"I designed all the characters, anyway, and Frank Doyle was doing all the writing. I didn't have any more input on what direction they were going to go with Josie"
About this Quote
There is a quiet sting in DeCarlo's plainspoken claim: he built the faces, the silhouettes, the vibe, and then watched the story walk away without him. "I designed all the characters" is a cartoonist's version of authorship, staking ownership not through plot but through visual identity - the thing readers actually recognize on a spinner rack. When he adds "anyway", it lands like a shrug that doubles as a correction, a small defensive move against a history that tends to credit the writer, the editor, the brand.
The sentence turns sharper with the partitioning of labor: "Frank Doyle was doing all the writing". Not an insult, just a boundary line. In mid-century comics - especially at Archie - this division was standard, and it was also a machine for smoothing individual creators into an interchangeable house style. DeCarlo's subtext is about power: design can originate a world, but writing steers it, and editorial decides who gets to steer.
"I didn't have any more input" is the real reveal. It frames Josie not as a personal creation but as corporate property in motion, a character whose direction is determined elsewhere. The phrase "what direction they were going to go" is telling: "they" is faceless, institutional, the collective authority of editors, publishers, perhaps licensors. DeCarlo isn't romanticizing the artist as lone genius; he's pointing at the quiet dispossession embedded in collaborative, work-for-hire culture - where you can invent a pop icon and still be treated like you just drew the package.
The sentence turns sharper with the partitioning of labor: "Frank Doyle was doing all the writing". Not an insult, just a boundary line. In mid-century comics - especially at Archie - this division was standard, and it was also a machine for smoothing individual creators into an interchangeable house style. DeCarlo's subtext is about power: design can originate a world, but writing steers it, and editorial decides who gets to steer.
"I didn't have any more input" is the real reveal. It frames Josie not as a personal creation but as corporate property in motion, a character whose direction is determined elsewhere. The phrase "what direction they were going to go" is telling: "they" is faceless, institutional, the collective authority of editors, publishers, perhaps licensors. DeCarlo isn't romanticizing the artist as lone genius; he's pointing at the quiet dispossession embedded in collaborative, work-for-hire culture - where you can invent a pop icon and still be treated like you just drew the package.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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