Joe Maneely
Encyclopedia
Joseph "Joe" Maneely is an American comic book
artist
best known for his work at Marvel Comics
' 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics
, where he co-created the Marvel characters the Black Knight
, the Ringo Kid
, the Yellow Claw
, and Jimmy Woo
.
An exquisite draftsman whose delicate yet solid, fine-line figures made his work both distinctive and well-suited to the medium, Maneely was one of the relative stars of Atlas, along with such soon-to-blossom talents as Steve Ditko
and John Romita
. Talented and well-respected, he died in a commuter-train accident shortly before Marvel's ascendancy into a commercial and pop-cultural conglomerate.
Joe Maneely, born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
, was one of at least five children born to a poor couple, Robert and Gertrude Maneely. He attended Ascension BVM Elementary School and North Catholic High School
; at the latter, he created a school mascot, the Red Falcon, that also starred in a comic strip
in the school newspaper. After dropping out in his sophomore year, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving three years as a specialist in visual aids and contributing cartoons to ship newspapers. In 1947, after his discharge, Maneely married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth "Betty Jean" Kane (died April 16, 2003).
Under the G.I. Bill, Maneely trained at the Hussian School of Art
in Philadelphia. He entered the professional realm in the advertising
art department of the Philadelphia Bulletin
newspaper. He began his comic book
career freelancing for Street & Smith Publications in 1948, drawing such features as "Butterfingers", "Django Jinks, Ghost Chaser", "Dr. Savant", "Mario Nette", "Nick Carter", "Public Defender", "Roger Kilgore", "Supersnipe", and "Ulysses Q. Wacky" in comics including The Shadow
, Top Secrets, Ghost Breakers and Super Magician Comics. His earliest known credits are that company's Top Secrets #4 (Aug. 1948), for which he penciled and inked
the eight-page crime fiction
story "The Ragged Stranger"; and Red Dragon #4 (Aug. 1948), for which he drew the eight-page story "Death by the Sword" and the one-page featurette "Tao's Small Sword Box", both starring the hero Tao Anwar.
Other nascent work includes the seven-page story "Washington's Scout" in Hillman Periodicals
' Airboy Comics
vol. 6, #10 (Nov. 1949), and a small amount of work on the Catholic
comic-book Treasure Chest.
With artist Peggy Zangerle and Hussian classmate George Ward, an artist for periodicals including the Philadelphia Bulletin and the New York
Daily News and a 1950s assistant on Walt Kelly
's comic strip Pogo
, Maneely formed an art studio at Philadelphia's Flo-Mar Building, at 3160 Kensington Avenue, Room 501. His and Betty Jean's first child, daughter Kathleen, was born in 1950. They would have two more, daughters Mary Carole, born 1951, and Nancy, born 1956.
's Marvel Comics
predecessor, Timely Comics
, as it was transitioning to its 1950s incarnation as Atlas Comics
. His first published story there was the eight-page Western
story "The Kansas Massacre of 1864" in Western Outlaws And Sheriffs #60 (Dec. 1949). However, historian Michael J. Vassallo, dating stories by Atlas' published job-numbers, suggests the first Atlas story to which Maneely contributed was the later-published "The Mystery of the Valley of Giants" in Black Rider
#8 (March 1950), an 18-page story drawn by many uncredited artists, including Syd Shores
; Maneely's work appears on page three, with some additional minor inking on five other pages.
Maneely soon hit his stride at Atlas, for which he freelanced before going on staff "in about 1955". Until 1953, when Maneely and his family moved to the Flushing neighborhood in the New York City
borough of Queens
, he traveled from Philadelphia to New York three times weekly to pick up scripts. In either 1954 or 1955, the family movie to suburban New Shrewsbury, New Jersey.
With speed to match his style, he became a favorite of editor-in-chief Stan Lee
, who assigned Maneely covers and stories throughout virtually the entire range of Atlas comics. With superheroes experiencing a lull in popularity, Maneely drew Westerns, war
, horror, humor, romance
, science fiction
, spy
, crime
, and even period-adventure stories — that last most notably with the medieval series Black Knight
, co-created by Maneely and writer and editor-in-chief Lee, and first reprinted in 1960s Marvel Comics at the behest of editor Roy Thomas
, who as a teen had "devoured the Black Knight comic, and became an immediate fan."
