Archie Andrews has been marketed as “America’s Typical Teen,” yet it was his quirks and individualized distinctions which allowed him to surpass Wilbur Wilkins, a similarly lovetorn teen who happened to precede Archie in the MLJ comics pantheon by three months, debuting in September 1941 in the 18th issue of Zip Comics. What’s typical about red hair, checkerboard sideburns
Wilbur—who’s blonde and crewcutted, as so many young men appeared to be in the 1940s—is so typical he’s downright dull. Even more annoyingly, there’s a moral quotient to a lot of Wilbur stories that Archie tends to sidestep. Wilbur learns from his mistakes. He regrets hurting the feelings of those he cares for. Archie, on the other hand, is comically oblivious, making the same blunders over and over and not noticing how he’s disappointing friends and family. It’s an extension of his natural clumsiness, making him a full-blown comic character. Wilbur? Wimpy, reliable, self-aware. Typical

SIxty or so years ago, you could have heard the Archie radio series in Connecticut on WELI in New Haven, WNBC in Hartford and WNAB in Bridgeport.That was still the so-called Golden Age of Radio, before TV caught on. The Archie Andrews program debuted at the end of May, 1943 on the NBC Blue network, moved to the Mutual network in 1944 and then back to NBC for another nine seasons, 1945 to 1953. Considering that it ran for a decade, it’s appalling (but not that surprising, given the cavalier treatment of old tapes by their original owners/broadcasters) that only around three dozen episodes seem to still exist. You can find the shows at https://archive.org/details/ArchieAndrews.
Just as the comic book Archie was clearly derivative of literary bad boys such as Tom Sawyer and Penrod, the radio show leaned on existing film and radio awkward-teen archetypes such as Andy Hardy and Henry Aldrich. Unfortunately, the radio forebears didn’t line up clearly with the radio ones. Archie Andrews, too often, was a family sitcom about a family. On many of the extant episodes, there’s way too much of Archie’s father Fred. Fred Andrews tries to take a bath, and keeps getting interrupted by Archie and his friend. Fred Andrews tries to paint a room, and the kids interfere. Fred Andrews has a cold. Etc.
It should be said that the Archie comics had this same problem when they first started. Authority figures were all over the place, defining the teenagers’ place in the world rather than letting them set their own comic boundaries. But within a few years—well before the radio show came along and made the same mistakes—the teens were largely on their own.

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.

Random Archie Celebrities
Chad Cole, soap opera star
Idinka Chump, “local debutante turned international fashion model”
Mlle. Lazongg, owner of a high fashion store
Kinley, host of Fresh, “the TV newsmagazine for Today’s Teenager”
Zappy the Monkey, “the famous TV star”
The Teen Terror (pro wrestler)

Betty and Veronica Comics Double Digest #230 features an old Dick Malmgren-drawn Sabrina the Teenage Witch story, “Super Duper Party Pooper,” in which Aunt Hilda is ruining Sabrina’s party with her withering distaste for the younger generation, until Cousin Ambrose “whammies” her into youthful exuberance. She picks up a guitar and plays the Archie song “You Make Me Wanna Dance” solo, then sings lead on “Bang-Shang-a-Lang.”
That early ‘70s story is immediately followed in the digest by an earlier Sabrina tale, “The Matchmaker, drawn by Harry Lucey. (Both stories are written by George Gladir.) Here, Sabrina resembles a young, white (and white-haired) Earth Kitt, while Aunt Hilda is at her most monstrously witchy, with a wart on her nose and beard stubble. I’m not generally a Dick Malmgren fan (his people are too static, one-dimensional and rectangular) and consider Harry Lucey one of the greatest artists in the history of comic books period, but I have to say that Malmgren has the better approach to Sabrina. Lucey’s work is so detailed it’s distracting. Malmgren plays up the absurdity and cartoonishness of the witchiness. However perfectly composed a Lucey panel can be—the coquettish Sabrina dashing upstairs while Hilda tells herself “Sabrina’s not too much in the good looks department,” or passersby Betty & Veronica zapped into fighting over an unwitting Harvey—there’s a lightness required here, and Lucey is acting like Sabrina’s Chilling Adventures is already a thing.

