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KATHLEEN WEBB IN RIVERDALE WITH BETTY AND VERONICA
by Jennifer Contino (Pulse)
Kathleen Webb is writing and sometimes drawing two of Archie's leading ladies adventures monthly in the pages of Betty and Veronica. We find out how she got into comics and landed that notable gig.
Webb, like a lot of us comic fans, remembers getting her comics at the local drugstore. She was lucky enough to have a mother who bought her and her sister, whatever caught their eye on the racks and said in their house, "there was a bottom drawer in the kitchen devoted solely to our comics."
"The Classics Illustrated Junior — my absolute favorites were The Little Mermaid and The Elf Mound," Webb continued. "We also had the very first issue of the Fantastic Four! My sister was the one who started collecting Archie Comics around about 1965. I started collecting Betty & Veronica and Marvel Comic’s Millie the Model in 1967, when I was about nine or ten years old. I wanted to be a cartoonist 'just like Charles Schulz' when I was nine. I started seriously thinking about writing for comics when Dan Decarlo encouraged me to write a story for Archie in the summer of 1985. My actual goal has always been to both write and draw comics."
Speaking of Dan Decarlo, he's responsible for Webb breaking into the industry. She wrote him a fan letter of sorts in 1985 and that opened a door to communications. "Dan had always been my favorite Archie artist from when I was a kid and first started collecting Betty and Veronica," Webb said. "That year, after Archie published a story about the Archie characters visiting the Archie offices (published in their long-defunct Pep title), I decided to write Dan and let him know how much I appreciated his work. He called me from New York, and said he felt I had talent, and he wanted to help me get work at Archie. That summer he had me 'sub' under him doing a couple of fashion pages (I’d do the pencils, he’d correct them and ink them, then pay me for my work). Then he encouraged me to write a script, as he thought I also had ability in that area, and in September of 1985 I sold my first script to Archie."
"Well, my first script was rejected—only because it was too short and crammed with dialogue," she quickly added. "Victor Gorelick, the editor at Archie, called me and encouraged me to write another story and submit it. He said that among the female writers they had at that time submitting work to Archie, I showed the most talent, so he wanted to encourage me to try again. I did, and my second story sold ('Fashionable Date,' published in Betty & Me). I later took the first story he’d rejected and rewrote it, stretching it out to five pages and cutting the dialogue. It sold, too."
Webb said what thrilled her the most about working at Archie Comics on Betty and Veronica was the fact that she was writing stories about characters she grew up reading and enjoying. "Even better, I now had Dan Decarlo, whom I’d learned from artistically and admired so much over the years, drawing the stories I was writing!"
"[I enjoy] playing Betty and Veronica off of each other," Webb continued. "Their personalities are so different, it’s fun to pit them against one another. That, and I get to write about 'girl stuff' as much as I want."
Webb has also added characters to the mythos of Betty and Veronica. "I created the 'Sugar Plum Faery,' who appears each Christmas to try and help characters find their Christmas spirit. I also created 'Lady Penny,' a character who appeared first in the early 'Veronica' books, when she traveled all over the world. And in the eighties I helped bring back two of the characters Bob Bolling had created in the early sixties in the Little Archie books — Betty’s sister Polly and her brother Chic."
Webb enjoys working on this series because it's good, "clean" fun. Aside from her work on Archie Comics, the talented writer has also done several art pieces for the entertainment medium. "I did a wee bit of art for Marvel’s Barbie comic years ago," She said. "Also wrote and drew some stuff for Nate Butler’s Alpha-Omega Christian comics — a one-page piece on 'super-heroes' of the Bible, and a spoof on soap operas. And for ten years I wrote, inked, penciled and colored on computer a one-page monthly comic entitled, Holly and the Ivy Halls, for BRIO, a magazine for teen girls. Holly was about a sixteen year old redheaded freckled girl, her friend Jazz, and their adventures both in and out of school. Since BRIO was a Christian magazine, Holly reflected those values."
Interested PULSE readers can learn more about Webb at her official website. Along with working on Betty and Veronica monthly Webb said she has a few other projects she'd like to complete. "I’ve been tinkering with a story titled, 'Yume Dream,' (pronounced 'you-may') that I’d love to see published someday. I started doing it in an American style of art in color, then changed that and went to a more manga-style in black and white."
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