The World's Greatest Superheroes Part 8: The Gimmick Gang
He was broadly considered one of the greatest letterers in American comic books, and The World's Greatest Superheroes was lucky to have him. Despite not being included in the strip's credits, Gaspar Saladino 's breezy and open lettering style is instantly recognizable, and serves to both elevate and ground the visual elements of the storytelling. The Brooklyn-born Saladino boasted a career in comics which lasted well over half a century. In addition to having lettered tens of thousands of comics at DC and elsewhere, he was also a celebrated logo designer , Marvel's go-to guy for their iconic splash page design , omnipresent in DC's in-house ads , and the innovator of custom styling for individual word balloons (such as he did with Wein's and Wrightson's Swamp Thing ). For all of his accolades, however, Saladino had never actually appeared in one of his comics -- or has he? In this storyline from early 1980s, a criminal " Gimmick Gang " takes Met...