[2] In the early 1960s, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein derived many of his best-known works from the panels of romance comics that had been illustrated by Abruzzo.
His involvement in the school's drama society garnered attention,[4] as did his poetry, which was entered into an annual national writing competition sponsored by Scholastic magazine.
During his military service, at Fort Knox near Louisville, Kentucky, he illustrated tanks, scout cars, and jeeps for specialized Armored Force training manuals.
Comics Abruzzo worked on in 1946–1947 included Mission: Rescue!, Parables Jesus Told, and Life of Esther Visualized, all written by Dorothy Fay Foster.
[3] Roy Lichtenstein made a splash in the 1960s with his pop art "appropriations" based on the work of Abruzzo and other comic book artists, who rarely received any credit.
[16] Lichtenstein has claimed a strong relation between Abruzzo's original panel and Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, making this work a bridge between the two.
[27] In 2013, Abruzzo's artwork was exhibited as part of the show "Image Duplicator", curated by Rian Hughes and Jason Atomic, at Orbital Comics in London.
Abruzzo was one of the artists featured, alongside the likes of Dave Gibbons, Rian Hughes, Salgood Sam, Steven Cook, and Howard Chaykin.