His pen names include Dan Rico, Donella St. Michaels, Donna Richards, Joseph Milton, and N. Korok.

His parents were emigrants from Italy: Father Alessandro was a shoe designer from Celano, Abruzzi, and mother Josephine was from the Basilicata region.

Other early work for the company included a story of the superhero the Terror and co-creating, with an unknown writer, the obscure Jekyll-and-Hyde-like feature "Gary Gaunt", both in Mystic Comics #9 (May 1942).

By the following year, Rico was variously writing/drawing stories featuring such characters as the Human Torch, the Whizzer, the Destroyer, the Blonde Phantom, Venus, and the Young Allies.

Around this time, he became one of at least five staff writers (officially titled editors) there under editor-in-chief Stan Lee, along with Hank Chapman, Ernie Hart, Paul S. Newman, Carl Wessler, and, doing teen-humor comics, future Mad cartoonist Al Jaffee.

Rico briefly returned to comic art as an illustrator on the Atlas series Bible Tales for Young Folk.

[8] His last published story for Atlas was the four-page anthological Western tale "The Bushwhacker", with artist Angelo Torres, in Rawhide Kid #16 (Sept.

[4] In 1977, Rico, Sergio Aragones, and television and comic-book writer Mark Evanier co-founded the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS).

[11] Also in 1977, Rico drew a six-page chapter starring Captain America in the World War II-superhero flashback series The Invaders Annual #1.

[5] In 1977, Rico drew the cover and wrote an introduction for a 128-page anthology of black-and-white reprints, The Magnificent Superheroes of Comics [sic] Golden Age #1 (Vintage Features).