José Delbo, a comic book artist whose career spanned seven decades, best known for his long run on Wonder Woman and his acclaimed stint on The Transformers in the late 1980s, has passed away at the age of 90.
Born in Argentina, Delbo began his career as a professional comic book artist when he was just 16 years old, drawing the Argentine Western comic book, Pancho Negro. In 1963, due to political instability in Argentina, Delbo moved to Brazil, and then two years later, he moved to the United States. His work as a Western comic book artist in Argentina led to him working in Westerns for Charlton Comics in the United States, most notably a long run on Billy the Kid.
It was his Western work that got him his first gig working for Dell Comics, as well, as he was hired to draw Dell’s comic book adaptation of the TV series, The Big Valley, in 1967. His work on that series led to work on a number of Dell’s other TV adaptation comics, with Delbo drawing comic books based on Hogan’s Heroes, The Monkees, Gentle Ben, The Mod Squad, The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, The Young Rebels and The Young Lawyers.
In the early 1970s, with his Billy the Kid run coming to a close, Delbo began to work for DC, including a few issues of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, following Jack Kirby’s iconic run on that series. Delbo then became the regular artist on Wonder Woman at the end of 1975, continuing to draw the book until the early 1980s.
During that timeframe, Delbo also drew a number of other features for DC in anthologies, like Superman Family, Batman Family and World’s Finest Comics. Briefly, Delbo became the regular artist on the main Superman/Batman feature in World’s Finest Comics before he left DC after 1985.
Delbo moved to Marvel, where he began to work on Marvel’s licensed comic books. First, he drew the Thundercats series, but then he moved over to an acclaimed run on Transformers in the late 1980s…
In 1990, Delbo and his Transformers collaborator, Simon Furman, co-created the comic book series, Brute Force, for Marvel, which was intended as a possible toyline, but no toy company bought the idea. Delbo drew Captain Planet and NFL SuperPro for Marvel in the 1990s, as well.
After his career slowed down a bit in the 1990s, he taught at Joe Kubert’s The Kubert School for years before moving to Florida around 2005, where he continued to do comic book classes for young artists.
In recent years, Delbo garnered a good deal of attention for being one of the first comic book artists to get into the world of NFTs, making millions drawing comic book art for a series of collectible digital pieces.
CBR offers our condolences to Delbo’s family and friends.
