Here's a point I need to make to my fellow comic book historians. The rest of you can look away.
We spend a great deal of time 'n' energy trying to identify the writers and artists and other folks who worked on the many comics that have been published, sans credits. We become familiar with their styles and we do other detective-type work, doing interviews and digging up old records. We are usually quite successful at this.
However, sometimes we hit brick walls and blind alleys. For example, in the sixties Dell Comics published several issues of a comic book based on the TV show, Car 54, Where Are You? It's easy enough to identify the artist. It's Tony Tallarico and we know that because the art style is recognizable and matches up to known work by Mr. Tallarico, some of which he signed. But who wrote the story? If you consult The Grand Comics Database, they'll tell you it was "?" They don't know. Lots of people have tried to discern it and lots of people have failed…but I'll tell you who wrote at least some of them. Paul C. Ignizio.
Which of course prompts many of you to ask, "Who?"
Paul C. Ignizio. You wouldn't have guessed him for a good reason. You never heard of him before. Neither had I until the other day.
I recently got a great book on the history of the Car 54 TV show. It's written by Martin Grams, Jr. and by the way, if you'd like a copy, you can order it here. Among the many other miracles of research managed by Mr. Grams, he got his mitts on the files of Howard Epstein, an executive who was involved with the TV series. In those files was a letter from this man, Paul C. Ignizio, who was looking for writing work on the show. He sent as a sample, a copy of a Car 54 comic book he wrote for Dell and also stated that he'd written comics for them of Laurel & Hardy, Diver Dan and The Twist.
As far as I can tell, the name of Paul C. Ignizio has never appeared in any article, database, interview or anything of the sort relating to comic book history. It's not in The Who's Who of American Comic Books. It's not anywhere in The Grand Comics Database, either.
This is, maddeningly, the answer to a lot of questions we have about who wrote or drew what. Sometimes, the answer is, "Someone we never heard of." For a long period, Bob Kane was allegedly drawing Batman stories but actually having them ghosted by Sheldon Moldoff. Around 1966, there were a couple that were not by Moldoff or anyone else whose work can be recognized. I asked Kane once about those and he said, "Oh, those were done for me by some kid I met at an art show…I don't recall his name." It's likely that person never drew anything else for the comic book industry and their identity is lost forever. I'll bet no one at DC Comics ever knew it.
I am impressed with a lot of comic book scholarship. Some folks are just amazing at digging up information that the folks who published or created old comic books didn't think to record or preserve way back when. But even scholarship has its limits. We can't identify people until we find a name somewhere.