Monday Cartoon Day.
It's been a long time snce I have devote a post to just a single illustration, but if this gag cartoo is what I think it is, it deserves the attention. Although the scan is of two pages, it's the cartoon on the right that concernes us. As you can se, it is signed DeCarlo and wouldn't it be great to think it ay be one of the first published cartoons by Dan DeCarlo? The subject matter certainly would help you think that, because DeCarlo, like the soldier in this cartoon, was stationed in France and met his wife Josie there. The soldier in bed does look like Dan DeCarlo did in the cartoons he sent his wife during their courtship, with the greased cowlick hairstyle and his reletively small size. The girl in the back does not look like his brownhaired wife, though and there are more problems. The style itself is miles away from either the wobbly style DeCarlo used when he ws still in the army. It is also completely unlike the style he would develop at Timely/Atlas around the same time this cartoon was published in Smiles #22 (Summer 1947). Still, until he got that job, he had unsuccesfully tried to become an illustrator, so who knows? He may have tried his hands at cartooning. What makes me double unsure, is the fact that in the midfifties, there was another cartoonist signing DeCarlo. He had a totally different style, though. Unfortunately, the signature itself is no big help either. It is done with a capital D and C, as DeCarlo used and there is the little squiggle at the end of the O he used in the late forties on some projects, but I could find no match for it in Bill Morrison's biography of Dan DeCarlo. Maybe if Bill drops by, he can tell us what he thinks this cartoon might be...
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