I was reading two Archie stories in a row, and both had "unknown" under the artist and/or pencilled credit. How in the world could ACP not know who did the artwork? It just seems odd...

For a small company like Archie Comics, it probably isn't easy searching through 75+ years worth of files, comics and other records to find out who did what in the hundreds of comics they've printed.  Some of it is bound to slip through the cracks.

Quote from: SAGG on July 07, 2017, 11:36:46 PM
I was reading two Archie stories in a row, and both had "unknown" under the artist and/or pencilled credit. How in the world could ACP not know who did the artwork? It just seems odd...

The credits you DO see aren't always 100% correct, either. I know I catch mis-identified art credits on stories every so often, so you have to wonder about the other credits as well. I doubt that they have complete accounting records of who was paid for what story in which issue, so probably a lot of what's credited is based on Vic Gorelick's memory, or some digest editor's guesswork.

This made me recall a digest story that had an obviously phony name credited as the Letterer.  I wish I had made an actual note of it at the time, but forgot.  I do believe it was Fernando's art, but don't recall the story itself.   

For many, many years Archie stories went uncredited and there were no records kept as to who did what on these stories.  This was especially the case with artists who didn't produce the volume of work of DeCarlo and Lucey. I know I've been present when the digest production crew's only option was to run certain stories past Victor Gorelick and hope that he remembered who worked on them. For the most part, he usually did!


For some reason, this problem with the credits extended to stories published as recently as the 90's. Occasionally, I was asked to confirm if I'd written or drawn a particular story that there was a question about.


In spite of this, I know mistakes were made and I've seen my name credited with work I haven't done. Most commonly, I'm credited as the writer on stories I haven't written.