Page "Josie and the Pussycats (comics)" Paragraph 1

Cartoonist Dan DeCarlo, who had spent most of the 1950s drawing teen and career-girl humor comics such as Millie the Model for Atlas Comics, that decade's forerunner of Marvel Comics, began freelancing as well for Archie Comics.

In 1960, he and Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee co-created the short-lived syndicated comic strip Willie Lumpkin, about a suburban mail carrier, for the Chicago, Illinois-based Publishers Syndicate.

Casting about for more comic-strip work, DeCarlo created the characters of Josie and her friends at about the same time.

The artist's wife, Josie DeCarlo, Josie's namesake, said in an interview quoted in a DeCarlo obituary, " We went on a Caribbean cruise, and I had a costume for the cruise, and that's the way it started.