Rocke Mastroserio

Mastroserio's final Warren work was inking Boyette on "The Graves of Oconoco" in Eerie #15 (June 1968). Mastroserio died of a heart attack in early March (possibly March 4), shortly after completing that story, and the following issue ran a memorial page. His final published comics work was the full cover art and nine inked story pages, over penciler Mo Marcus, of Charlton's Ghost Manor #3 (Nov. 1968).

He inked all but the last two issues of Captain Atom, the full run of which numbered #78-89 (Dec. 1965 - Dec. 1967), penciled by comics artist Steve Ditko, co-creator of Marvel Comics' Spider-Man, who almost invariably inked his own work.

Other work in Charlton's occasional superhero titles including co-creating Mercury Man, with an unknown writer; the character appeared only twice, in Space Adventures #44-45 (Feb. 1962), with Mastroserio drawing only the debut. Other Charlton superhero work includes one-page fillers in some issues of Blue Beetle. Mastroserio also pencilled and inked stories of the masked Old West hero Gunmaster.

His first known work at Charlton, where he would spend the bulk of his career into the 1960s, was the four-page humor story "The Ride of Paul Revere!", penciled and inked by Mastroserio and Dick Ayers as, respectively, "Rock" and "Rye", in the Mad-like satiric comic Eh! #4 (June 1954).

In the late 1960s Mastroserio drew stories for Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror magazines Creepy and Eerie, often working with writer Archie Goodwin. Both penciling and inking, he made his Warren debut with the six-page "Monsterwork" in Eerie #3 (May 1966). He helped his friend Pat Boyette, a fellow Charlton artist, join the stable of Warren creators, initially having him ghost-pencil, uncredited, "The Rescue of the Morning Maid" in Creepy #18 (Jan. 1968), which credited artist Mastroserio as inker.

Mastroserio stories appear in the DC Comics hardcover collection Action Hero Archives Volume 1, the company's first archive of Charlton material. The book collects penciler Steve Ditko's 1960-66 Captain Atom stories.

Because comic-book writers and artists during this time were not regularly given published credits, a full bibliography is not always possible. Mastroserio's first confirmed comics work is in Avon Comics' Famous Gangsters #2 (cover-dated Dec. 1951), inking penciler Mike Becker on the seven-page crime fiction story "Waxie Gordon". With his first name variously credited as "Rocco" or "Rocke", he inked stories for a variety of publishers and titles, including Prize Comics' Prize Comics Western; American Comics Group's Adventures into the Unknown and Operation: Peril; Key Publications' Mister Mystery; and the Harvey Comics' horror anthologies Black Cat Mystery, Chamber of Chills, Tales of Horror, and Tomb of Terror, and Comic Media's Horrific.

Mastroserio's first known comics work, from Famous Gangsters #2 (December 1951), was reprinted in Skywald Publications' black-and-white comics magazine The Crime Machine (May 1971). His Mercury Man story appears in reprint specialist AC Comics' Men of Mystery #32 (2001).

Rocco A. "Rocke" Mastroserio (June 8, 1927 — early March 1968) was an American comic book artist best known as a penciler and inker for Charlton Comics. He sometimes signed his work "Rocke M.," "RM," "Rocke," or "RAM."