RIP Stan Goldberg

Stan Goldberg, whose art delighted generations of readers of Marvel and Archie comics, died yesterday at the age of 82.

Born in 1932, Goldberg went to work as a colorist for Timely Comics (which later became Marvel) in 1949, at the age of 16, and he stayed with the company as it became Atlas and then Marvel comics. In the late 1950s he went freelance, but he continued to work at Marvel and is responsible for the color schemes of both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. He also drew a number of Marvel’s teen comics, including Kathy the Teenage Tornado and Millie the Model. He stopped freelancing for Marvel in 1969 and moved to DC for a year, where he worked on similar titles, then shifted to Archie, where he was the primary artist on Archie, the flagship title from the mid-1990s to 2006. He worked on two of Archie’s most famous titles, the Archie Meets the Punisher crossover and the original Archie Marries Veronica/Archie Marries Betty series that led to the highly acclaimed Life With Archie stories about the Riverdale gang in their 20s. He also drew the Archie newspaper strip.

Goldberg stopped working for Archie in 2010, apparently not by choice, but he found plenty of work drawing the Nancy Drew and Three Stooges comics for Papercutz. And he actually has one more comic yet to be published: A Spider-Man story written by Tom DeFalco and illustrated by Goldberg will be included in Marvel’s 75th Anniversary Special, due out in October.

Here’s a roundup of obituaries and appreciations:

Stan Goldberg’s Facebook Page
Stan Goldberg 1932-2014 (Archie Comics Facebook)
Stan Goldberg 1932-2014 (National Cartoonists Society
Stan Goldberg, R.I.P., by Mark Evanier (News from ME)
Legendary Comics Artist Stan Goldberg Passes Away, by Kevin Melrose (Comic Book Resources)
Farewell, Stan Goldberg, by Craig Yoe and Steve Thompson (13th Dimension)
R.I.P. Famed Archie Comics Artist Stan Goldberg, 1932-2014, by Russ Burlingame (Comicbook.com)

Filed under: News