Joe Orlando was born in Bari, Italy, but emigrated with his family to the USA in 1929. After serving in the army during the second World War, Joe Orlando studied at the Art Students League in New York. He published his first comics in titles like Catholic Comics and Treasure Chest (the 'Chuck White' feature). Then, he worked in a small studio with Wally Wood, producing material for Fox, Fawcett, Avon, Ziff-Davis and most notably, EC Comics.
Until 1956 Orlando did art on classic EC science-fiction stories published in Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, and also contributed to some of the horror titles. When EC stopped publishing, due to Fredric Wertham's campaign against violent comics, Orlando transferred to Marvel Comics under Stan Lee. Orlando also contributed three stories to the Classics Illustrated series, such as 'A Tale of Two Cities', 'Caesar's Conquests' and 'Ben Hur'. In 1957, he went back to Mad magazine as a regular contributor. Nine years later, Orlando became an editor at DC Comics. Among the series created under his helm are 'Swamp Thing' and 'Jonah Hex'. Orlando retired in 1996 from DC and became a teacher at New York's School of Visual Arts.
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