Sal Trapani's Ghosts: Rocke Mastroserio

Another artist whom I'm sure Gold Key editors had no idea they were getting when they assigned work to Sal Trapani is Rocke Mastroserio—like Charles Nicholas and Bill Molno, a Charlton workhorse. (I have to watch myself in writing his name because I first encountered it in the credit lines at Warren as Rocco, even though he signed himself Rocke.)

Mastroserio pencilled the Trapani chapters in Gold Key's UFO Flying Saucers 1 (October 1968).

Here are more panels from different pages that echo a layout choice of Mastroserio's.

Notice in all three panels the faces in the foreground shadowed on the reader's side. On the second and third panels, note the slant on the face in the background. Compare these panels from different pages in Charlton's Space War 17 (July 1962) story, "The World Where Man Has Wings," full art by Mastroserio (script by Joe Gill). Mastroserio signed the cover duplicating the splash page.

The other artists on different chapters of the double-size UFO Flying Saucers 1 are Joe Certa, Luis Dominguez, and Alberto Giolitti. The entire issue is written by Leo Dorfman—note the caption "In the next fantastic moment...." He served as sole writer on weird "true fact" anthology comics for runs of Ripley's Believe It or Not at Gold Key and then Ghosts at DC.