Archie Andrews Anagram #1

This was an amusing game my daughters and I played while having dinner at Claire’s Cornercopia tonight: create descriptive anagrams from the names of Archie characters.

ARCHIE:

American

Riverdale-raised

Clumsy

Heroic

Indecisive

Everyman

BETTY:

Beautiful

Enviromentalist

Truthful

Triangle-point

Yellow-haired

(More of these will follow in future posts.)

I’ve never had a problem with Archie as an adventure hero. The old Life With Archie comics were some of Stan Goldberg’s best work, and Pureheart the Powerful put a neat mythic superheroic spin on the mortal tribulations of the traditional Archie & the Gang. The R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. spy stories and the early Archies band inadvertently fighting crime were good-natured parodies of U.N.C.L.E. and Monkees. I even dug the “New Look” Archie stories of the late ‘00s, based on non-graphic Archie novels written by Michael Pellowski and published in the early ‘90s.

But there were some adventures Archie ought to have avoided. I speak of:

• Archie’s R/C Racers, a global race of remote-controlled toy cars.
• Archie’s Adventures in the Wonder Realm. “After hooking up Archie’s new console, Dilton’s invention brings the games to life by sending the gang inside! Little did he know they would end up trapped! Now it’s up to Archie to save them! Will he rescue them in time or its it ‘Game Over’ for his friends?”
• Archie’s Weird Mysteries. Scooby-Doo made its TV cartoon debut in 1969, one year after The Archie Show ushered in a new era of kid-friendly Saturday morning programming. Thirty years later, in 1999, it was Archie who was beholden to Scooby-Doo. The comic book version of the series, drawn by Fernando Ruiz, never really found itself.
• Archie’s Clean Slate. Some of Al Hartley’s longform Christian adventures were easier to take than others.
• Dilton Doiley Dropout. What smart kids will do to be liked.

Observations from Archie’s Sunday Finest: Classic Newspaper Strips from the 1940s and 1950s by Bob Montana (IDW Books, 2012).

Reggie’s surname was once spelled Mantel, not Mantle.

Archie and Li’l Abner exist in the same universe. There are references to a Sadie Hawkins-type “patch dance” and Lena the Hyena.

Archie nearly coined a musical general three decades early: There’s a dance event called the “Hep-Hop.

Bob Montana apparently created the gesture where Miss Grundy gets so flabbergasted by her students’ behavior that her white bun hair-do flies off her head like a wig.

The Archie Andrews radio series, which ran on various networks for a decade, 1943-1953, has an effect on the Archie comic strip, as when the cartoon Jughead mutters “Boy-o-boy-o-boy” a la Harlan Stone on the radio shows.

The Fox network has given the go-ahead for a pilot episode of a series called Riverdale, described as “a bold, subversive take on Archie, Betty, Veronica and their friends, exploring the surreality of small-town life — the darkness and weirdness bubbling beneath Riverdale’s wholesome façade.” Some of the talent connected to the project have some experience with that sort of thing. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa writes Afterlife With Archie, was on the writing staff of Glee, and combined both pursuits in the special comic series Archie Meets Glee. Producer Greg Berlanti has previously squired Green Arrow, The Flash and Supergirl to the small screen.

This won’t be the first live-action Archie TV series pilot. It’ll be at least the fourth.

In 1964, there was a sitcom with a lot of familiar TV faces (William Schallert, Roland Winters, Mary Grace Canfield, Jean Vanderpyl) playing various Riverdale parents and teachers; John Simpson played Archie.

In 1978 there was a sketch-based series starring David Caruso as Archie and Derrell Maury as Jughead. Essentially the same cast reconvened for a slightly different variety-show-style pilot.

Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again was broadcast in 1990 and released on VHS tape. It aged the teen characters into their 20s, a precursor of sorts to the recent Life With Archie magazine.

In 2012, a four-minute faux trailer for a realistic Archie film called Riverdale was posted on Youtube. It won a Canadian Comedy Award for Funniest Web Clip, but seems remarkably like what the forthcoming Fox pilot Riverdale appears to be going for in earnest.

