Comic book artist Violet Barclay (aka Valerie Barclay) has died at the age of 88. Ms. Barclay was born in New York on November 5, 1922. She attended the School of Industrial Arts in that city but was unable to find work in that area after graduation. In 1941, Mike Sekowsky — who had recently begun drawing for Timely Comics (now Marvel), discovered his old classmate working as a restaurant hostess and got her a job inking for Timely. She worked there until 1949, then freelanced for other companies including Standard Comics, DC, St. John, Ace and ACG. When work became scarce in the field around 1954, she got out and worked as a model and a waitress until breaking into fashion illustration, mainly doing advertising art for some of the nation's leading clothing lines. She died February 26.
I'm afraid I don't have an illustration available that I'm sure represents Ms. Barclay's artwork. The panel above right is from a 1954 issue of Complete Love, published by Ace, and it's often offered as being both pencilled and inked by her. Is it? I don't think the pencilling is. The inking might be. She didn't have that distinctive or consistent a style and a lot of what has been identified as her work was clearly done by Chic Stone, who worked for Timely at the same time. Someone needs to research this better than I can.
Beyond her credits, Ms. Barclay is known today for a couple of reasons. One is that in his 1947 book Secrets Behind the Comics, Stan Lee introduced her as the "Glamorous Girl Inker" of several of the comics he was then editing. Women were rare in comics then and it was startling to some that there were any, let alone that one was glamorous. Another point of interest for some were the stories of romantic triangles in and around comic book company offices. Sekowsky was usually one point of a triangle and she was another. In a 2004 interview with Alter Ego and in other conversations, Barclay told some of those stories and they may well have been accurate. Then again, I know Sekowsky, with absolutely no anger towards her, remembered certain incidents in an entirely different manner.
I'm in no position to judge whose memories were more correct, nor is it much of my business. The one time I spoke to Ms. Barclay, she phoned me to ask how Mike was. She'd heard he was not well (he wasn't) and she heard I knew him (I did) and she still had great affection for him (and vice-versa). We had a nice conversation about him and about her career and she asked me to give him a big hug and a kiss for her (I didn't).
Mike told me his versions of the same history. I'm not sure I remember them well enough to repeat them and if I did, I wouldn't because he always refused to talk about her for public consumption. I did one formal interview with Mike "on background," meaning that I promised him it would never be quoted directly. He was unhesitant in telling me how certain people in comics were, to him, liars and cheaters and he even accused some of the kinds of deeds for which people go to prison. But about Violet Barclay, he would only say she was a sweet, wonderful lady. Maybe I ought to leave it at that.