Redartz: Hello, everyone! Today we're looking at a big feature of the Bronze Age for many of us, Archie Comics. It's quite possible that some of you may never have picked up an Archie book, so for you, there will be a plethora of covers and a bit of a general overview to clue you in.
The first Archie comic I ever bought was the first issue of "Archie's TV Laugh-Out", from September 1969. At that time I (like many kids) was a big fan of the Archie saturday morning television cartoon, and had also gotten caught up in "Sabrina the Teen-age Witch". Seeing that this new comic featured Sabrina, I gave it a shot. At that time I was buying a scattershot variety of books from Marvel, DC, Harvey and Gold Key, but hadn't tried Archie yet. It turned out this comic was but the first of many.
By the end of 1970 I'd dropped all the Marvel and DC books, and was only buying a couple Disney and Little Lulu books. But I replaced that comic reading with Archie titles, quickly being enticed by the Archie's Band covers, Sabrina, and also Josie and the Pussycats (I was living proof of the merchandising potential of Saturday morning cartoons). I was amazed at the huge number of comics out each month featuring Arch, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, and all the rest. And it didn't take long for me to discern some differences between the books.
And on that note, let's take a brief look at the array of Archie publications on the stands in the Bronze Age...
Since we've mentioned "Archie's TV Laugh-Out", we'll start with that. It basically featured a couple of stories with Sabrina, rounded out with a variety of short features with Archie and the gang. Some issues also featured "Archie's Band" stories. It was one of many "Giant" sized books published by Archie.
Continuing with the tv theme, "Josie and the Pussycats" was another book I picked up frequently. Starring the characters from the Saturday morning show, it presented adventures and pitfalls aplenty. Incidentally, Josie had been published for years prior to the tv show, but the book really took off when the Pussycats joined in.
Adventurous stories were also to be found in two regular-sized Archie books, "Life With Archie" and "Archie at Riverdale High". "Life" began back in the early 60's, and had featured stories with "Pureheart the Powerful" and the Archie gang as superpowered heroes. The book used many book-length stories, a big difference from many other Archie titles that generally contained several short humor stories. In 1972, "Riverdale High" joined "Life" in carrying these more dramatic tales.
Like Marvel and DC, Archie published a giant-sized Annual each year. This one starred Archie, others highlighted Jughead, Betty and Veronica. These giants were full of stories of varying lengths, generally humor stories and gag strips.
"Archie Giant Series" was an ongoing series with a rotating lineup of monthly titles. Here are two, "The World of Archie" and "Betty and Veronica's Christmas Spectacular". Each holiday season saw several Christmas themed books, with famously festive covers.
"Pep" and "Laugh" both were long-lived titles originating in the Golden age when Archie was published by MLJ comics. During the Bronze age they contained comic stories of various lengths, gag strips, pin ups, and so forth.
"Archie's Joke Book" is a bit different from the other Archie titles. It focused on single panel, multi-panel or single page gags, with no longer stories. Basically it was exactly what it promised: a joke book.
"Little Archie" obviously presented stories about Archie and his retinue as children. This book gained a big following for the clever, adventurous tales by writer/artist Bob Bolling...
"Archie and Me" was a book devoted to stories involving Riverdale High School's principal Mr. Weatherbee. There also was a "Reggie and Me", starring Archie's perennial rival Reggie.
"Jughead" was the best place to find stories about Archie's best friend, the hamburger-loving Jughead Jones. "Juggie" owns a level of popularity rivaling that of Arch himself. Jug was always my personal favorite character. Maybe it was the hat.
Now how can we discuss Archie comics without mentioning his two loves, Betty and Veronica? The girls have been the stars of several books all their own, primarily "Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica". Betty also starred in "Betty and Me", and in the 80's, both girls had titles of their own. "Betty and Veronica" seems to be a popular title for collectors; vintage issues bringing some premium prices. Incidentally, this issue of "Betty and Me" had an interesting storyline: a parody of the then-current soap opera "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman". Called "Betty Cooper, Betty Cooper", the feature ran over the course of several months, and took Betty through some pretty strange scenarios. Oh, if you're wondering "Betty or Veronica?" For me, it's always been Betty. No contest.
Finally, here's an issue of "Archie Comics Digest". Archie publications made great use of the digest format starting in 1973, and continuing even today. As a matter of fact, the current Marvel Comics digests being sold (finally) in stores and newsstands are actually published by Archie Comics. They know how to do digests..
Okay, so now you've seen some of the massive presence Archie Andrews had on the spinner racks throughout our youthful years. Did any of these, or other Archie titles, find their way into your reading stacks? Which were your favorite characters? Did you watch the tv cartoons? Share your thoughts and memories, and I'll tell Miss Grundy to go easy on you.
14 comments:
Hi All!! My Archie reading was happen stance back in the day. I never bought one! BUT.,,
Around the year 2002 I went into this guys model car shop and he had a whole spinner of Archie’s from the 60s and 70s for sale at 5 for a dollar or so! I bought a handful, my young son and daughter to them like fish to water and are still huge Archie fans 15 years later!
Also the NEW Archie series by Matk Waid the past few years is DYN-O-MITE! Love it and I buy it monthly... for me! (We’re empty nesters now)
While I don't think I ever purchased a single Archie Comic myself (until purchasing a big box-full on ebay for HBGirl about 12 years ago), they somehow still resonate as a constant childhood presence from, really, before I could read. And they were ALWAYS at the barber shop, and our dentist's office had a stack on-hand, and my dad would bring home the ones he'd confiscated from kids at school. And babysitters would often have them in hand. As Red points out, there were SO MANY titles, and they were always around, y'know? A perpetual element in the childhood landscape.
I stuck with that original cartoon on Saturday mornings, although I'm not sure why-- I don't recall actually liking it a whole lot-- and never, ever bought that the "Band" voices were the "character" voices at all-- even as a little kid it made me roll my eyes. Sabrina was better. . . and Josie & the Pussycats was pretty good, IMO-- well-paced, MUCH better scripts, and the voice-acting was much less old-school-kiddie-show. Plus the JOSIE songs were not bad, y'know? (Sort of like some of the final-chase songs in the first season of Scooby-Doo--- "wait, how can I be liking this song. . . when I don't like the whole gratuitous convention of sticking a song in to eat up the clock?") ("And how can I be using a word like 'gratuitous' when I'm, like, 8 years old??")
And while I haven't been watching RIVERDALE at all (got halfway through the first episode, and it was SO much like TWIN PEAKS that I couldn't stand it anymore-- and jumped over to SUPERGIRL), I do appreciate that it represents yet another incarnation of these characters and there world, which have been with us since the month that the U.S. entered World War II.
My own non-super-hero diversion, Red, was a brief but intense foray for a bit over a year into Harvey's SAD SACK-verse. Much the same experience as yours with Archie-- just a different venue, eh?
HB
Oh, yeah. I had a big Archie phase that kicked in when I was in the third grade and lasted into fifth grade. For a while, especially in the fourth grade, Archie and the Disney ducks almost entirely supplanted superhero comics. I don't think I ever had a favorite single title, I picked them off of the spinner rack randomly, usually on a whim - there were never any continuity concerns, and really, the story-telling was so uniform that it didn't matter if you read the main Archie title, or Life, or Riverdale, or Betty & Veronica, or Jughead, etc. (The sole exception: the Archie Spire Christian comics. I know I've mentioned this before, but once I accidentally pulled one of those off the rack and found it completely bonkers, in a bad way. It was really off-putting.)
My favorite Archie books back then, though, were the digests. I had many more of those than the comic books - they were a much better deal, with about 90-100 pages of story for about a buck or so, and they often contained reprints from the 1950s and 1960s as well. To me, that is the go-to format for Archie comics, and the last few times I visited the US I usually picked up one of the giant 500-page digests if I came across them (like in a thrift shop).
Also, I'm currently rather slowly making my way through this monster Archie digest called 75 Years, 75 Stories, which was published a few years ago to mark Archie's 75th anniversary. It contains one story from each year up to 2015. Although I question the choice of using certain stories (like a few that have multiple parts, but they only included the first part), it's a really interesting book to track the way the Archie universe evolved - especially in the 1940s and 1950s. It seems like the Archie formula so familiar to us in the Bronze Age had crystallized by the late 1950s.
Also, Veronica. No contest.
And thus, Edo & I finally fall into contention. . .
V-v-v-Veronica-??
So fickle? So disingenuous? So in need of exterior validation?? So determined to be the focal point for ALL the boys???
Veronica is, like, the second person to get killed in every MIDSOMER MURDERS episode. . .
Betty. . . BETTY is the girl Archie needs to be appreciatin'-!
HB (Also a "Maryann" man, tbh)
What can I say? I always gravitate more to the dark-haired bad girls. Besides, given all of the Archie stories I've read, there are so many in which Veronica is portrayed as more than just shallow and vain. Just an example: in the prehistoric Archie stories (yes, those exist), Veronica is portrayed as the smartest one, who's always making sardonic comments on the antics of the rest of the gang.
