25 Covers, from 1952 to 2010: A Dick Giordano Gallery

Dick Giordano (1932-2010) died this past Saturday. Sad, sad news. He was not so very old, and he had continued to stay busy and engaged in the world of comics. Had leukemia not taken him -- and I imagine he put up a fight -- I bet he would have been busy for a lot longer. With his passing, another living link to the early days of comic book history has slipped away.

I've got to admit that I don't have a very strong personal connection to Giordano's artwork, but I remember him as a banner name and prime mover in the 1980s resurgence of DC. That company benefited greatly from having working artists like Carmine Infantino, Joe Orlando, and Giordano working in editorial, and, though the artist-driven or "Infantino" era didn't last long, I like to think that that legacy had something to do with the emergence of auteurist comics like Ronin and Watchmen in the eighties. Even twenty-five years ago, when I first started getting back into comics, I knew Giordano was an important figure for DC and for comics generally.

Like John Romita, Sr., or the late John Buscema, Giordano was a second-generation comic book artist, one who had grown up in the field from the late forties or early fifties onward and had proven a dependable, endlessly adaptable pro whose individual gifts did not become known and celebrated until relatively late in his career. Like them he had a sturdy yet portable style that was always solid, often elegant, and like them he started to look better and better in later years, as the kind of visual intelligence and flexibility he modeled became rarer and the look of comic books hardened into second-hand conventions. Having put nose to grindstone for years at Charlton, and then moved over to DC in the sixties, Giordano was everywhere present in the mainstream comic books of my youth (again like Romita or Buscema). He was one of the artists that, for me, defined the mainstream. His thin lines and lithe figures were a dead giveaway.

Tom Spurgeon, once again, has done a fantastic job of relating Giordano's career story and thoughtfully setting his achievements in context. Please read Tom's writeup. One thing Tom points out is Giordano's track record as a cover artist, and, with that in mind, I present the following (I hope) chronological sampling of Giordano covers, a more or less random sampling determined by personal interest and culled from the indispensable Grand Comics Database. Publishing info is per GCD. I hope you enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Mike Rhode]

Nice one.

[Craig Fischer]

Thanks for the visual treats, CH. There's beautiful figure drawing there, and high camp too: how about that phallic NATURE BOY cover?

Last summer, I met Giordano for my first and only time. When I found out that he was going to attend Heroes Con 2009, I wrote him an e-mail, asking if I could interview him as part of the Steve Ditko panel Ben Towle and I were organizing. His reply was gracious: he'd love to participate, but he was worried that his near-deafness would make an interview impossible. We e-discussed some ways to solve the problem--we could transcribe my questions in advance, etc--but eventually decided to just wing it.

The event went great. Roy Thomas was also on the panel, and together we spoke loud and guided Dick through any hearing difficulties. Dick reminisced about playing ping-pong with Ditko, about the mechanical lettering in so many Charlton titles (which was apparently done with something like a giant typewriter--the letterer rolled the original art into the machine and typed letters directly onto the art!), and about how Ditko got him his job as a DC editor.

Afterward, I gave Dick a small present (some locally-made jams and snacks), and then a family member rolled him off in a wheelchair. And he was gone.

Here's a photo from the panel:

http://www.box.net/shared/j0m8935u1e#/shared/j0m8935u1e/1/29030652/301454256/1 [.]

[Jim Kingman]

This is the first time I've seen the Young Romance cover by Giordano. It's beautiful.

[Charles Hatfield]

Thanks for visiting, Jim. Hope you like the Who's Who post as well...