The Pastiche That Failed-- Or, Improving It Until It Sucks

PREVIOUSLY ON "DAVE WOLFE WHO DOES WOLFIETOONS"--

I ran on and on about one of my favorites, Mr. Dan DeCarlo-

(Here's his photo from his WW II Days!)

who began his cartooning career at Timely Comics-- later called Marvel Comics-- doing mags like "Millie the Model," "Sherry the Showgirl," and "Nellie the Nurse," among others.  Editor-in-chief Stan Lee was the writer.  

Dan tried some newspaper strips with Stan and finally wound up over at MLJ Comics-- AKA, the Archie Comics Group.  Dan's style was very similar to the original artist, Bob Montana, and he soon became one of the Archie stars.  In fact, over forty years, he did a huge number of their covers, and eventually became the "House Style" the newer artists were told to emulate.

Dan created "Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch," and "Josie," named for his wife!  Josie later got some Pussycats.

In the early 60's Dan picked up some extra dough doing one-panel cheesecake cartoons for publisher Martin Goodman's line of men's humor digests.  (Goodman was also the Marvel Comics publisher.)  Dan's work was among the classiest, if not THE classiest in those little mags.  You've seen most of these, I bet.  He signed his work "DSD" for some kind of anonymity, but how could anyone miss that style! 

(If for some reason you HAVEN'T run across these, the line in the Hillbilly cartoon is, "I know I deserve a spanking, Paw, but can't Clem do it?"  That's the joke I stole, as you'll see below.  Well, it wasn't theft, it was a Tribute.)

Mr. DeCarlo would attend the comic conventions in the 80's and often did sketches for his fans.  Semi-Naughty sketches, with a twinkle in his eye!  

The sad end of the story is, the bosses at Archie Comics fired Dan when he sued for his part of the dough from the Sabrina and Josie shows and movies.  He lost the first big court case and was trying again, working for other comics companies when he got pneumonia, and then died of a heart attack at the age of 82.  Both his sons, who had followed him into the comics biz, had died before him!

But some form of justice will arise, as it did in various ways for "Superman" creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, "Batman's" co-creator Bill Finger, and even Jack Kirby, whose characters and concepts you've never stopped seeing in all the Marvel comics, movies and TV shows! 

Meanwhile...

Back when "Discipline & Desire" was still alive, I thought I'd do a pastiche, a tribute to Dan's Timely Comics and the cheesecake cartoons.

However, I started going far afield and the end result wasn't very Dan at all. 

Perhaps I'll do another and better later!  Stay tuned!

Sunday Funnies: Dan and Wolfie, Part Two

Hi, Gang!

The WolfieToon at "DISCIPLINE & DESIRE" this week is a comic cover!

I did this mainly to show off the spiffy seal of approval that Larken made after SuperToonMan, but it's also an homage to one of my cartoonist heroes, the late Dan DeCarlo, who. at the start of his career, did books for Timely/Atlas (later called Marvel) like "Sherry the Showgirl," "Millie the Model," "Nellie the Nurse," "Bettie the Botanist," and "Harriet the Homewrecker."

OK, I just made up "Bettie the Botanist."

Dan and writer/editor Stan Lee went on to have a short-run newspaper strip about mailman Willie Lumpkin!  (Hope it's legible with a click!)

(Just to tie up loose ends, Stan moved Willie to the big city, where he became the Fantastic Four's mailman and lived happily ever after.)

After that, Dan DeCarlo began a very long association with Archie Comics-- which, you may have heard, did not end well.  He did spectacular work there, though!

  

So, while working on all these other comics in the late fifties and early sixties, Dan earned some extra cash doing pin-up cartoons for publisher Martin Goodman's line of Men's Humor Mags.  

In the book Innocence and Seduction  The Art of Dan DeCarlo,  Bill Morrison reports that Dan did five to ten of these a month, but to compensate for the low pay rate, editor Arthur Goodman (Martin's brother)  told Dan he could just turn in the drawings and Arthur would write the gags himself.  

Which explains to me why such brilliant cartoons so often had remarkably weak or just plain awful captions.  Well, this first one's not so bad...

