Saturday, December 28, 2019

The Artist on Gold Key's Wally

I had no idea who did the art on Gold Key's teen title Wally (#1, Dec/62–#4, Sep/63). I wondered if I'd seen it on a syndicated strip like Penny, but that one didn't match up.

Some time later I saw the same artist's work on a couple of fillers in Standard's Kathy--but that still didn't give me a name. And some time after that I found it again, in more of those fillers, on Standard's Intimate Love 25 (Nov/53). Here, however, James Vadeboncoeur, Jr., had already IDed the artist: Paul Robinson.


Robinson did do a sydicated strip--Etta Kett--for almost half a century: from 1925 to 1974. The day's strip here is from 1966. On the four issues of Wally he drew the Wally stories, backup Yvette stories, covers, and text headers; this tier is from "Ballots and Belles" in #2.

Are there any assistants involved? I don't know. The Wally writer is hardly likely to be John Stanley as the GCD guesses; he was pretty busy over at Dell at the time. UPDATE: Jake Oster has told me that in an Alter Ego interview Herb Rogoff recalled writing Wally for editor Wally Green.

These are Robinson's fillers in that issue of Kathy at Standard:

June/53 15  How's About That!! Starring Beezey!!
Justeen and Bucky

4 comments:

  1. I've wondered for a long time who drew Wally in that interesting retro style - and it turns out to be Paul Robinson, Wow. I've been reading the 1953 Etta-Kett strips one a day this year, and it so clearly is, with much more similar clothing and hairstyles to Wally than the 1966 sample. Thinking about it, 1962-1966 had a massive change in clothing styles. Now, I'm also wondering if Robinson did new covers for Standard's Etta-Kett reprints, and if there might be more fillers in the early 1950s ...

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  2. The one-pagers "Moonlight and Problems" and "Ride a Hobby Horse" in an issue I just got, TODAY'S LOVE #7 (July/52), are attributed to Robinson in the GCD. Upon looking at them I'd say there's a "realistic" inker involved on "Moonlight."

    And I just looked through the one issue of Standard's ETTA KETT I have, #11, and find that Beezey in the KATHY 15 one-pager is a name, if not the character himself, from ETTA. (I would think that the ETTA 11 cover is indeed new, as it's a single-panel gag.)

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  3. And there's Kathy #4, with the Chubby filler. Easy to spot once you know he's there.

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  4. And now that I've started looking, I see even a straight romance story drawn by Robinson at Standard--"The Man I Spurned" in Popular Romance #7--as well as self-help fillers in the romance books, which James Vadeboncour Jr. has IDed.

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