There is much speculation as to why Prof. Flutesnoot is obliged to teach both Science and Music at Riverdale High School. Is he some comic book version of Paul Hindemith, modeling his compositions on principles of physics or astronomy? Or was it simply an editing error? In the panel gag “The Corney Cornetists,” collected in the IDW hardcover Archie Joke Book Volume One: Great Gags from Great Archie Artists, Archie and Jughead are in the school’s music room (playing cornet, badly), when in walks their music teacher… Mr. Fluteweed. He looks nothing like Prof. Flutesnoot—he has a pointy rather than bulbous nose, a small mustache and dark hair (though both men are bald on top). But their surnames are enough to cause considerable confusion. I wonder if they got each other’s paychecks by accident.

Rhyming Titles from Archie #365, March 1989

“Neat Feat”

“Beat Treat”

“Borrow Sorrow”

…and one of the worst, most dated, Archie rhyming titles of all time:

“Colleen Scene”

In this brief gag, Archie is “punished” by having to sit in the back of the class. But it’s not really a punishment, see, because he can ogle girls from back there. Girls, aka colleens. From Wikipedia: “Colleen is a common English language name of Irish origin and a generic term for Irish women or girls, from the Irish cailín (caile, countrywoman).”

Colleen Scene. Gosh. Even “Back of the Class Sass” or “Last Row Gal Ogle” might’ve been better choices.

Style Signatures for Archie Artists

Bob Montana: Frowns, scowls and furrowed brows.

Samm Schwartz: black silhouettes, legs and arms sticking out beyond the panel borders.

Dan DeCarlo: Attractive anonymous women in the foreground of panels.

Harry Lucey: Back-end view of cars as they and their drivers leave the scene of an adventure, along a winding road.

Dick Malmgren: Loony reaction shots; comically twisted faces.

Stan Goldberg: full-body reactions, as if the characters had been pushed or thrown.

Joe Edwards: Beads of exasperation. Lots of close-ups.

Dan Parent: Thick strong lines, blank backgrounds.

Fernando Ruiz: Askew angles; diagonals and slants.

Uses for Poorly Cooked Food

Betty’s cookies: hockey pucks

Veronica’s meatballs: cannonballs in Jughead’s Civil War diorama.

Betty’s too-hot chili: spicing up Archie’s lips such that Veronica comments on his “hot ’n’ spicy” kisses.

Betty’s bad-breath-inducing cheese dip: its halitosis effects can be countered by Pop Tate’s mint chocolate chip cookies.

Fruitcake: bricks for a stone wall

Archie Comics artists didn’t used to get credited for their work. In the ‘60s, when DC was ballyhooing talents such as Neal Adams, and Marvel referenced the names of their artists and writers freely in their “Bullpen” and “F.O.O.M.” columns, Archie wasn’t acknowledging their creators at all. But once those “story by” and “pencilled by” credits finally came about (sometime in the ‘80s, I believe), the floodgates opened. “Archie Artist of the Month” (or, less frequently, “Writer” or “Editor”) boxes appeared on the covers in the space where the price barcode would otherwise go, offering cartoon portraits of key Archie contributors.

Best of all, readers were suddenly in on the in-jokes which had been peppering Archie stories for ages. The “By Dan ’n’ Dick” message on the cover of She’s Josie comics (probably meant to play off of the “Dan ’n’ Dick” who hosted the then-hit TV show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In) could be recognized as Dan DeCarlo and Archie publisher Richard Goldwater. DeCarlo was parodied as a flamboyant golfer, “Dandy” Carlo, in an Archie story. “Where’s Samm Schwartz” became a recurring theme that spread through several tales.

In a story reprinted in Archie Comics Digest #252 (August 2014), Archie is envious of artists at the beach; the girls flock around them due to their talent. “They say nobody can letter like Bill Yoshida,” Archie proclaims, and there’s Archie letterer Bill Yoshida.

“Thanks for lettering my boat, Bill!,” a pretty girl exclaims.

“My pleasure, Gloria!” Yoshida answers. In the next panel, another girl approaches.

“Oh, Bill!” Would you letter my name on this jet ski?”
“Be glad to! Of course, Denise,” Yoshida politely responds—a big smooch mark from Gloria adorning his left cheek.