One- or Two-Word Titles From Archie Comics Digest #2 (October 1973)

Relief
Hip Quips
The Victim
Light Work
Draw Flaw
The Needle
Spy Spoof
Street Seen
Switcheroo
Spellbound
Couch Coach
Just Desert
Hand-Daft
Return Engagement
Stumble Bum
Cute Suit
Fashion Show
Sand Crab
Cool Skool
and Price Wise

Of the thre-or-more-word titles, best of the lot has to be “Little Red Archiekins.”

The new, ninth issue of Jughead and Archie Comics Double Digest (not to be confused with the old Jughead With Archie digest which began in 1974) brings back a classic touch of Archie sexism that the series has missed for far too long. It’s the premise that Jughead hates girls. The lead story in the digest, “Mission Most Improbable,” not only uses this as a jumping-off point, it adds to the gender barriers by having otherworldly male imps firing love-arrows at the misogynist Jug, then declaring “We didn’t even know there was such a thing as a female Cupid.” Technically, of course, Cupid isn’t a thing, it’s the name of a specific god. But never mind. Good old woman-hating Jughead is back.

One of the stated impetuses (impeti?) for the new Archie #1 reboot, according to a press release, is “showcasing the beginnings of the historic love triangle between Archie, Betty and Veronica.” But, as any longtime Archie reader knows, that origin-story-of-sorts (one in which the heroes and heroines don’t gain superpowers but only smooch) has been told a zillion different ways over the past seven decades. One of them, “Down Memory Lane” by George Gladir and Bob Bolling, is reprinted in the current issue of Archie Comics Double Digest (#257). Another is currently unfurling in the bloodsoaked pages of Afterlife With Archie. Depending on which mythology you follow, the Archie/Betty/Veronica triangle started when the characters were babies, or in grade school, or middle school, or in freshman year of high school—pretty much every era of their young lives excepting the womb.

Archie Comics Double Digest #257, which arrived in my mailbox Tuesday, leads off with a Bob Bolling-illustrated Little Archie story—not written by him, as so many were, but bearing his distinctive rounded drawing style. (Things flow and rolling in Bolling stories; even his people are round and pudgy.) Bolling’s still alive, in his mid-‘80s. When did he do this story? (A wonderful appreciation of Bolling, “Bob Bolling and the Pursuit of Melancholy Innocence, by Jaime Weinman, can be found here.

This is one of those nostalgia-packed trad Archie digests meant to hold the line against all the progressiveness and innovations in the non-digest Archie titles. There’s a snow-shoveling story, a generation gap story, two Monkees-style Archies stories (from when that hallowed band was a trio of Archie, Reggie and Jughead), a modern-art-is-bunk story (“How d’you know if they’re upside down?”). Besides Little Archie, the ‘50s Archie also-ran Wilbur (“America’s Son of Fun”) is represented. The Archies stories, complex arrangements of wacky gags, quick-changes, fantasies and a perceptible plot, are drawn by Bob White, in a style that really stands out nowadays. Not as much as the pair of Harry Lucey stories (“Hall of Fame” and “The Christmas Game”) do, however. Most of the stories here, in any case, are drawn by Stan Goldberg. Samm Schwartz barely gets a page in edgewise.

Jughead’s Double Digest #54 (October 1998) contains a Jughead story entitled “Winner Takes Almost All” as well as a Betty & Veronica story entitled “Loser Takes All.” Other stories include “Rejected,” “The Gamblers” and “Prize Fool.” The competitive spirit has always persevered in Archie comics.

Archie has an official podcast. It’s hosted by a young man whose physique, manner and stripey shirts are reminiscent of the querulous boy Bruce MacDonald used to play on Kids in the Hall.
The podcast is nearly 150 episodes old, but has only recently—eight or nine episodes ago—been designated the “official” Archie podcast.
The podcasts are basically news-based, structured around new releases and special announcements (like the new Archie #1 and the revamped Kevin Keller). There’s not a lot said about the content of the books: no reviews, just an airing of the main credits (“…with a cover by Fernando Ruiz….”).
More authoritative Archie analysis would be appreciated.