Date with Debbi #4
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeDate with Debbi #4 (cover-dated August 1969) is a representative entry in DC Comics' deliberate late-1960s effort to compete directly with Archie Comics in the teen humor genre — a market the publisher had last seriously contested with A Date with Judy (1947–1960). The series, including this issue, stands as an artifact of DC's Silver Age humor line under editor-in-chief Carmine Infantino and editor Dick Giordano, a line that earned real industry recognition when Henry Scarpelli won the 1970 Shazam Award for Best Inker (Humor Division) in part for his contributions to this title. The issue's cover, handled by Samm Schwartz, drew on a recycled pool of ideas that reached back to DC's own earlier teen romance titles — a self-conscious continuity of house style that also documented the limits of DC's ability to dislodge Archie from its dominance of that readership. As one of the earlier issues in a run that spawned a concurrent spin-off (Debbi's Dates), #4 appeared precisely at the moment the franchise was expanding outward, making it a useful marker of the imprint's brief commercial ambition.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Date with Debbi launched in January–February 1969 under Carmine Infantino's editorial leadership at DC, with Dick Giordano serving as the line editor throughout the run. Issue #4, on sale May 22, 1969, arrived just as the companion title Debbi's Dates was also getting underway, reflecting a short-lived strategy of saturating the teen humor market with simultaneous Debbi-branded product. Samm Schwartz, who had spent time at Tower Comics drawing that publisher's teen humor books before Tower folded, brought Archie-adjacent draftsmanship to both covers and interiors during the series' early phase before returning to Archie Comics proper — giving the DC title a brief but authentic connection to the genre's visual vernacular. Cover lettering and logo design across the run were handled by veteran DC letterer Gaspar Saladino, whose work gave the book its distinctive display identity.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated August 1969; on-sale date was May 22, 1969, per multiple database records.
- The issue runs 36 pages and contains multiple short stories, including 'T.V. or Not T.V.,' 'And the Beat Goes On!,' 'Double Standard,' and 'Tennis Bums!'
- Creative contributors on this issue include writers/artists Henry Boltinoff and Phil Mendez, pencillers John Rosenberger and Jack Sparling, and cover art by Samm Schwartz, with lettering credited to Gaspar Saladino.
- Dick Giordano served as editor and Carmine Infantino as editor-in-chief — the same editorial pairing overseeing DC's broader late-1960s genre diversification.
- The series consciously positioned itself as DC's answer to Archie Comics' teen humor dominance, and the title itself was a direct homage to DC's own earlier teen series A Date with Judy (1947–1960).
- Samm Schwartz, who pencilled this issue's cover, was a veteran of Archie Comics best known for Jughead, lending the book credibility in the teen humor idiom during his brief tenure at DC.
- The parent series ran 18 issues (1969–1972); a concurrent spin-off, Debbi's Dates, ran 11 issues (1969–1971), with both titles cancelled as DC wound down its entire humor line in 1971–1972.
- The series earned industry recognition: Henry Scarpelli received the 1970 Shazam Award for Best Inker (Humor Division) partly for his work on Date with Debbi and its sister titles.
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Reprinted in The Best of DC #39 (1983)
Key issues in Date with Debbi
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