After about twenty issues of Josie, they decided to pay me.

I designed all the characters, anyway, and Frank Doyle was doing all the writing. I didn’t have any more input on what direction they were going to go with Josie.

The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.

What made me want to go into doing comics was I was working as a laborer with my father, a gardener.

When I found this opportunity to answer the ad, I got the job and I’ve been there ever since.

I brought samples in, because I didn’t have any comic book samples, and I brought all these illustrations that I had influenced by Norman Rockwell and a couple of the other big boys. That’s all I had, that’s all I brought.

Then is when I decided to take it to Archie to see if they could do it as a comic book. I showed it to Richard Goldwater, and he showed it to his father, and a day or two later I got the OK to do it as a comic book.

Then he took me off Jeannie and he gave me Millie the Model. That was a big break for me. It wasn’t doing to well and somehow when I got on it became quite successful.

There were eleven publishers in New York City, and when it was all over, I think it went down to four or five, and then finally just the three of them, the Big Three.

I started working with Timely in 1946. Stan Lee hired me.

That’s the problem today: Who is the creator?

Because they feel that without them telling you to do this, you wouldn’t have had the characters that you have, you wouldn’t have the book that you have.

Once publishers got interested in it, it was a year in developing, and it was launched, I think, in 1960. But Willie Lumpkin didn’t last long – it only last a little better than a year, maybe a year and a half.

After about twenty issues of Josie, they decided to pay me.