Andru assisted Hogarth on the "Tarzan" newspaper comic strip from 1948 until, Esposito recalled, "the strip died in about 1950-51. Then Ross came to me when I started publishing and we more or less teamed up." Another source says penciler Andru first teamed with inker Esposito in 1949 for the publisher Fiction House, but this is unconfirmed at the Grand Comics Database. The team's first confirmed collaboration was on the six-page "Wylie's Wild Horses" in Hillman Periodicals' "Western Fighters" vol. 2, #12 (Nov. 1950), signaling the start of a four-decade collaboration.