krelllabs:ealperin:As Kirby is to Marvel, Dan DeCarlo is to...

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krelllabs:

ealperin:

As Kirby is to Marvel, Dan DeCarlo is to Archie. He was the creator of Josie and the Pussycats, Sabrina the Teen Age Witch, and Cheryl Blossom. He defined the "look" of Archie comics for decades. Archie's mainline "house" style is still strongly influenced by DeCarlo. And the reason that you never hear any of this is because, as I say, DeCarlo is to Archie as Kirby is to Marvel. The divorce was bitter—there were lawsuits—and Archie Comics is even MORE militant about asserting that the company itself, and NOT the creators, are the actual authors of their work.

The thing about DeCarlo is that, like Kirby, there's just SO much stuff out there. The Best of Dan DeCarlo volumes in trade from Archie are really good and representative, as is the Best of Josie and the Pussycats, but my favorite place to start is actually the naughty stuff in The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo (2 volumes) and The Art of Dan DeCarlo.

Oh, and it almost goes without saying that without Dan DeCarlo, there would be no Hernandez Brothers and no Love and Rockets—at least, not as we know them.

This is a cool story, I'll just spin it briefly.

Bongo had a lot of great artists who could draw the Simpsons and who could tell a story, but they weren't as familiar with how to set up a gag, how to make a joke page pay off.

So they hired Dan DeCarlo to do layouts, to teach the new artists some tricks for telling Simpsons stories in comics form. Great idea, right?

But the problem was, Dan had never WATCHED the Simpsons. So he wasn't really familiar with it. So he drew the characters all like Archie characters in the classic DeCarlo style. If you watch the show, you know they aren't really shown as three-dimensional most of the time. Dan drew them in full 3-d, with classic DeCarlo/Archie figures, movement and layouts. It was absolutely creepy and wonderful at the same time. I have the pages around here somewhere.

The weird thing is, it really, really worked. Even with the Simpsons "off-model," he really told a great, clean story with beautiful lines and a laser eye for the gag. He was amazing. It made me so happy. He also complimented my scripts for the stories and the jokes, so I floated around for days. He was the first time I had a hero of mine draw a story I'd written. Sadly, he passed away soon after.

But it's a wonderful memory.