Also, forgot to mention: the vaguely recall the Josie cartoon on Saturday mornings, those would have been some of the earliest I'd watched. I have better memories of the Archie cartoon show, which was shown in syndication on weekday mornings where I was growing up in the late 70s. I usually watched those during Christmas and spring break and during summer vacation. My favorites were the historical ones, where the Archie gang would living in some period of American history, and they would help some famous historical figure, like Buffalo Bill or George Washington Carver, deal with some problem.
Hmmm, I gotta go with Betty over Veronica, but I do agree with Edo on the digests; I don't think I ever bought a single-issue Archie comic. I mainly went for the superhero digests anyway, my favourite being Jughead as Captain Hero.
Did and HB you NEED to read the Archies being done by Mark Waid and also grab the 3-part series done by Adam Kubert a few years ago. Thoroughly entertaining!
Also while I find the Riverdale show pitiful my kids, who love and still read Archie Comics though now 20+ years old dig that show. Generation gap?
I don’t read Archies much nowadays, but I still enjoy them all. It is really kind of amazing how well formed the characters are for that type of book. Sure they are archetypes (girl next door, goofy friend, etc) but they were handled so well and so consistently.
When we talk about “house style” certainly Archie Comics had a distinctly recognizable style. Not only were the characters always exact, but the look of the books, the fonts, the colors were always consistent.
I was a fan of Little Archie as a kid. Thought it was hilarious.
Edo - regarding that 75th anniversary book - I was a little disappointed. I felt the story choices were not the best and it seemed very inconsistent - unlike the books I felt I remembered. Reading that, I skipped around a lot.
Jughead was my favorite always. But I also liked Reggie’s antics (though I never understood why the gang hung around him). I also liked Moose.
I was a Midge fan!
Charlie- you mentioned a great thing about Archie comics- they can often be found quite cheap! Of course, often the books you find are heavily read- if you look for a pristine copy, they can be difficult to find. Perhaps harder to find than most superhero comics of the same age, as collectors often hung on to those books while disregarding and discarding the 'funny books'. Oh, and I too enjoy the current versions. I also picked up the "Betty and Veronica" and "Jughead" books. Nice feature is that as back-ups to the new stories, they present a vintage story in the 'old style'. Nice touch.
HB- good call on the music; other than "Sugar Sugar" and "Jingle Jangle" (did the Archies have a trend of sorts there?), the music was unremarkable. But Josie and the gang did step it up a bit.
Interesting that you'd mention Sad Sack. I bought a bunch of those during my early "Harvey" phase. Now a couple old issues reside on my tablet. Harvey books, that might be fodder for another post...
Edo- you're right, the digests were a wealth of affordable reading. And those Spire Christian comics were ...a bit different. A lot of them featured art by Al Hartley, who did much work for Archie (and also worked on "Patsy Walker" for Atlas/Marvel in earlier days).
Marti- you have a great point about the Archie 'house style'. For many years they never credited the creators, but even as a kid I could recognize a few different styles. A couple of those artists later became known to me: favorites Harry Lucey and, especially, Dan DeCarlo.
Oh, and if you want a nice overview collection of stories, try "The Best of Archie" series. They are about digest-size, but with many more pages. They break down by decades, and present a selection of stories and art from each of those periods. A solid advantage to these books is the abundance of quotes and comments from various personalities and creators. Also good to see the earlier artists and writers identified.
I read various issues of most of the Archie comics, usually picking up one if the cover caught my eye. However, when they started publishing the digests in the early/mid 70's, I started buying them regularly. They had more stories and I really liked some of the older stories they sometimes ran. I remember a Christmas digest that had mostly stories from what I guessed to be the 40's and 50's. I always enjoyed those and I still see them on displays in various stores now.
I was given a handful of Archie Digest's back in the mid seventies. I enjoyed them, quite a change of pace from my regular comic reading. Though I saved my quarters for superhero's.
The Josie and the Pussycat's cartoon was a weekly watch. The theme song is extremely catchy and will probably be in my head the rest of the day :-).
oh, by the way Veronica is my girl!
I have to say that though Veronica is seen as les wholesome than Betty, I love her personality inthe latest Archies! Her evolution after bein shipped to private school in Switzerland was lovely.
Just read the last bit of the 75 Years/75 Stories book today. I have to say, I rather enjoyed the last batch of stories from roughly 2005 to 2015. A bunch of new characters were introduced, including one who is gay and another who is of Middle-Eastern descent, to create a little more diversity. Rather than being heavy-handed or contrived, I thought it was actually done quite well. Also, Tom DeFalco wrote several of these newer stories, which were quite good. I'm actually curious about the new stuff being done by Waid and Staples.
Edo- another more recent Archie publication worth a look is "Afterlife With Archie" by Francisco Francavilla and Robert Aguirre-Sacasa. Unique, creepy, and great artwork.
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