Comics lost a giant with the passing this morning of Dick Giordano, a former Executive Editor at DC and an influential inker who helped shape the look of Bronze Age comics and usher in a new era of talent.
Giordano’s career included work at Charlton, Dc and Continuity Associates, the studio run by Neal Adams. As Adams’ inker on such much admired works as Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Giordano’s techniques influenced a generation of inkers, including Terry Austin, Bob Layton, Al Milgrom, Joe Rubinstein, and Bob Wiacek, essentially setting the tone for the entire Bronze Age of comics.
Giordano was equally important as an editor. At Charlton, he helped create and revamp their line of characters. That feat got him a job at DC. During his first stint there, from 1967-1970, he helped usher in a more modern era of comics storytelling with books such as Bat Lash and Manhunter, and helping to bring in the first wave of new talent to DC Comics since the Golden Age. After leaving to go to Continuity, he came back to DC in 1981 and continued at VP/Executive Editor from 1983 until 1993, where he oversaw such epochal events as the maturation of the Direct Market, limited rights for creators, the publication of Watchmen and Dark Knight and the establishment of the Vertigo line. While Giordano was not the originator of these changes, along with Jenette Kahn and Joe Orlando, he helped usher in the first truly modern era of comics.
He was much admired as a a line editor — one who supports and advises without heavy-handedness.
Giordano retired from DC in 1993, partly due to hearing loss that made working in an executive capacity difficult. However, he continued to draw and ink and was a familiar figure at conventions, and an important mentor and confidante for some of comics’ most important creators of the period. In recent years, he had suffered from leukemia and was hospitalized last week.