Herb Trimpe
, a Marvel artist of that time, said in 2001, "The Black Knight stuff is great! [Fellow artist] Marie[ Severin]
said his pencils were almost nonexistent; they were like rough, lightly done layouts with no features on the faces ... It was just like ovals and sticks and stuff, and he inked from that. He drew when he inked. That's when he did the work, in the inking!" Columnist and historian Fred Hembeck
said, "While we may've heard of the pivotal day a young[ John] Romita spent with the tragically doomed yet immensely talented artist Joe Maneely, listening to him describe it as one of the most important days of his entire life gives the familiar tale an added gravity".
Other Atlas work reprinted widely by Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s include Yellow Claw
#1 (Oct. 1956) — starring a Fu Manchu
-inspired villain and the Asian FBI agent pursuing him, created by Maneely and writer Al Feldstein
— and the Old West Ringo Kid
#1-21 (Aug. 1954 - Sept. 1957), co-created with an unknown writer.
The covers of Sub-Mariner Comics #37, 39 and 41 (Dec. 1954, April and Aug. 1955) were Maneely's only superhero work for Atlas, during the company's short-lived mid-1950s attempt to revive superheroes.
Maneely's talent, range and prolificity impressed fellow Atlas artists. Stan Goldberg
in 2002 recalled "the all-time great Joe Maneely, [...] who I thought was the best artist that ever drew comics. [...] Joe wasn't just a great craftsman; he worked so fast and he was one of the few artists who could go from drawing the Black Knight to drawing Petey the Pest, or a war story. He had an unbelievable knack and he was just one sweet, nice guy". Goldberg recalled in 2005, "He worked so fast, we used to call him 'Joe Money'". Maneely's distinctive style, wrote historian Vassallo, was, "Crisp, uniquely inked, busy, and action oriented. Not necessarily pretty, but vivid. It was a style unique to comics and difficult to imitate". By 1955, "Maneely's inking had stylized itself to a precision 'etching' effect, and he would enter a fruitful year that would see him turn out his most diverse and prolific work".
By the summer of 1957, Atlas was experiencing difficulties and began shedding freelancers. Shortly afterward, Martin Goodman
stopped distributing his own titles and switched to American News Company
, which soon closed, temporarily leaving Atlas without a distributor and resulting in all staff other than Lee being fired. Maneely continued to work with Lee on the Chicago Sun-Times
-syndicated
comic strip
Mrs. Lyons' Cubs, which debuted in newspapers February 10, 1958. He also "bought a new home in[ New] Jersey
for his young wife and small daughters" and did a limited amount of freelancing for DC Comics
(Gang Busters
#62, House of Mystery
#71-73, House of Secrets #9, Tales of the Unexpected
#22, cover-dated from February to April 1958); Charlton Comics
(Cowboy Western #67, Wyatt Earp
, Frontier Marshal #20, both March 1958); and Crestwood Publications
.
Maneely also drew a four-page comic about Social Security
for the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, "John's First Job" (1956), and another for the same agency, "A Farm and a Family".
, in Manhattan. He did not have his glasses with him, and was killed when he accidentally fell between the cars of a moving commuter train on his way home to New Jersey.
Fellow Atlas artist Stan Goldberg
recalled that on the night of Maneely's death,
His last original published story was the five-page Ringo Kid
tale "One Bullet Left" in Gunsmoke Western #53 (July 1959), and his final comics work was the cover of Gunsmoke Western #55 (Nov. 1959), featuring Kid Colt
and Wyatt Earp
. Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee
opined in the early 2000s that had Maneely lived, "he would have been another Jack Kirby
. He would have been the best you could imagine".
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
best known for his work at Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
' 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
, where he co-created the Marvel characters the Black Knight
Black Knight (Sir Percy)
Sir Percy of Scandia, also known as the original Black Knight, is a fictional character in the Marvel Universe. He was a medieval knight created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Joe Maneely.- Publication history :...
, the Ringo Kid
Ringo Kid
The Ringo Kid is a fictional Western hero in the Marvel Comics' universe, whose comic book series was originally released by the company's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics...
, the Yellow Claw
Yellow Claw
The Yellow Claw is a fictional comic book supervillain in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Al Feldstein and artist Joe Maneely, the character first appeared in Yellow Claw #1 , published by Atlas Comics, the 1950s predecessor of Marvel.-Publication history:While the...
, and Jimmy Woo
Jimmy Woo
Jimmy Woo is a fictional, Chinese-American secret agent in the Marvel Comics comic-book universe. Created by EC Comics great Al Feldstein and artist Joe Maneely, the character first appeared in Yellow Claw #1 Jimmy Woo is a fictional, Chinese-American secret agent in the Marvel Comics comic-book...
.
