B&V Friends Comics Double Digest contains two stories in which characters dream that they have been transported into life-sized board-game fantasies.
In “Candy Craze, Shrill, Riverdale High’s token Goth girl, disappears into a high level of the “Candy Craze” game app.
In “Betty Doesn’t Have Game,” Betty dreams she has to maneuver a game that’s a weird cross of Monopoly and Life, with Veronica as her gamemaster/tormentor.
Neither has a particularly good time.

The relationships, recently:

Archie & Betty & Veronica

Midge & Moose

Reggie & Harper

Dilton & Brigitte

Chuck & Nancy

Cheryl & the bald guy (George)

Kevin & Devon (though Kevin will grow up to marry Clay Walker)

Frankie & Maria

Ginger & Marcus

Jughead remains unattached, though Ethel Muggs has gone with him to more proms than any high schooler could ever be expected to attend. But “prom dates” is really a whole different category than “relationships”; in one of the first Veronica stories, “Prom Pranks” from Archie #1, Ms. Lodge is escorted to the dance by Jughead (who mistakenly gives her a poison ivy corsage).

Tim Levin draws lips as if they were inner tubes, making Betty & Veronica’s lipstick look as if it were clown makeup. This is not actually a bad thing. His art draws attention to what the characters are doing. When they’re talking, you know they’re talking.

Levin also digs panoramic tableaux. In “Designing Divas,” the opening story of Betty and Veronica Comics Double Digest #230 (which I received in my mailbox an hour ago), there’s a great panel of Veronica tossing clothes from one end of her vast walkin closet clear to the other end. In another, she’s sitting in a diner and you can see the wheelchair-bound character Harper rolling up on the sidewalk outside the building.

Levin packs his panels. His work is more realistic than gag-based Archie stories often are these days (especially in the digests). When the theme, as it is here, is fashion, he’s a fine artist for the job.

Archie Anagrams Part 2: More Archie names spelled out, a collaboration among me and my daughters Mabel and Sally.

Rambunctious
Evildoing
Gloating
Great
Impolite
Egotist

Beautiful
Environmental
Truthful
Triangle-point with
Yellow hair

Vain
Extravagant
Rich
Overindulged
Nasty/nice
Impatient
Cool
Archie-magnet

So the newsmongers have named today’s historic blizzard Colbie, after Colbie Caillat. She appeared in an Archie comic, of course. But that was strictly a warmhearted summertime thing. She’s from California. Her winter holiday song was “Christmas in the Sand.” She co-wrote “Chasing the Sun” for Hilary Duff. She won Teen Choice Awards for her songs “Bubbly” and “Lucky.”
Can we name a blizzard Veronica soon? Makes more sense.

When you talk about the great regular Archie artists, it’s a pantheon: Bob Montana! Harry Lucey!  Dan DeCarlo! Stan Goldberg! Even though each of those artists got to toil on the flagship Archie title for decades, they made their mark.

But Jughead, who had his own comic title from the 1940s into the first decade of the 21st century? Only two main artists shaped him as a leading hero in all that time.

Samm Schwartz and Rex Lindsey.

I place Schwartz right up there with DeCarlo and Lucey. His amazing fluid pages, where a character might set a foot outside the line of the enclosing panel, were masterful. His use of silhouettes was unparalleled, his background gags inspired. In league with the lead Archie writers Frank Doyle and George Gladir, Schwartz gave Jughead the style and stature to star convincingly in his own comic. Schwartz also gave Jughead a look that set him apart from all the other Archie titles.

Rex Lindsey inherited the Jughead book from Schwartz and turned the title into longform, even multi-issue stories. The art was more Archie-conventional, and the supporting cast broadened in a way that made the stories seem shallower and Jughead more of an all-purpose weirdo. But the Lindsey made some lasting contributions to Jughead’s character: making the young drummer a blues enthusiast, for instance, or giving him a baby sister (Jellybean), or having one of his greatest female foils be an amateur psychologist, Trula Twist, driven to uncover the deeper motives for Jughead’s distrust of women.

The Jughead book closed down a few years ago now. Still waiting for phase three for happen.

When I was in Montreal this past July, I searched the newsstands (that city still has newsstands) for French-language Archie comics. Found a few digests, including Sélection Betty et Véronica #808.

