Joe Giella
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Joe Giella (born 27 June 1928, Manhattan, New York City) is an American comic book artist best known as a DC Comics inker during the Silver Age of comic books.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Joe Giella attended the Manhattan's School of Industrial Art, where future singer Tony Bennett was a classmate and friend, leaving three months shy of graduation in order to work and help support his Depression-era family. At 17 or 18, he freelanced for editor Ed Cronin at Hillman Publications, penciling and inking the humor feature "Captain Codfish". He also studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan, alongside future comics professionals Mike Sekowsky and Joe Kubert, and took commercial art courses at Hunter College.
[edit] Golden Age of comic books
Giella later freelanced for Fawcett Comics, commuting by bus to C.C. Beck's and Pete Costanza's studio in Englewood, New Jersey to ink Captain Marvel stories. In either 1946 or 1947, he began freelancing for Timely Comics, the 1940s precursor of Marvel Comics, and shortly afterward joined the staff. "I would do any work that they offered," he recalled in a 2005 interview. "I started out doing a little touch-up work, a little background work, a little inking, redraw this, fix this head, do something with this panel".[1] Later, he assisted Syd Shores on Captain America Comics, finishing backgrounds, making pencil corrections and inking the occasional page or two. Giella did similar duty on Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, and humor stories. Inking soon became his specialty. In addition, he joined the Naval Reserves in 1948, continuing with them for eight years.
His close friend Frank Giacoia, who was best man at Giella's wedding, moved to DC Comics in the late '40s, and eventually convinced Giella to join him at that better-paying, if more staid, company. Starting circa 1948, Giella inked the Flash, Green Lantern, Black Canary and other characters under editor Julius Schwartz.
[edit] Into the Silver Age
During the early-1950s lull in superheroes, Giella inked Westerns penciled by Alex Toth (including the feature "Sierra Smith") and Gene Colan (on the series Hopalong Cassidy, splitting the duties with fellow inker Sy Barry).
When the era historians call the Silver Age of comic books began with the resurgence of superheroes starting in 1956, Giella began inking science fiction stories, including the feature "Adam Strange" in Strange Adventures, and Batman stories pencilled by the likes of Sheldon Moldoff (ghosting for Bob Kane), and Carmine Infantino. In the 1960s, he prominently inked Gil Kane on the series Green Lantern. Giella eventually inked the covers and interior art of DC's top-selling books that decade.
[edit] Comic strips
Giella also assisted on such King Features syndicated comic strips as Flash Gordon (inking Dan Barry in 1970), and The Phantom, on which he worked for 17 years (sometimes helping Sy Barry with pencilling when deadlines became too consuming for Barry). In the early 1990s, Giella became the artist on the Mary Worth daily and Sunday newspaper strip.
[edit] Other work
Outside comics, Giella did commercial art for such ad agencies as McCann Erickson and Saatchi & Saatchi, and such publishers as Doubleday and Simon & Schuster.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Joe Giella interview, Alter Ego #52 (Sept. 2005), p. 6
