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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.

Joe Giella attended the Manhattan's School of Industrial Arts, 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 age 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, alongside future comics professionals Mike Sekowsky and Joe Kubert, and took commercial art courses at Hunter College.

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 anywork that they offered," he recalled in a 2005 interview. "I started out doing a little touch-up work, a little background work, a little inkjing, redraw this, fix this head, do something with this panel." Template:Fn 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.

Best-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. Staring circa 1948, Giella inked the Flash, Green Lantern, Black Canary and other characters under the aegis of editor Julius Schwartz. Later, during the early-1950s lull in superheroes, Giella inked Westerns penciled by Alex Toth (including "Sierra Smith") and Gene Colan (Hopalong Cassidy, splitting the duties with fellow inker Sy Barry).

Later in the decade, 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 in the Silver Age Green Lantern. Joe's slick inks graced the covers and contents of many of DC's top selling books in the 1960s, thus making him one of their most important inkers.

Outside comics, Giella did commercial art for such ad agencies as McCann Erickson and Saatchi & Saatchi, and such publishers as Doubleday and Simon & Schuster. He 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. Since the early 1990s, Joe has been the artist on the Mary Worth daily and Sunday newspaper strip

Footnotes

  • Template:Fnb Jim Amash interviews Joe Giella,Alter Ego #52 (Sept. 2005), p. 6

References

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