As you may have noted from today's (December 19) "Today in Toons", this is the anniversary of Dan DeCarlo's death. I remember the day well. He'd been suing Archie Comics for ownership of what is perhaps his most personal creation — the one he named for, and modeled after, his beloved wife, Josie. That's not why I remember the day so well, but I'll fill in the story before getting to that.

It seems Archie had just come out with a live-action feature film about Josie, and didn't give her creator a red cent. I don't know if the money meant a lot to him or not, but when a company claims a guy's dearest creation was simply a project assigned to him by an editor, it's got to feel pretty darned bad.

And the company didn't leave it at that. They got pretty vindictive about being challenged by a mere writer and artist — even the one who one who created the house style they instructed all their artists to emulate, throughout the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s.

They even fired him! Or, as one does with a freelance artist, let him know he wouldn't get assignments from them anymore. For disputing their ownership of his creation, he found himself out of work at age 80. What's more, they dropped him from their history, and refused to acknowledge his many contributions to what the company is today. He became what George Orwell called an un-person.

Of course, nobody with the talent of Dan DeCarlo can be out of work for long in the comics industry. The moment news got out that he was free, he was deluged with job offers. But still, it was an unnecessary slap in the face to a man they'd already succeeded in defeating in court.

The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned him down again. I read that in Splash, the now-defunct site where I got most of my comics industry news at the time. The next day, I read that he'd taken his case to a higher authority. I thought, whaddya mean, "higher". American authorities don't get higher than — oh, no!

Yes, that was the event we're marking the sixth anniversary of today. But I haven't explained why I remember it so well, have I? Nor why I titled this entry what I did.

Remember the story of The Monkey's Paw? It would grant wishes, but the wishing party never liked the way they came out.

Well, this happened to be a "slow anniversary day" when I opened this site. I only had one item for the date, and it seemed factually shaky. I used that one item for the first year's "Today in Toons", but hoped I'd find more for 2002, or that something notable would happen.

Well, I got my wish, all right. But I didn't like it one little bit.

— DDM