For some Phantom phans, Jose Delbo may not be an artist you are aware of but please read on to learn about his career including his Phantom credits.
Sadly this past week he passed and as a past Phantom artist we wanted to pay our tribute to him and thank him for his work. Jose Delbo (José María Del Bo) was born December 9, 1933 and passed February 5, 2024.
He moved to USA in the 1960's and straight away received work in the comics field for comic books (Charlton Comics, Dell Publishing, Gold Key, DC Comics and Marvel) and also newspaper adventure strips like The Phantom and Superman.
Before his move to the USA, he drew for many South American comic books like Pancho Negro, Batallas Inolvidables, Misterix and Rayo Rojo.
His first Phantom credit was penciling the 1969 Charlton story "The Secret of the Golden Ransom", written by Pat Fortunato and inked by Sal Trapani (who was Dick Giordano's brother in law). It is worth noting that this knowledge about Jose Delbo was only a recent discovery - you can read about that, at this article.
From 1979 to around 1982, he then assisted Sy Barry on the Daily and or Sunday newspaper's before he took over on the Superman syndicated newspaper strip from May 3, 1982, through to its last episode on February 9, 1985.
Since his death, some phans have looked at the possible Phantom stories that Jose Delbo could have assisted on in more detail. According to one story retold by a former colleague, Jose told some that he assisted on some panels of the wedding. While the known information of his work with Sy Barry has him only assisting from 1979 onwards, that does fit in with the flash back scenes of the wedding during the story of Kit jnr and Heloise being born.
However, Rich Buckler has also claimed he worked on these stories. We are talking about artwork drawn nearly 45 years ago, so anyone's memories would be tested and it is of course possible, all three parties of Sy, Rick and Jose worked on the same story that was presented in both the Daily and Sunday newspapers.
Thank you to Jeremy MacPherson, Quim Thrussel and Andreas Eriksson for bringing this news to our attention and for further information presented in this article. If you ever spot Phantom related news before us, please let us know via our email - ChronicleChamber@gmail.com.
