17/09/2026
Honoring Jose Matucenio!
Still another creator we have little biographical data on… not even a photo.
Jose Montales Matucenio (sometimes credited in his American comics work as “Joe Matucenio”) got his start in American comics inking fellow Filipino artist Nardo Cruz, first on a five-page short that appeared in DC Comics' Ghosts #63 (April 1978), and later, a George Kashdan-written three-pager for House of Mystery #277 (February 1980).
Matucenio's first solo outing as an artist for DC Comics was illustrating a five-page strip written by Paul Kupperberg for Weird War Tales #84, "The Once and Future War". This would start a trend for Matucenio, as he contributed mostly to DC's war-themed comics anthologies for the remainder of his American comics career. All in all, he drew 17 strips for DC's war and “weird war” titles between 1980 and 1986, in Weird War Tales, G.I. Combat, Ghosts, House of Mystery, Secrets of the Haunted House and SGT Rock.
Matucenio's linework would occasionally come out looking somewhat indistinct and blobby partially because of the limitations of color printing technology in the early 1980s. Like a number of his Filipino Wave peers, Matucenio got his chance to really showcase his skills through Warren Publishing's various publications. The black & white format and larger page dimensions of Warren's comics magazines offered the artist the opportunity to flash his ink wash skills and his predilection for detailed rendering.
Matucenio freelanced for DC up until the mid-1980s, after which he focused on creating material for the Filipino komiks market.
His work appears in two issues of Weird War Tales.