An exquisite draftsman whose delicate yet solid, fine-line figures made his work both distinctive and well-suited to the medium, Maneely was one of the relative stars of Atlas, along with such soon-to-blossom talents as Steve Ditko
Steve Ditko
Stephen J. "Steve" Ditko is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the artist co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics heroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange....
and John Romita
John Romita
John Romita may refer to:*John Romita, Sr., comic book artist best known for his art on The Amazing Spider-Man for Marvel Comics in the 1960s...
. Talented and well-respected, he died in a commuter-train accident shortly before Marvel's ascendancy into a commercial and pop-cultural conglomerate.
Early life and career
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, was one of at least five children born to a poor couple, Robert and Gertrude Maneely. He attended Ascension BVM Elementary School and North Catholic High School
North Catholic High School
North Catholic High School is a private Catholic high school located on Troy Hill on the Northside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The school's mascot is the Trojan and its official colors are scarlet and gold....
; at the latter, he created a school mascot, the Red Falcon, that also starred in a comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
in the school newspaper. After dropping out in his sophomore year, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving three years as a specialist in visual aids and contributing cartoons to ship newspapers. In 1947, after his discharge, Maneely married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth "Betty Jean" Kane (died April 16, 2003).
Under the G.I. Bill, Maneely trained at the Hussian School of Art
Hussian School of Art
The Hussian School of Art is a private vocational school for graphic design and commercial illustration located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.It was established in 1946 and offers a four-year, full-time, program.-History:...
in Philadelphia. He entered the professional realm in the advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
art department of the Philadelphia Bulletin
Philadelphia Bulletin
For the 2004 resurrection of the Bulletin, see The Bulletin .The Philadelphia Bulletin was a daily evening newspaper published from 1847 to 1982 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the largest circulation newspaper in Philadelphia for 76 years and was once the largest evening newspaper in the...
newspaper. He began his comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
career freelancing for Street & Smith Publications in 1948, drawing such features as "Butterfingers", "Django Jinks, Ghost Chaser", "Dr. Savant", "Mario Nette", "Nick Carter", "Public Defender", "Roger Kilgore", "Supersnipe", and "Ulysses Q. Wacky" in comics including The Shadow
The Shadow
The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town"...
, Top Secrets, Ghost Breakers and Super Magician Comics. His earliest known credits are that company's Top Secrets #4 (Aug. 1948), for which he penciled and inked
Inker
The inker is one of the two line artists in a traditional comic book or graphic novel. After a pencilled drawing is given to the inker, the inker uses black ink to produce refined outlines over the pencil lines...
the eight-page crime fiction
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
story "The Ragged Stranger"; and Red Dragon #4 (Aug. 1948), for which he drew the eight-page story "Death by the Sword" and the one-page featurette "Tao's Small Sword Box", both starring the hero Tao Anwar.
Other nascent work includes the seven-page story "Washington's Scout" in Hillman Periodicals
Hillman Periodicals
Hillman Periodicals, Inc. was an American magazine and comic book publishing company founded in 1938 by Alex L. Hillman, a former New York City book publisher...
' Airboy Comics
Airboy
Airboy is a fictional aviator hero of an American comic book series initially published by Hillman Periodicals during the World War II-era time period fans and historians call the Golden Age of comic books. He was created by writers Charles Biro and Dick Wood and artist Al Camy.-Golden Age:Airboy...
vol. 6, #10 (Nov. 1949), and a small amount of work on the Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
comic-book Treasure Chest.
With artist Peggy Zangerle and Hussian classmate George Ward, an artist for periodicals including the Philadelphia Bulletin and the New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
Daily News and a 1950s assistant on Walt Kelly
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. , or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Post-Hall Syndicate,...
's comic strip Pogo
Pogo
Pogo is the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip, created by cartoonist Walt Kelly and distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate...
, Maneely formed an art studio at Philadelphia's Flo-Mar Building, at 3160 Kensington Avenue, Room 501. His and Betty Jean's first child, daughter Kathleen, was born in 1950. They would have two more, daughters Mary Carole, born 1951, and Nancy, born 1956.
Atlas Comics
Maneely then found work at publisher Martin GoodmanMartin Goodman (publisher)
Martin Goodman born on was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics....
's Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
predecessor, Timely Comics
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
, as it was transitioning to its 1950s incarnation as Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
. His first published story there was the eight-page Western
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
story "The Kansas Massacre of 1864" in Western Outlaws And Sheriffs #60 (Dec. 1949). However, historian Michael J. Vassallo, dating stories by Atlas' published job-numbers, suggests the first Atlas story to which Maneely contributed was the later-published "The Mystery of the Valley of Giants" in Black Rider
Black Rider
Black Rider may refer to:* The Third Horseman of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse* Black Rider , a Marvel Comics Western character* The Black Rider, a 1990 stage musical by Tom Waits, Robert Wilson and William S...
