Victor Salvatore Carrabotta (June 24, 1929 – November 22, 2022) was an American comic-book artist and advertising art director whose career stretches to the early 1950s.
[1] Drawing since grade school, Carrabotta as a teen became friendly with fledgling professional comic-book artist Jerry Grandenetti, who lived near Carrabotta's home and taught him inking,[1] the step in the comic-book process where the pencil artist's work is embellished with ink for stylistic and print-reproduction reasons.
[citation needed] Continuing to draw for Marvel long-distance, he expanded to such war comics as Battle, Battle Action, Battlefront, Battleground, and the aptly named War Comics; such Westerns as Apache Kid, Kid Colt: Outlaw, The Outlaw Kid, and Western Outlaws; the crime anthologies Caught and Police Action; the jungle title Jann of the Jungle; and the men's adventure anthology Rugged Action.
), Fiction House (Planet Comics), and Lev Gleason Publications (The Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe, Black Diamond Western, fillers in Crime Does Not Pay and that company's Daredevil).
[4] Upon leaving comics after a 1950s Atlas downturn, Carrabotta moved from South Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia, where he went to work for a printer, illustrating booklets.
[5] After being in and out of work, he briefly joined Mother Earth News Magazine in Henderson, North Carolina, before again returning to New York to be an art director at Reader’s Digest.
[8] During the latter part of his advertising career, he and his family lived in Westport, Connecticut, but after remarrying, he and his new wife left the New York metropolitan area following the 9/11 terror attack of the World Trade Center and moved to Columbia, South Carolina.
[5] At some point afterward he spent three years in Los Angeles, California, where he worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean movie posters.