future Comics at the turn of the century, but alas the economics did work out. A few years back he re-teamed with Roy Thomas to complete an adaptation of Dracula begun decades before, but never finished. It's been collected.


His work was always crisp and clean, as seemingly was his professional reputation.

Up top is a gallery of some of the great covers he produced for Charlton.


Farewell Mr.Giordano. Thank you and good afternoon.

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