#8 (March 1950), an 18-page story drawn by many uncredited artists, including Syd Shores
Syd Shores
Sydney Shores was an American comic book artist known for his work on Captain America both during the 1940s, in what fans and historians call the Golden Age of comic books, and during the 1960s Silver Age of comic books....
; Maneely's work appears on page three, with some additional minor inking on five other pages.
Maneely soon hit his stride at Atlas, for which he freelanced before going on staff "in about 1955". Until 1953, when Maneely and his family moved to the Flushing neighborhood in the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
borough of Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, he traveled from Philadelphia to New York three times weekly to pick up scripts. In either 1954 or 1955, the family movie to suburban New Shrewsbury, New Jersey.
With speed to match his style, he became a favorite of editor-in-chief Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
, who assigned Maneely covers and stories throughout virtually the entire range of Atlas comics. With superheroes experiencing a lull in popularity, Maneely drew Westerns, war
War comics
War comics is a genre of comic books that gained popularity in English-speaking countries following World War II.-American war comics:Shortly after the birth of the modern comic book in the mid- to late 1930s, comics publishers began including stories of wartime adventures in the multi-genre...
, horror, humor, romance
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, spy
Spy fiction
Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...
, crime
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
, and even period-adventure stories — that last most notably with the medieval series Black Knight
Black Knight (Sir Percy)
Sir Percy of Scandia, also known as the original Black Knight, is a fictional character in the Marvel Universe. He was a medieval knight created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Joe Maneely.- Publication history :...
, co-created by Maneely and writer and editor-in-chief Lee, and first reprinted in 1960s Marvel Comics at the behest of editor Roy Thomas
Roy Thomas
Roy William Thomas, Jr. is an American comic book writer and editor, and Stan Lee's first successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E...
, who as a teen had "devoured the Black Knight comic, and became an immediate fan."
Herb Trimpe
Herbert W. "Herb" Trimpe Herbert W. "Herb" Trimpe Herbert W. "Herb" Trimpe (b. May 26, 1939, is an American comic book artist and occasional writer, best known for his work on The Incredible Hulk and as the first artist to draw for publication the character Wolverine, who later became a breakout...
, a Marvel artist of that time, said in 2001, "The Black Knight stuff is great! [Fellow artist] Marie
Marie Severin
Marie Severin is an American comic book artist and colorist best known for her work for Marvel Comics and the 1950s' EC Comics....
said his pencils were almost nonexistent; they were like rough, lightly done layouts with no features on the faces ... It was just like ovals and sticks and stuff, and he inked from that. He drew when he inked. That's when he did the work, in the inking!" Columnist and historian Fred Hembeck
Fred Hembeck
Fred Hembeck is an American cartoonist best known for his parodies of characters from major American comic book publishers. His work has frequently been published by the firms whose characters he spoofs. His characters are always drawn with curlicues at the elbows and knees...
said, "While we may've heard of the pivotal day a young
Other Atlas work reprinted widely by Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s include Yellow Claw
Yellow Claw
The Yellow Claw is a fictional comic book supervillain in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Al Feldstein and artist Joe Maneely, the character first appeared in Yellow Claw #1 , published by Atlas Comics, the 1950s predecessor of Marvel.-Publication history:While the...
#1 (Oct. 1956) — starring a Fu Manchu
Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character introduced in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century...
-inspired villain and the Asian FBI agent pursuing him, created by Maneely and writer Al Feldstein
Al Feldstein
Albert B. Feldstein is an American writer, editor, and artist, best known for his work at EC Comics and, from 1956 to 1985, as the editor of the satirical magazine Mad. Since retiring from Mad, Feldstein has concentrated on American paintings of Western wildlife...
— and the Old West Ringo Kid
Ringo Kid
The Ringo Kid is a fictional Western hero in the Marvel Comics' universe, whose comic book series was originally released by the company's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics...
#1-21 (Aug. 1954 - Sept. 1957), co-created with an unknown writer.
The covers of Sub-Mariner Comics #37, 39 and 41 (Dec. 1954, April and Aug. 1955) were Maneely's only superhero work for Atlas, during the company's short-lived mid-1950s attempt to revive superheroes.
