Saturday, April 28, 2007

DAN DECARLO!!!

Dan DeCarlo was one of the greatest "good girl" cartoonists ever to work in the comic book industry, he also drew "naughty' cartoons for men's humor magazines.
DeCarlo drew hundreds of pages for ARCHIE COMICS, including JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS, named after his wife, Josie, and also worked on many, many pages for BETTY & VERONICA, SABRINA THE TEEN-AGE WITCH, and of course, the company's flagship title, ARCHIE, and many others.
At one time, when JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS was first in an animated series on television, back in the 1960's, Dan's name was in the end credits, unfortunately, there was litigation between Dan and ARCHIE COMICS near the end of Dan's life, and, now, the prints of that cartoon that air on Cartoon Network have had Dan's name removed from them. Some of them, at least, I've seen them myself.
Dan worked on _endless_ numbers of pages for ARCHIE COMICS, the ones he drew from scripts by Frank Doyle and George Gladir are among the best, fortunately ARCHIE did begin printing credits for their writers some time ago, so you can often pick out comics with work by DeCarlo and these two writers fairly easily in your comic shop's back issue section.
But wait!!!
Dan also drew many, many pages of comics for ATLAS/MARVEL COMICS during the 1950's, including MY FRIEND IRMA, based on a radio show, and made into a movie with Dean Marrtin & Jerry Lewis, and HOMER THE HAPPY GHOST, among others. There is a good-natured quality to his work, and his "girls" are just so cute!!!
Dan should not just be a footnote in comic book history, his friend Gene Colan refers to him as "Danny" to this day, so, I do also.
Danny, we miss you!!!

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