The Fabuleous Fifties

Digging for Goldbricks

Friday Comic Book Day.

For many fans the name Dan deCarlo conjurs up images of Betty and Veronica at their most sexy or the original Jody and the Pussycats. But he shold be equaly known for the work he did before that. From the late forties all through the fifties, he was Stan Lee's number one dumb blonde artist on titles such as My Friend Irma and in fact set the style for the whole genre pretty much from the start. And even that is not all he did. Last year Craig Yoe edited a reprint collection of deCarlo's futuristic adventurs of Jetta, which was a delight and a surprise for all the fans. Around the same time he did Jetta (when things were a bit slow at Stan Lee's Timely/Atlas company, he also did an army feature for Ziff-Davis' G.I. Joe not starring a pretty girl (although they were always around). One of these was shown around several blogs (including Sherm Cohen's Cartoon Snap), so I thought I'd show some of the others. Actually, I came across them while researching all thise Ziff-Davis books I showed last week and then found someone had beaten me to it last month. Well, at least I have different stories. Additionlly, there was another series in G.I. Joe #8 about a WAF, which I am showing after the others. My guess is the then new succes of Beetle Bailey may have been a factor in creating this series, althugh deCarlo certainly had his own war experiences to fall back on.