Early life and career Tony Tallarico was born 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. 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".
The Silver Age In 1961, Tallarico illustrated the
Gilberton Company's
Classics Illustrated #160, its adaptation of
H. G. Wells'
The Food of the Gods;
Classics Illustrated Junior #571, "How Fire Came to the
Indians"; and
Classics Illustrated Junior #574, the European
folk tale "Brightboots". He also drew individual chapters in several issues in Gilberton's
World Around Us series. At the end of the decade, Tallarico supplied second painted covers for reprints of
Classics Illustrated #81,
Homer's
The Odyssey, and #96, historian
John Bakeless'
Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness. '' #1 (Dec. 1965), the first known
comic book to star an
African-American. Art by Tallarico. 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), 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. Tallarico's work includes issues of the Charlton
superhero comic
Blue Beetle and its
TV tie-in and
teen idol comics
Bewitched and
Bobby Sherman. He also drew Dell's 1966–1967
Frankenstein and
Dracula superhero series and
Harvey Comics' short-lived superhero title
Jigsaw. His last recorded work in the comic book field is the story "Double Occupancy" in Charlton's
Ghost Manor #15 (Oct. 1973).
Later career 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. Still active as of the mid-2000s, Tallarico by his counts has created more than 1,000 children's books, including the
Where Are They? series. ==Personal life and death==