JOE MANEELY: AN ICON
ORIGINAL COVER ART OF NAVY COMBAT #6
gunsmoke western #55, maneely’s last published cover art
JOE MANEELY
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JOE MANEELY 〰️
Joe Maneely was born into a very poor family in Philadelphia on February 18, 1926. In his 32 years of life that was tragically cut short, he earned himself quite a name in the world of comic creators. His earliest known comic work was illustrating a weekly strip for his Catholic High School’s newspaper, where he also designed the mascot. After dropping out of school his sophomore year, he enlisted in the Navy and served three years as a visual aid specialist. After his discharge, he went on to study advertising art at the Hussian School of Art in Philly— from there, he entered the world of illustrating comics, initially freelancing for Street and Smith publications in 1948.
Best known for his work for Atlas Comics, he co-created characters such as the Black Knight, The Ringo Kid, and The Yellow Claw— he penciled and inked numerous covers and full stories, excelling in the domain of the War & Western comics that I’ve come to love— needless to say, I truly think Maneely was one of the greats. Alongside him at Atlas were legendary creators Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr. and Stan Lee.
“Joe Maneely to me would have been the next Jack Kirby. He could draw anything, and make anything look exciting, and I actually think he was even faster than Jack.”
Being assigned projects from all genres that Atlas was publishing, Maneely’s work was especially popular amongst the War, Western, and Horror crowd— his original adventure stories, like the Black Knight and Yellow Claw surely may have been his most notable work at the time it was published. Marie Severin, who had worked closely with Maneely had once stated that “his pencils were almost nonexistent. they were rough, lightly done layouts with no features on the faces… it was just ovals and sticks and stuff, and he inked from that. He did the work in the inking!” His only known Superhero work for Atlas consisted of three covers of Sub-Mariner Comics (#37, #39, and #41) during Atlas’s attempt to revive timely’s war title.
Maneely went on staff with Atlas in about 1955— Before then, as a freelancer, he would travel from Philadelphia to New York three times a week to pick up his scripts. Eventually, he moved his family to Queens and then to a suburb in New Jersey. Sadly, on June 7th, 1958, a little past midnight, Maneely had left a dinner with fellow laid-off Atlas employees to catch a train home. Having lost his glasses the week prior, Joe was killed when he fell between the cars of a moving train on his way back home to New Jersey. He left behind his wife (whom was his childhood sweetheart) and their three daughters.
Years after his death, Stan Lee reiterated that had Joe Maneely lived, “he would have been another Jack Kirby. He would have been the best you could imagine.”
joe maneely, 1945
splash page from maneely’s last published story, two-gun kid #45
