There is an early era of Archie Comics when the one-page gag strips were not titled almost exclusively with rhyming monosyllabic words. I love those rhyme titles—“Wipe Gripe,” “Hit Bit” and the thousands of others—and gleefully list them here on a regular basis. But as the 300-page hardcover Archie Joke Book Volume One: Great Gags from Great Archie Artists (IDW Books, 2011) proves, rhyming titles are not mandated:
Heavenly Daze
Stopped Short
Can’t Dance
Wong Number (Betty calls a Chinese laundry by accident)
Study Does It
A Slip of the Hip
Taking No Dances
Franks a Million
Toss Up!
Blow Up!
First Aid!
Baa-a-ad Boy (a lamb-bleat pun)
All A Loan
Haste Makes Chased
Guard Duty
Idle Idea
Punk-tuation
Water You Know
Sing You Sinner
Meat D’Armour
Fired With Enthusiasm
Alias Mr. Lip
Snooty Snoot
Grundy Punch!
The High Cost of Leaving
Jugly Duckling
I Like Isaac
Picture Puzzle
Dependent Descendent
Puppet Love
House About It?
Betty’s Booty
The Corney Cornetists
The Dickens to Pay (in which Miss Grundy tells Archie and Jughead that they can “raise the Dickens” in the school library, by which she unfortunately means reshelving the complete works of Charles Dickens).
Discharge and Dat Charge
Key to Success (a musical key, that is)
Look the Udder Way
Water Guy
Dirty Dog
Quite a Bit
Acid Test
… and that’s just the first 50 pages. In that sampling, there’s only one title that rhymes: Lunch Hunch.
Archie’s Joke Book Volume compiles, in a different layout format, the first 11 issues of Archie’s Joke Book comics, all of which were published in 1953.