Joe Giella was born on June 27 1928 in Queens, New York City. He studied at the School of Industrial Art and the Art Students League, both in Manhattan, and took courses in art at Hunter College in New York City. He began his career at age 17, working for Hillman Periodicals. He freelanced for Fawcett Comics, inking stories featuring Captain Marvel. He joined the staff at what would later become Marvel Comics, working on stories featuring Captain Marvel, The Human Torch, and The Sub-Mariner.
It was in 1949 that he joined National Comics Publications, the company now known as DC Comics. He worked on stories featuring the Golden Age Flash, the Golden Age Green Lantern, Black Canary, and various other characters edited by Julius Schwartz. In the Fifties, as superheroes fell by the wayside at DC Comics, Joe Giella inked Western stories pencilled by Alex Toth and Gene Colan, and the King Faraday stories in the title Danger Trail. During the Atomic Age of Comics, he inked Gil Kane on science fiction stories, Western stories, and crime stories.
It was with Showcase no. 4 (October 1956) that editor Julius Schwartz introduced a new version of The Flash, launching the Silver Age of Comic books and a revival of superheroes. Joe Giella inked Carmine Infantino on the new Flash series and later Gil Kane on the new Green Lantern series. He also inked the earliest Adam Strange stories in the title Mystery in Space. Perhaps the most important story every inked by Joe Giella (or any comic book artist) was "The Flash of Two Worlds" in The Flash (September 1961), which re-introduced the Golden Age Flash and introduced the DC Multiverse.
In 1964, when Julius Schwartz took over as editor of the Batman titles, Joe Giella became the inker for Carmine Infantino on Detective Comics and Sheldon Moldoff on Batman. He stayed with the Batman titles through the Batmania created by the TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968.
Joe Giella continued to work at DC Comics through the Seventies, but also began work on various newspaper comic strips. He began inking on Don Barry on Flash Gordon in 1970. He worked on The Phantom for 17 years, even helping Sy Barry with pencilling. He took over as the artist on Mary Worth in 1991 and continued to work on the comic strip until his retirement in 2016. In addition to his work on comic books and newspaper strips, he also did work for advertising agencies such as McCann Erickson and Saatchi & Saatchi, as well as such publishers as Doubleday and Simon & Schuster.
In 2001 Joe Geilla worked on issue no. 2 on the mini-series Batman: Turning Points.
Joe Giella will always be most identified with the Silver Age at DC Comics, inking numerous stories featuring The Flash, Adam Strange, Green Lantern, and Batman. Indeed, it was Joe Giella's style that was chosen as the house style at DC Comics during the Sixties. His style was clean, crisp, fluid, and, most importantly, modern. It was Joe Giella who made Sheldon Moldoff's work on Batman look more modern, this after Sheldon Moldoff had been emulating the work of Golden Age artist and Batman co-creator Bob Kane for years. While other comic book fans might not agree with me, I think Joe Giella often made the art of various pencillers look much better. I don't think Carmine Infantino's work every looked as good as when it was inked by Joe Giella. If he was prolific and had a long career, it was because Joe Giella was so very talented.
No comments:
Post a Comment