Print

[nick caputo]

My latest blog post delves into some of the uncredited inking on titles such as Millie the Model and Patsy Walker, with some surprises along the way:

http://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/

[jimmm kelly]

Interesting stuff. I was wondering about this when I used the one issue of PATSY AND HEDY that I have for my blog on paper dolls. I used the credits that are in the comic for Al Hartley. But looking at the inks, I wondered if those were really his--not being familiar with Hartley, I couldn't really say, but the style seemed Colletta-ish.

I guess these kinds of books are on the line between Romance and Humour. Or maybe they should be in another genre of Fashion. But I'm reminded of something I read in an interview with Bob Oksner, many years ago, where he said he had to change his inking style when he went back into super-heroes, from doing humour for many years. On the humour books he used thick line work, but he had to change to a thinner line for he super-hero stuff.

For these humour/romance/fashion comics, I think a thicker line works better. You really want the figures to stand out on the page.

[narfstar]

I always thought of Millie,etc in the same vein as Archie being teen titles. But they really aren't teen agers. GCD seems to just class them as humor. I agree that humor/romance would probably be more accurate for most.

[nick caputo]

Thanks for the interest Jimmm and Narfstar. The Millie and Patsy comics began as humor strips and then moved to more dramatic, soap opera style stories in the 1960's, with emphasis on continuing storylines, romantic problems and school and careers. In the late 1960s they reverted to the Archie style humor, but overall the humor appeared to be more popular in the long run (although I found some of the dramatic stories to be interesting).

I'll have a follow up blog post soon.