When an artist is doing a licensed property, the best bet for identifying them by style is to look at the one-shot secondary characters. So, if I'm IDing correctly on these pages:
Lee Marrs' comic book work, both in undergrounds and mainstream, came after working on syndicated strips (writing gags on "Hi and Lois" for King in 1969 and doing backgrounds on "Little Orphan Annie" for Chicago Tribune-New York News starting in the same year, according to the
Who's Who). Her underground work first appeared in 1972. I'd assumed her first four-color comic book credit was DC's
Plop in 1974.
It would seem it was actually
Blondie—at King's mid-Sixties comic book division. Out of a spotty collection (there could be something earlier), I see her work in #175 (Dec/67) on the story "Dagwood and the Go-Go Girl." Possibly she did "Emergency Dinner" in that issue and
just possibly "Blondie Makes the Switch." The Dagwood story "The Offer" I'm pretty sure is by someone else, not that I could say who. The main artist on the Blondie comic books, Paul Fung Jr., channeled Chic Young more thoroughly.
Lee Marrs also drew an entire issue of Popeye (apart from regular artist/editor George Wildman’s cover), licensed from King at Charlton, a little later: #120 (Jun/73). It looks like she drew an unrelated back-up, Marvin the Mailman in "Dog Gone It," in
Popeye 103 (Aug/70). Again, my collection is incomplete; she may have done other work on the title.
She's on Facebook but I wasn't able to get hold of her for a recent article of my own. Your examples here definitely look to be her work.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I certainly thought so, Steven, I dithered over this for a while, but in the end the King connection made it seem plausible enough.
DeleteThis is very interesting! I interviewed George Wildman in 1974, and asked who was responsible for "Popeye" #120. With no hesitation, he said, "Tony Tallarico." But the art did not look like Mr. Tallarico's work on Popeye in a few of the KFS Educational comics (the "careers" series). Did Mr. Tallarico job the work on #120 to Lee Marrs?
ReplyDelete