Wow, those are great cartoon buns!!  The joke's pretty fair, too.  

But this one-- this one's gotta be the worst caption.  Ever. 

What??  That doesn't even make sense with the 'toon.  Dan deserves better.  Here, lemme prime the pump with a couple of throw-away lines:

"Well, that's show biz!"

"It's 'Life Drawing!'  Take a crack at it!"

"And now, in other Nudes..."

Yeah, lame, but a lot better than "scaredy-cat!!"  Chee.  I invite better submissions!!

Anyway, every now and then, probably when Dan actually suggested the caption himself, they'd hit a homer.  This is my favorite of the spanking cartoons, and sure,  you've seen it before, but you just can't beat the Classics..

Let us hope her disappointment was short-lived.  Perhaps she hooked up with Popeye.

Say, Judy the Jewel Thief also reminds me of another Funnies Femme Fatale with a penchant for purloining pretties...

Ah, but she, and artwork by animator / producer Bruce Timm are subjects for another entry, or two!

   

Betty, Veronica, Dan DeCarlo and Wolfie! (Illustrated Profusely)

Sexy spanking intrigued me before I knew what sex was.  Drawing cartoons has also been a life-long passion, so naturally those two came together early on.  The first "WolfieToons" were derived from comics ( comparatively cheap and ubiquitous back then, "sold at newsstands everywhere") and my trusty pad of tracing paper!

 (What the first "WolfieToons" might have looked like if I'd found this panel from "Tom, Dick and Harriet," drawn by Lee Holley.  And, yeah, the dialogue would have been about that "clever.")

Now, all the fabulous flying female crimefighters were wont to strike spankable poses--

--and so were the cuties of the "teen humor comics!"    Of course, the most popular and most imitated of those were the Archie group, in particular, "Betty and Veronica!"  

 

 
I would have plotzed to have seen those two actually get spanked, and it did happen on some extremely rare occasions!  

For instance-- cutting a long story short-- at a Daddy-Daughter Dance, Veronica gives her pop, Mr. Lodge, a LOUD earful of grief, thinking he's Archie in disguise (told you, long story) and he restores the equilibrium:  

Nor was that the only time we got to see Ronnie spanked!  Well, more or less.  Huge thanks to Web-Ed of Chicago Spanking Review for posting these pictures during this discussion at "Spanking Panels!"  (Join up for free, and you'll see all the pics!) 

You know, it's so nice to see Mr. Lodge try to teach rich brats the value of things! 

Although I never saw any Betty and Veronica spankings back then, I did admire and copy the brilliant cartooning of a talent whose name I later learned was Dan DeCarlo.  

Dan joined the Archie Group in the late 50's, and although that story didn't end well, his work became their "house style," meaning all the artists had to try to copy him.  It's said his cute, curvy girls with their turned-up noses were based on his wife Josie. In fact, he gave one of his characters her name.  She got some Pussycats and made a band later.  (Again, thanks to Web-Ed for the following pin-up from this page at the CSR Forum!)  

Now, before he went over to Archie, Dan was doing "Millie the Model" for Atlas Comics (which later became Marvel Comics) and single panel cartoons for another group of magazines Martin Goodman was also publishing, for an older audience!

But that was before my time, and I never knew he did that.  Imagine my delighted surprise when the first thing I saw at that new website, Shadow Lane, was a copy of this Dan DeCarlo cartoon!

 

That particular copy-- slighty dizzy from the scanning-- is from Happy Jolly's page!  Some of these are, too, and the others I've had in my collection for a while!  Enjoy!  I'll be back!

 

 

 

 

And so the circle was complete, and I loved Dan even more!

He's one of my many cartoonist heroes, for his superb draftsmanship and outstanding humor!  He kept that slightly naughty sense of humor all the way to the end, by the way.  When fans at the comic conventions would meet him and ask for a sketch of Josie, or Betty and Veronica, I'm told he would grin and ask, "Do you want her nude?"  Sometimes they said, "Sure!!" 

Although that one's only a peek! 

And now, if you feel like foolin' around-- check out the new WolfieToon and the story snippets at this week's "Discipline And Desire" update!