Tony Tallarico (September 20, 1933 – January 6, 2022) was an American comic book artist, and children's book illustrator and author. Tallarico drew primarily for Charlton Comics and Dell Comics, including, for the latter, the comic book Lobo, the first to star an African-American, in 1979 - 1980 he authored and drew a series of Mork & Mindy Tie In's for Wonder Books / Paramount.
Biography[]
Born Anthony F. Tallarico in Brooklyn, New York on September 20, 1933, and attended New York City's School of Industrial Art, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and the School of Visual Arts.
Tallarico was married to a writer, Elvira, for over 44 years. They had two children, Nina Reyes and Tony John Tallarico. He died on January 6, 2022, at the age of 88 in South Setauket, New York, U.S.
Career[]
He got his start in comics in 1953, penciling and self-inking stories for such publishers as Charlton Comics, Trojan, and the David C. Cook Publishing Company, for which he contributed to a newspaper Sunday-supplement comic book similar to "The Spirit Section".
Under the joint pseudonym Tony Williamson and, later, Tony Williamsune, Tallarico and his generally uncredited penciler, Bill Fraccio, collaborated on many stories for Warren Publishing's horror-comics magazines Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.
He drew the sole two issues of Lobo (Dec. 1965 & Sept. 1966) — also listed as Dell Comics #12-438-512 and #12-439-610 in publisher Dell Comics' quirky numbering system — the first known comic book to star an African-American. This Western series, scripted by Don Arneson, chronicled the adventures of a wealthy, unnamed African-American gunslinger hero, called "Lobo" by the first issue's antagonists. Tallarico and Arneson dispute who originally conceived the character.
A single-issue, small-press comic book in 1947, All-Negro Comics was an omnibus featuring a black detective, a black adventurer and others in separate features. Likewise, while Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics had included the feature "Waku, Prince of the Bantu — starring an African chieftain in Africa, with no regularly featured Caucasian characters — as one of four features in the omnibus series Jungle Tales (Sept. 1954 - Sept. 1955). Aside from Lobo, there would be no black title star of a comic until Luke Cage, Hero for Hire (June 1972), though black supporting characters such as the Black Panther and the Falcon were introduced in the interim.
In the 1970s, Tallarico began writing/illustrating children's books for such publishers as Fitzgerald Publishing, Kidsbooks, Tuffy Books, Modern, Simon & Schuster, Price Stern Sloan, Treasure Books, Concordia Publishing House, Putnam, and Little Simon.
Active into the mid-2000s, Tallarico by his count created more than 1,000 children's books, including the Where Are They? series.
Mork & Mindy Series[]
Tallarico created a series of Tie Ins for the show for kids, comprising games, puzzles, cut outs, illustrations and strips. These included: