Bob Bolling

Mr. Bolling received the Inkpot Award in 2005 in recognition of his work on Little Archie. He was presented with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2022.

In 1979, Archie Comics began to give Mr. Bolling more work as a writer-artist, starting by returning him to Little Archie on a part-time basis. From 1983 to 1985 he both wrote and drew Archie and Me, injecting the title with drama and adventure as well as comedy, and bringing some Little Archie characters, including Spotty, into the "big" Archie universe. In between Archie assignments, Mr. Bolling wrote and drew the first two issues of Marvel Comics' Wally the Wizard. Mr. Bolling continued to contribute stories and artwork to Archie Comics well beyond "retirement age". By the time he was in his mid-80s, he still contributed, though eventually tapered off, and is now officially retired.

In 1965, Mr. Bolling was relieved of his duties on Little Archie (Dexter Taylor took over the title full-time) and moved to the regular Archie comics. After getting tips from both Dan DeCarlo and Harry Lucey on how to draw the teenaged Archie characters, he spent the next decade and a half drawing stories for such titles as Archie's Pals and Gals, sometimes from his own scripts, but more often from scripts by Frank Doyle.

From 1957 to 1965, Mr. Bolling worked exclusively on Little Archie, writing, drawing, inking and lettering approximately half the stories in each giant-sized quarterly issue. (Most of the other stories were written and drawn by Dexter Taylor, Mr. Bolling's former roommate.) Mr. Bolling also drew the covers for most issues. Mr. 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 Chic 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.

In 1956, Archie publisher John Goldwater decided to do a comic about the adventures of Archie as a little boy. Shorten asked Mr. 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, Mr. Bolling was assigned full-time to Little Archie, and was permitted to sign his stories starting with the second issue.

Mr. 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 Mr. 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.

Bob Bolling (born June 9, 1928) is an American cartoonist best known for his work in Archie Comics. He created the company's popular spin-off title Little Archie.