Dan DeCarlo - Atlas and Archie

Atlas and Archie

DeCarlo was married, with a pregnant wife, and a laborer working for his father when he began to pursue a professional art career. Circa 1947, answering an ad, he broke into the comic book industry at Timely Comics, the 1940s iteration of Marvel Comics. Under editor-in-chief Stan Lee, his first assignment was the teen-humor series Jeanie. DeCarlo went uncredited, as was typical for most comic-book writers and artists of the era, and he recalled in 2001, "I went on with her maybe ten books. They used to call me 'The Jeanie Machine' because that was all Stan used to give me, was Jeanie.... Then he took me off Jeannie and he gave me Millie the Model. That was a big break for me. It wasn't doing too well and somehow when I got on it became quite successful."

He went on to an atypically long, 10-year run on that humor series, from issues #18-93 (June 1949 - Nov. 1959), most of them published by Marvel's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics. For a decade, DeCarlo wrote and drew the slapsticky adventures of Millie Collins, her redheaded friendly nemesis Chili Storm and the rest of the cast. He also contributed the short-lived Sherry the Showgirl and Showgirls for Atlas. In 1960, he and Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee co-created the short-lived syndicated comic strip Willie Lumpkin, about a suburban mail carrier, for the Chicago, Illinois-based Publishers Syndicate. A version of the character later appeared as a long-running minor supporting character in Lee's later co-creation, the Marvel Comics series Fantastic Four

In addition to his comic-book work, DeCarlo drew freelance pieces for the magazines The Saturday Evening Post and Argosy, as well as Timely/Atlas publisher Martin Goodman's Humorama line of pin-up girl cartoon digests.

DeCarlo first freelanced for Archie Comics, the company with which he would become most closely associated, in the late 1950s while still freelancing for Atlas. He said in 2001,

I was looking for extra work. I went down to see Harry Shorten and he gave me a job. The pay wasn't too good, but I did it and he liked it — but I didn't go back right away. Finally after two or three weeks go, he called me up and wanted to know what happened, why I wasn't around. I said, 'Well, you know I'm very busy.' ... I had Millie the Model, I had My Friend Irma, Big Boy. ... I told him, 'The people that I'm working for now let me do my own thing. But when I do work for you, it's "Draw like Bob Montana." And it's hard to look at your reference, and then back at your own page. It's very slow, and very tedious and I didn't like it too much.' He said, 'Come on in, and you can draw any way you like.' That made me go back with him.

DeCarlo in the late 1950s and early 1960s modernized the looks of Archie Comics' teen-humor characters to their contemporary appearance, and established the house style. As well, he is the generally recognized creator of the teen-humor characters Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Josie and the Pussycats, and Cheryl Blossom.