R-WAD for April 27th 2011: Stan Goldberg

So, it's random Wikipedia article day and today's random Wikipedia article is on a man by the name of Stan Goldberg

This guy!

So, if you're looking at the picture and thinking "eeeeeeewwwwww, he's an old guy." Then first, I have to agree with you, he is old. Second, do you know who else is old? Stan Lee, yeah, the guy who's responsible for all your favorite superheros that aren't Superman or Batman. "Why are you talking about Stan Lee in an article about ugly old Stan Goldberg," you ask? Well because this guy is responsible for Spider-man wearing red and blue. And I quote: "Stan [Lee] was writing Fantastic Four, Spider-man and all those books. I was doing the initial colouring on all those books; I was creating the colour schemes on all those characters" (Adelai Comics and Books). That's right, this guy put The Fantastic Four in blue, and Spider-man in red and blue. Also, he spells color weird, especially weird since he was born in New York.

Anyway, Stan started out working  for Timely Comics (which was essentially the baby form to Marvel's full-grown adult) in 1949. In two years he had worked his way into the position of coloring-department manager and was in charge of, as he put it, coloring "every cover the rest of the decade," and during that time Timely Comics grew into the adolescent form, Atlas Comics.

In 1958 Stan went freelance and eventually ended up doing a lot of the coloring for Marvel. In 1968 he stopped doing freelance work for Marvel and then started being more associated with the Archie comics. He's did work for the Archie Comics up until mid-2006, since then it seems he's slowed down but still does a little bit of freelance work from time to time.

I get the feeling that a man like that never really grows up, sure he has to deal with adult issues, (bills, bills, bills, etc.) and now, because of his age (he'll be 79 on May 5th this year) he probably even has to deal with old person issues, (liver spots, sciatica, lumbago, rutabaga, asparagus, etc.) but he still probably finds the time and energy to add his own little touch to a few comics here and there. If there's one lesson I can learn from Stan Goldberg it's this. Never grow up, but even if you do, add a bit of you as a kid to everything you do.