When I was younger, Canadian Archie comics were ramshackle affairs—black and white reprints of the color originals, with French translations poorly pencilled in to the whited-out speech balloons. These days, the Canadian editions are identical to their American cousins, the text professionally done and fitting cleanly into the balloons. The stories are in color and the covers seem even slicker and more colorful than the U.S. versions.

The translations are fully wrought, right down to vernacular interjections and sound effects. When our heroines see a picture of someone they believe to be Mr. Weatherbee on a “Most Wanted”-type TV show and are informed he’s a master criminal, Veronica’s reaction is “Gak!!” while Betty’s is “iiiii!!” A sign on a building is redone to read “Alors,” while an artsy coffeehouse has the name Hargne du Petit Patelin.

Each culture should own their own Archie. Canada’s modified theirs admirably..

Older Archie readers recall the Archie News pages, where you could win a couple of bucks for having your letter to Archie reprinted as a “news” story. It was an aspect of the Archie fan club, a bonding experience for farflung fans. It was also a vestige from the days when comics, to be considered magazines and thus get discounted postage when sent through the mails, had to have regular text elements unencumbered by graphics.

There seemed to be very few editorial policies in place at the Archie News. Stories could be personal, but many seemed to be recycled school history assignments, teaching drily about, say, the Aztecs or cheese. Even as a child, I was puzzled by Archie News’ odd standards. I was getting fan mail published in DC and Marvel comics left and right, but couldn’t crack Archie News no matter how hard I tried.

I just came across an example of what the Archie News page became shortly before it died. It’s from Archie & Friends #130, June 2009. There’s only one winning story instead of the old two or three, and it takes up a whole page with a big original illustration at the bottom. The story is “The Guitar,” and for submitting it the author James K. from New Jersey wins five Archie digests.

“Send in a report! Be in a comic book! Get 5 free digest issues!” the page screams, offering both an e-mail and a “snail mail” address. Along the top of the page are suggested topics for stories” Geography, Animals, History and Science.

I’m impressed by this game attempt to dress up and improve a feature that had always been the unfathomable gulch at the center of Archie comics, the pit you had to jump across to get back to the action. Someone’s bothered to get a drawing of Archie (in Springsteen headband) and Reggie (in Nils Lofgren vest and shades) rockin’ back-to-back, and there’s a care with the layout and coloring.

When we talk of the death of newspapers, Archie News never comes up. But it tried hard to interest its few readers until the very end, and for that earnest effort it surely deserves a Pulitzer or two.

Archie Statements

• When Veronica is grounded from going out, or inconvenienced by a storm, it is considered comical because she lives in the lap of luxury.

• When Archie is looking forward to something or enraptured by something, he will be beset by so many calamitous versions of the thing he cherishes that in the last panel of the story he announces that he never wants to have anything to do with that thing ever again.

• Whenever Betty thinks Archie is taking her out that night, he’s really taking Veronica out that night.

• Jughead thinks he hates things (girls, food other than hamburgers, trendy fashions) but can be convinced otherwise, though he always reverts to his old traits.

• Hot Dog is sentient and highly skilled, but is weak-willed and unreliable.

• Dilton Doiley’s superior intelligence apparently renders him automatically unattractive and remote.

• Moose’s instinctive reaction regarding people who challenge him in any way is to beat them up.

I was very young, certainly less than ten years old, when I first discovered Big Ox. I have not heard of him since, yet I have never forgotten him.

Big Ox, if memory serves, was a cousin of Big Moose—even larger, even dumber (this was back in the non-PC times when it was acceptable for Moose and his ilk to simply be stupid, not dyslexic or misunderstood) and even bullier. Ox was posed as a larger threat than Moose, if such a thing were possible.

Something about the existence of a Big Ox captivated me. Perhaps it was the concept of a giant race of beings, all with “Big” in their names and named for large, hoofed animals. Perhaps it was the idea of a world outside Riverdale, a world populated by convenient cousins. There was Veronica’s cousin Leroy  for whenever a brat was required. There was Jughead’s cousin Souphead whenever a more youthful Jughead-type gag needed to be made. And there was Big Ox, for when Big Moose just was not big enough.

Big Ox. I wonder whatever became of him. Still standing on a suburban sidewalk somewhere, I expect, waiting for his shot at glory.