Thursday, June 12, 2014

Double Date (Cover Division) with Kathy and Vicki

When Martin Goodman started the new Atlas Comics after having sold Marvel, he wanted books as much like Marvel's as possible. You'd think that would be hard to do with Vicki, which repurposed reprints of Tippy Teen from Tower. But:

Kathy 1 and Vicki 4 covers--kissing booth gag

Kathy 1 (Oct/59) was published by the company going without a cover name between calling itself Atlas and Marvel; Vicki 4 (Aug/75) by Atlas/Seaboard. Both covers were drawn by Stan Goldberg. The question is whether he needed any help for the eight words of dialogue on the Kathy cover if he came up with the situation Marvel-style (as the artist-before-writer method would later be called); on the Vicki one, was he reusing something he'd done all by himself?

Of course in the intervening years at Marvel he could first-hand see Stan Lee recycling story stuff over and over on Millie the Model.

9 comments:

  1. Martin,

    That issue #1 of Kathy is the only incidence of Goldberg being inked by Christopher Rule on both the cover and the interior artwork.

    Doc V.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Doc. I've gathered that Stan Goldberg had inkers much more often than not at Marvel, ones who went unsigned and uncredited even after the fuller credits had taken hold on the adventure books.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Martin,

    Stan Goldberg told me that he was often inked by others, including Vince Colletta, Frank Giacoia, John Tartaglione, John Verpoorten and even Bill Everett. I've identified a number of stories over the years and provided credits for the GCD.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nick, thanks for adding names to the list. The funny thing is that all of them would fit into the rhyming "S. Lee and Stan G." credits--Vince C., Frank G., John T., John V., and Bill E. I suppose S. Lee felt a mere two names made for a snappier signature.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ironically, I think Stan G was the only 1960s "Archie-style" artist (besides Dan DeCarlo who was doing too much work at Archie) who didn't work on "Tippy Teen" (as Vicki was originally-known) in the 1960s, making the 1970s Vicki covers his only contribution to the series.
    Does anyone know why the series was retitled?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dan DeCarlo did pencil a story, "Runaway Romance," in TIPPY 1.

    Britt, I wonder too why Tippy was retitled Vicki. To help disguise to newsstand browsers that it wasn't original material?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I would guess that the name "Tippy Teen" was seen as too-dated by the time of the reprints. Like "Leisure Suit Larry" is a dated name.
    I added one inking credit on Goldberg - one of the Bill Everett inked jobs- I admit that I got that credit from a contemporary fanzine of the time (and luckily it looked like Everett too). Hmm, as Jon D'Agostino was lettering for Marvel in the early 60s, wonder if he inked there as well? For art-spotting on Tippy, it's been said that many of the artists would try to hide their styles (pencilers would ink, etc) to add doubt from the frowning and firing eyes of the Archie management.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think Jon D. is a very likely suspect, SangorShop.

    ReplyDelete