Art By John Rosenberger And
Doug Crane From Date With
Debbi #5. Published In 1969.
Yet Even More Comic Book Fun From The Past With Other Strange Stuff Thrown In Just For The Heck Of It.
Yet Even More Comic Book Fun From The Past With Other Strange Stuff Thrown In Just For The Heck Of It.
There's no question that from Archie's debut he generated a lot of knock-offs, but from what I've seen on the internet they did come in different artistic styles. On the other hand, by this point it looks like the consensus has switched to if you're going to riff off Archie it has to be ala DeCarlo. (At least face-wise, the bodies look more like Harry Lucey, or maybe Bob Osker? It's actually an attractive combination.)
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think these stories do point out how important Frank Doyle was to the mix. I appreciated the continuity that was brought to the stories, but the writing doesn't exactly hit. In fact, I don't get what was going on with that beatnik at first. I thought it would be ventriloquism but it wasn't. The winking thing was dopey but it was set up. But again I do like the DeCarlo-esque art.
I liked the Flowers feature for doing its own thing (appropriate for a hippie strip). Well... OK... I guess it's derivative of other stuff of its time, but at least it's not derivative of other comic books, especially Archie. Not that knock-offs can't be fun too, if done well (like at least Rosenberger's art).
Rosenberger did a great job on the art. He was such an underrated artist. I can see the Oksner, DeCarlo and Harry Lucey influences in his art.
ReplyDeleteFrank Doyle was among the most prolific writers in comics
along with Joe Gill, Paul S. Newman and Robert Kanigher.