Del Castillo, Arturo - The Kings Musketeers and the Man in the Iron Mask, CAP 7, page 2 (1959)

Arturo Pérez Del Castillo was born in Concepcion, Chile in 1925. He first worked in an advertising agency, but moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1948 where he took a job as a letterer and illustrator with Editorial Columba and its magazine, Aventuras (he would remain affiliated with the publisher until the mid-1950s). He also created comic strips for the magazines Intervalo and El Tony. He would eventually provide the art for the comic strip adaptations of Alexandre Dumas novels, including 'The Three Musketeers' and 'The Man in the Iron Mask', on behalf of the British publisher, Fleetway. This page appeared in the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’ story that was first published in Fleetway’s Film Fun magazine in 1959.

Del Castillo’s skill is clearly evidenced in this piece. Every panel is absolutely gorgeous with the bottom panel jumping off the page. Its depth of field pulls us directly into the confrontation between the Cardinal’s Guards and the Three Musketeers.

The piece has been professionally & archivally restored. There were a few tears originating from the left and top borders, with two of the left side panels experiencing such tearing into the actual image area. The restoration work was incredibly well done. The page also has some usage of white out and caption paste-ups. The art is pen & ink on a 16" x 22" (41cm x 56cm) board.

A final note on the meaning of 'CAP' - the series as it appeared in the original magazine was published in two-pages sequences per magazine. The first page of each segment has a story logo stat as the first panel (which are missing on many of the original such pages) while the second page is pure art. CAP simply seems to refer to the ‘chapter’ that the two-page sequence represents in the story.