Date With Debbi #5

Date With Debbi #5 (On Sale: July 17, 1969) has a cover by Samm Schwartz. Is it just me, or does that pose, that posture on the cover remind you of Alley Oop?

Editor Dick Giordano, you just couldn't trust him. A throwaway Archie rip-off like Date with Debbi should not be as interesting as this book ends up being. For sure I wish I owned a copy. Subversion had finally come to DC, and it came wearing the mask of innocence called Date with Debbi. 

We begin with an untitled seven-page Debbi story drawn by John Rosenberger. That is followed by the five-page "Debbi Meets the Hawk" by Henry Boltinoff, John Rosenberger and Henry Scarpelli, which was reprinted in Best of DC #53. We next have Debbi in the seven-page "Who's Flirting?"  by persons unknown. that is 19 pages of Debbi, zero pages of subversion.

Lastly we come to a four-page story featuring a character called Flowers, which is drawn by L. Stuchkus and Frank McLaughlin. My guess would be that Stuchkus also wrote it. This is the subversion you were looking for.

This is the first DC work by L. Stuchkus who would do one more Flowers story in the next issue. In the early 1980s Stuchkus would work on a daily newspaper strip entitled Chip's Place. What other work Stuchkus did I do not know.

What I do know is this story is loaded with not so hidden drug references that somehow made it past the CCA.

This is also the first DC work for Frank McLaughlin who would go on to ink more than 365 stories for DC in the next 26 years. McLaughlin is another of the Dick Giordano imports from Charlton, where McLaughlin got his start in comics.

He became Charlton's art director working under Giordano and worked on such books as Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Sun of Vulcan, The Fightin' Five and Sarge Steel, it is his co-creation of Judo Master with Joe Gill for which McLaughlin's stint at Charlton is remembered.
McLaughlin remained the art director at Charlton through 1972, despite also working for DC during this period.

Despite his skills as a penciler, Frank McLaughlin was only utilized as an inker at DC and besides his work on Date With Debbie and Debbi's Dates, he is mainly remembered for long stints on Action Comics Weekly, Flash, Batman, Detective Comics, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, the Justice League of America, Wonder Woman and World's Finest Comics. His last work at DC was on Batman: Shadow of the Bat #39 in 1995.

At Marvel McLaughlin inked Captain America, Captain Marvel and The Defenders. He also did articles and pencils and inks for Marvel's black and white The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.

Frank McLaughlin has also had a long career in newspaper strips. He was an assistant on The Heart of Juliet Jones. He also worked on Brenda Starr, Nancy and The World's Greatest Superheroes.
As an author he was written How to Draw Those Bodacious Bad Babes of Comics and How to Draw Monsters for Comics both with Mike Gold.

Edited by Dick Giordano.