Archie
After seeing a notice that Archie Comics is going to be adding a gay character to Riverdale High, I had to go exploring further, both in memory and in the Archie Archives.
Who in North America hasn't read Archie at least once? I never actually bought an issue--comics were considered a waste of money in our house, so I was always on the watch for them to borrow. When I was ten, I found a treasure trove, boxes and boxes of comics stuck in a playhouse behind the garage of a family who had become agoraphobic, and never came out of their house. I used to run the back fences, on never ending imaginative adventures, and when I spotted that playhouse amid the waist-high weeds, I visited it every chance I could get until I'd read every comic.
Archie's world was the idealized teen world, shifting between high school, the malt shop, roadsters, and sports. I was already deeply antipathetic to what I'd glimpsed of the teen world through our babysitter--those horrible wide skirts, ugly saddle shoes, squealing over Fabian, and forever talking about boys or records--but the simple personalities in Archie's world (and their surprisingly complex dynamics) sucked me right in. I felt like I was cracking the teen code, though by the time I reached thirteen, I realized those out of date comics were clearly dinosaurs, only fit for laughter.
In the late sixties, when I was in my middle teens, I saw some issues, and was startled and amused to see Betty and Veronica in mini skirts. Veronica had finally gotten rid of that horrible forties hairdo. Archie said "Groovy." I had to laugh at that--'groovy' was cool for about a year, and after that, if you said it, you were out of it. Yet it persisted for a while on TV, which for a time seemed to depict all teens as "hippies" which was synonymous with "shaggy-haired twit."
From time to time I'd encounter Archie comics afterward, always startled that it was still going strong. Check here for an engaging history.
As for a gay character, I do remember that dorky as it was to actually be caught reading Archie after about age twelve, I discovered that most everyone had read it, and many were the herb-laced, earnest discussions through the early seventies on whether or not Jughead was gay.
Who in North America hasn't read Archie at least once? I never actually bought an issue--comics were considered a waste of money in our house, so I was always on the watch for them to borrow. When I was ten, I found a treasure trove, boxes and boxes of comics stuck in a playhouse behind the garage of a family who had become agoraphobic, and never came out of their house. I used to run the back fences, on never ending imaginative adventures, and when I spotted that playhouse amid the waist-high weeds, I visited it every chance I could get until I'd read every comic.
Archie's world was the idealized teen world, shifting between high school, the malt shop, roadsters, and sports. I was already deeply antipathetic to what I'd glimpsed of the teen world through our babysitter--those horrible wide skirts, ugly saddle shoes, squealing over Fabian, and forever talking about boys or records--but the simple personalities in Archie's world (and their surprisingly complex dynamics) sucked me right in. I felt like I was cracking the teen code, though by the time I reached thirteen, I realized those out of date comics were clearly dinosaurs, only fit for laughter.
In the late sixties, when I was in my middle teens, I saw some issues, and was startled and amused to see Betty and Veronica in mini skirts. Veronica had finally gotten rid of that horrible forties hairdo. Archie said "Groovy." I had to laugh at that--'groovy' was cool for about a year, and after that, if you said it, you were out of it. Yet it persisted for a while on TV, which for a time seemed to depict all teens as "hippies" which was synonymous with "shaggy-haired twit."
From time to time I'd encounter Archie comics afterward, always startled that it was still going strong. Check here for an engaging history.
As for a gay character, I do remember that dorky as it was to actually be caught reading Archie after about age twelve, I discovered that most everyone had read it, and many were the herb-laced, earnest discussions through the early seventies on whether or not Jughead was gay.