Bob Bolling

Who is Bob Bolling?

Bob Bolling is an American comic artist and writer best known for his work in Archie Comics. He created the company's popular spinoff title Little Archie.

Bolling was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from Vesper George Art School in Boston. His first job in comics was assisting cartoonist George Shedd on the adventure comic strip Marlin Keel. In 1954 he began freelancing for Archie Comics, writing and drawing joke pages. Deciding that Bolling was better at drawing children than adults or teenagers, Archie editor Harry Shorten assigned him to work on Pat the Brat, a comic about a child with an obvious resemblance to Dennis the Menace.

In 1956, Archie publisher John Goldwater decided to do a comic about the adventures of Archie as a little boy. Shorten asked Bolling to create designs for Archie and his friends as small children. When the designs were approved by Goldwater and Shorten, Bolling was assigned to write and draw the first issue of Little Archie. After the debut issue was a success, Bolling was assigned full-time to Little Archie, and was permitted to sign his stories starting with the second issue.

From 1957 to 1965, Bolling worked exclusively on Little Archie, writing, drawing, inking and lettering approximately half the stories in each giant-sized quarterly issue. Bolling also drew the covers for most issues. Bolling created a number of characters who had no counterparts in the "big" Archie universe at the time, including Little Archie's dog Spotty, Betty's cat Caramel, Little Archie's "picked-on pal" Ambrose Pipps, Betty's siblings Chick and Polly Cooper, and the South Side Serpents, a gang of tough kids who frequently went to war against Little Archie's "Good Ol' Gang." In issue # 24, he created his most popular recurring villain, Mad Doctor Doom, a green-skinned mad scientist trying to take over the world with the help of his dimwitted assistant Chester. The character made his debut at "approximately the same time" as Marvel Comics' Victor Von Doom.