For most of my long career of caring entirely too much about comic books I didn’t care about Dan DeCarlo. At first I didn’t know who he was and when I finally found out I didn’t care. As previously established growing up I was a straight up superhero guy and not only didn’t I have any use for Archie Comics they kind of actively creeped me out. But when when the day finally came and I ‘got’ DeCarlo’s work a light bulb didn’t just go on over my head it exploded; Literally overnight I became a huge fan of his work and quickly devoured what his work for Archie. Especially She’s Josie, the comic from whichJosie and the Pussycats sprang. Then I discovered the work he did for Atlas comics during the 1950′s on titles ranging from Homer the Happy Ghost to Showgirls.

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Showgirls ran only two issues and served as a kind of oddball anthology title for all of the Atlas pretty girl characters; I say “oddball” because the title is a misnomer seeing as how the only proper showgirl in it was Sherry Storm (who I’d really like to think is a distant relation of Susan and Johnny Storm and one day Ben Grimm will wake up one morning and find her stockings drying in a Baxter Building bathroom).

Cover of the movie Showgirls (No Relation)

Sherry starred in two short-lived series of her own, Sherry the Showgirl one in ‘56 and another in ‘57, both of which ran exactly three issues. Millie and Chili were models,Patty Powers was an actress, Hazel was a cigarette girl and My Girl Pearl was a professional dumb blonde.

Well to be fair Pearl was a little more than that; she was undoubtedly one of the most blatant rip-offs in comic book history. My Girl Pearl was a clone of My Friend Irma, a then popular radio/television series that spawned a pair of successful feature films. If the property is known at all today it’s due to the fact that the first one was the movie debut of the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The major difference between the two stupid girls was while Irma was Gracie Allen kooky Pearl was just a vehicle for the really lame dumb jokes that Stan Lee relied upon in lieu of actual comedy material back in the 50’s. Between 1950 and 1955 Marvel/Atlas published 47 issues of My Friend irma and between 1955 and 1961 Atlas/Marvel published 11 issues of My Girl Pearl.