Raised in Kane, Pennsylvania, Dick Rockwell was the son of Jerry Rockwell — brother of painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell — and Carol Rockwell. He had a brother, John. Rockwell began his career after World War II, during which he'd served as a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who flew Allied troops to France on D-Day and to the Ardennes Forest for the Battle of the Bulge. His first known comic-book credit is penciling and inking the one-page "Little Know Facts About Well-Known Animals" in publisher Fiction House's "Jungle Comics" #113 (May 1949), and his first known story art is the seven-page "The Masquerading Bandits" in the Prize Comics crime series "Headline Comics" #36 (Aug. 1949).