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Ever wonder why those Archie collectors love Harry Lucey?

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Great books thumbsup2.gif

 

It amazes me that there are at least 3 Archiefish covers 893whatthe.gif

 

It amazes me that Harry Lucey has been my favorite Archie artist all this time and I just didn't know it.

 

 

Same here! I always preferred the 50s and 60s Archie art to the newer ones in the 80s.

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It's funny - my kids read Archie digests and kept telling me how much they liked certain stories and art. I then told them that the artist of them all was Harry Lucey, so now when they buy new or old digests, they always do a quick scan to see how much of his work is in the book.

 

"Hey Daddy, this one has 5 Harry Lucey stories in it!!"

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It's funny - my kids read Archie digests and kept telling me how much they liked certain stories and art. I then told them that the artist of them all was Harry Lucey, so now when they buy new or old digests, they always do a quick scan to see how much of his work is in the book.

 

"Hey Daddy, this one has 5 Harry Lucey stories in it!!"

 

Now that's being a good father. Job well done. :applause:

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I always wondered why Lucey and Schwartz were, for the most part, not allowed to do covers after the late '60s or so, particularly given how good Lucey was at covers (as this thread proves). The Life With Archie one is typical: by then, no matter who did the stories in the book, the cover had to be by either De Carlo or Goldberg. I guess by that time the De Carlo style had become the Archie "house style" (which it really wasn't in the '50s and most of the '60s: everybody had their own different take) and the covers were standardized.

 

But turn the page and there was always great stuff to be found. Like this splash page from a story in Archie's Pals n' Gals # 46, from 1968:

 

I love how Lucey always manages to make Veronica and Betty seem like different types of women even though they have the same face and body. He had this sultry, almost realistic face for Veronica that he sometimes used (this is an example) while Betty was always the perky wholesome girl next door. Nobody else differentiated them like that.

87532.jpg.d79b7e4cba95c3e51ffb95fb60ebf928.jpg

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I always wondered why Lucey and Schwartz were, for the most part, not allowed to do covers after the late '60s or so, particularly given how good Lucey was at covers (as this thread proves). The Life With Archie one is typical: by then, no matter who did the stories in the book, the cover had to be by either De Carlo or Goldberg. I guess by that time the De Carlo style had become the Archie "house style" (which it really wasn't in the '50s and most of the '60s: everybody had their own different take) and the covers were standardized.

 

But turn the page and there was always great stuff to be found. Like this splash page from a story in Archie's Pals n' Gals # 46, from 1968:

 

I love how Lucey always manages to make Veronica and Betty seem like different types of women even though they have the same face and body. He had this sultry, almost realistic face for Veronica that he sometimes used (this is an example) while Betty was always the perky wholesome girl next door. Nobody else differentiated them like that.

 

87532.jpg

 

 

That's a helluva nice first post! :applause:

 

Welcome to the boards.

 

Thanks for posting this great splash.

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So, in addition to this classic gem, which I received this week:

 

IMG_0002-26.jpg

 

These unread, super-high gloss Lucey classics come in today. First the wrapper--apparently part of a roller-skating promotion.

 

IMG_0003-26.jpg

 

Now, the books. Not super-HG, but beautiful and way above average for the time period.

 

IMG-34.jpg

 

IMG_0001-27.jpg

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It's not a big thing, but one thing I wanted to correct from earlier in the thread is that Lucey did not do his own writing, normally. Frank Doyle was the Archie head writer from the early '50s through the '80s and seems to have written most of the classic stories (with occasional contributions from freelancers like Sy Reit).

 

Even though the drawing and inking can be a bit wonky at times, I really enjoy Lucey's late '60s Archie issues because they're like an island of sanity in a comic book company that's going off the rails. Archie's "classic" period ended around 1965 and they started to reach for gimmicks: superheroes, "The Archies," whatever. Samm Schwartz left the company and "Jughead" went into the toilet (he came back and rescued the title five years later), Bob Bolling was removed from "Little Archie," leading to the creative collapse of that title, and DeCarlo and Doyle were spreading themselves too thin, leading to some deterioration in "Betty and Veronica."

 

Through it all, Lucey's "Archie" kept a pretty consistent level of quality: solid, funny stories with Lucey art and funny Doyle scripts. Even the "gimmick" stories like the ones about The Archies don't feel so gimmicky in Lucey's hands. Like Schwartz later did on Jughead, he kept a classic feel in the title even after the rest of the company was changing around him.

 

The last panel of a story in Archie # 186 is a great example of Lucey's skill at staging and characterization:

 

90355.jpg.f0e9cf0ccca23f1e2e3215c344a0bac1.jpg

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It's not a big thing, but one thing I wanted to correct from earlier in the thread is that Lucey did not do his own writing, normally. Frank Doyle was the Archie head writer from the early '50s through the '80s and seems to have written most of the classic stories (with occasional contributions from freelancers like Sy Reit).

 

Even though the drawing and inking can be a bit wonky at times, I really enjoy Lucey's late '60s Archie issues because they're like an island of sanity in a comic book company that's going off the rails. Archie's "classic" period ended around 1965 and they started to reach for gimmicks: superheroes, "The Archies," whatever. Samm Schwartz left the company and "Jughead" went into the toilet (he came back and rescued the title five years later), Bob Bolling was removed from "Little Archie," leading to the creative collapse of that title, and DeCarlo and Doyle were spreading themselves too thin, leading to some deterioration in "Betty and Veronica."

 

Through it all, Lucey's "Archie" kept a pretty consistent level of quality: solid, funny stories with Lucey art and funny Doyle scripts. Even the "gimmick" stories like the ones about The Archies don't feel so gimmicky in Lucey's hands. Like Schwartz later did on Jughead, he kept a classic feel in the title even after the rest of the company was changing around him.

 

The last panel of a story in Archie # 186 is a great example of Lucey's skill at staging and characterization:

 

 

Totally agree (thumbs u

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