Maneely's talent, range and prolificity impressed fellow Atlas artists. Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg is an American comic book artist best known for his work as a flagship artist of Archie Comics and as a Marvel Comics' 1960s colorist, who helped design the original color schemes of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and other major characters.-Career:Stan Goldberg began work in the...
in 2002 recalled "the all-time great Joe Maneely, [...] who I thought was the best artist that ever drew comics. [...] Joe wasn't just a great craftsman; he worked so fast and he was one of the few artists who could go from drawing the Black Knight to drawing Petey the Pest, or a war story. He had an unbelievable knack and he was just one sweet, nice guy". Goldberg recalled in 2005, "He worked so fast, we used to call him 'Joe Money'". Maneely's distinctive style, wrote historian Vassallo, was, "Crisp, uniquely inked, busy, and action oriented. Not necessarily pretty, but vivid. It was a style unique to comics and difficult to imitate". By 1955, "Maneely's inking had stylized itself to a precision 'etching' effect, and he would enter a fruitful year that would see him turn out his most diverse and prolific work".
By the summer of 1957, Atlas was experiencing difficulties and began shedding freelancers. Shortly afterward, Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman (publisher)
Martin Goodman born on was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics....
stopped distributing his own titles and switched to American News Company
American News Company
American News Company was a magazine distribution company founded in 1864 by Sinclair Tousey, which dominated the distribution market in the 1940s and 1950s...
, which soon closed, temporarily leaving Atlas without a distributor and resulting in all staff other than Lee being fired. Maneely continued to work with Lee on the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
-syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Mrs. Lyons' Cubs, which debuted in newspapers February 10, 1958. He also "bought a new home in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
for his young wife and small daughters" and did a limited amount of freelancing for DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
(Gang Busters
Gang Busters
Gang Busters was an American dramatic radio program heralded as "the only national program that brings you authentic police case histories." It premiered as G-Men, sponsored by Chevrolet, on July 20, 1935.-History:...
#62, House of Mystery
House of Mystery
The House of Mystery is the name of several horror-mystery-suspense anthology comic book series. It had a companion series, House of Secrets.-Genesis:...
#71-73, House of Secrets #9, Tales of the Unexpected
Tales of the Unexpected (comics)
Tales of the Unexpected was a science fiction comic book published by DC Comics from 1956 to 1968 for 104 issues. It was later renamed The Unexpected although the numbering continued and it ended at issue 222, in 1982...
#22, cover-dated from February to April 1958); Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...
(Cowboy Western #67, Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
, Frontier Marshal #20, both March 1958); and Crestwood Publications
Crestwood Publications
Crestwood Publications, also known as Feature Publications, was a magazine publisher that also published comic books from the 1940s through the 1960s. Its title Prize Comics contained what is considered the first ongoing horror comic-book feature, Dick Briefer's "Frankenstein"...
.
Maneely also drew a four-page comic about Social Security
Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...
for the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, "John's First Job" (1956), and another for the same agency, "A Farm and a Family".
Death
On the night of his death, "past midnight of what was early Sunday morning," June 7, 1958, Maneely had dined hours earlier with fellow laid-off Atlas colleagues, including George Ward and John SeverinJohn Severin
John Powers Severin is an American comic book artist noted for his distinctive work with EC Comics, primarily on the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat; for Marvel Comics, primarily on its war and Western comics; and for the satiric magazine Cracked...
, in Manhattan. He did not have his glasses with him, and was killed when he accidentally fell between the cars of a moving commuter train on his way home to New Jersey.
Fellow Atlas artist Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg is an American comic book artist best known for his work as a flagship artist of Archie Comics and as a Marvel Comics' 1960s colorist, who helped design the original color schemes of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and other major characters.-Career:Stan Goldberg began work in the...
recalled that on the night of Maneely's death,
His last original published story was the five-page Ringo Kid
Ringo Kid
The Ringo Kid is a fictional Western hero in the Marvel Comics' universe, whose comic book series was originally released by the company's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics...
tale "One Bullet Left" in Gunsmoke Western #53 (July 1959), and his final comics work was the cover of Gunsmoke Western #55 (Nov. 1959), featuring Kid Colt
Kid Colt
Kid Colt is the name of two fictional characters in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The first is a cowboy whose adventures have taken place in numerous western themed comic book series published by Marvel...
and Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
. Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
opined in the early 2000s that had Maneely lived, "he would have been another Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
. He would have been the best you could imagine".
External links
- Joe Maneely at the Lambiek Comiclopedia
- Joe Maneely at AtlasTales.com
- Joe Maneely at the Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index
- Vassallo, Michael J. "What If? Joe Maneely: Marvel's Forgotten Star", Comicartville Library, n.d. WebCitation archive.