Friday, April 07, 2017

A Girl In Every Book

Friday Comic Book Day.

When Stan Lee and Dan DeCarlo were having a lot of succes with My Friend Irma, he also did a lot of short stories for other companies. Most of those were made together with his cousin by marriage, Rudy LaPick. When Stan Lee realized that he decided he had to give Dan more work at 'his' company and deviced a spinoff title from Irma - with new characters but the same artist and writer. But DeCarlo is no superhero and it looks to me that there is more of LaPick in these books than the the current issues of Irma.


3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi There,

Fantastic post, thank you so much for sharing. I was wondering if you had anymore information on Rudy LaPick? I have found multiple articles claiming he did more work than he was credited for. Rudy LaPick was my Uncle and I just recently discovered his past with Archie and Marvel. Being an artist myself I am extremely inspired and it's so hard to find anything on Rudy LaPick, but I see his name everywhere in Archie and he worked with the biggest names. I can't even find a picture of him. I just want to learn more about him and because most of the comic book artists he worked with have passed away, it's hard for me to get answers on how much he really did for Archie and Marvel. Please let me know. Thank you!

-F LaPick

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Much more than credited is a very vague term. I guess you know he worked with Dan DeCarlo all through the fifties. Not for Marvel or Archie (that was later) and not even for Atlas (whch is how Marvel was called in the fifties), because there Dan DeCralo did everything solo and signed it. I am guessing you did click on the link I have for Rudy Lapick, which shows some of those. As you can see, it is always unsigned DeCarlo work and personally I can sort of pick out your uncle because of the bulbshaped heads he seems to have drawn. In all of these stories it seems to me Lapick pencilled and DeCarlo inked. But some people say it's the other way around. If you want to put some time and effort into it, I would suggest you go to the Grand Comicbook Database and first look for the Lapick accreditations under 'everything'. You will find a lot of titles there already, including G.I. Joe and Joe Yank. You could also look for stuff credited to Dan DeCarlo unsigned and NOT for Timely or Atlas. With those lists you go to the Digital Comic Museum and you download every book you can get (which is quite a lot). I am guessing you will find hundreds of stories that are credited to him and possibly even more. So 'more work than he was credited for'... only if you look to the sixties. And I don't. That's a wasteland for me anyway.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Looking at this post and this book I see I forgot to mention that one of the reasons I suspect Rudy Lapick was involved in these, is the fact that very uncaracteristicly Dan DeCarlo did not sign them.