Comic strip and comic book artist Joe Giella has passed away.
June 27, 1928 – March 21, 2023
From the Joe Giella – Artist Facebook page:
The Giella family wishes for all to celebrate the incredible life of Joe Giella. Joe passed peacefully on March 21st at the age of 94.
Joe was such a special person. His presence alone would put you at ease. Even on the most difficult days, just being with him would make everything OK again.
Joe’s comic career began with comic books in 1946 at Hillman and Marvel Comics. Within a few years he had moved to National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) where he spent the majority of his time through the 1980s. Detours included a number of commercial and advertising assignments.
He is famed for his Silver Age comics inking over Carmine Infantino (The Flash) and Gil Kane (Green Lantern).
His inking led him to assist many of his friends on their comic strips; among them Dan Barry (Flash Gordon), Sy Barry (The Phantom 1971-1988), Frank Giacoia (Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, Sherlock Holmes), Murphy Anderson (Buck Rogers), and Fred Kida (The Amazing Spider-Man).
Joe both pencilled and inked the Batman comic strip from 1966-1968.
During the Batman years Joe also illustrated the Character Clues daily panel.
He also did the same on the Mary Worth comic strip for 25 years (1991-2016).
Doing daily and Sunday comics strips severely cut into his contributions to comic books.
The Daily Cartoonist celebrated Joe’s 90th birthday a few years ago.
The Grand Comics Database has over 6,000 comic book credits for Joe.
Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who has comic and commercial credits for Joe up to 1999.
Comic Art Fans has hundreds of samples of Joe’s artwork.
A career spanning interview with Joe from 2019 at The Comics Journal.
further reading: Joe’s Wikipedia entry.
edited to add: Andrew Farago’s obituary for The Comics Journal.
feature image via Sports Page Weekly
With the passing of Mr. Giella, I have been trying to work out who is still left that began work in comic books in the 1940s’…
Ramona Fradon (1949, also did Brenda Starr strip for many years)
John Romita Sr. (1949)
Al Jaffee
Sy Barry (was inking for DC in 1949 and of course did The Phantom strip for many years)
Is there anyone I’m forgetting?
Jack Katz and Jules Feiffer come to mind as 1940s comic book contributors still with us.
Was Giella still active doing commissions? Does Barry, Fradon do commissions? Just wandering.
Joe was doing commissions. Rmona still does and Sy I think would.
Rip uncle joe