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Zoya Akhtar’s long-awaited The Archies, an Indian film adaptation of the evergreen Archie comics, released on Netflix (December 7).
Arguably the most successful non-superhero comic book character ever, Archie debuted in December 1941, in Pep Comics No. 22. Today, more than 80 years later, we look back at the rise of Archie comics as a wholesome alternative to comic books of the time.
Humour comics featuring teenage protagonists were a staple of the comic book industry from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Amidst today’s superhero-comic dominated landscape, however, they are non-existent — well almost.
As Michael R Lavin wrote in ‘A Librarian’s Guide to Archie Comic Publications’ (1999): “The exception to this rule is the huge family of Archie comics, which has dominated the genre for nearly sixty [now 80] years and remains an industry juggernaut even today.”
Archie was the creation of MLJ Magazines’s co-founder John Goldwater, who felt that the company needed to offer more than the standard super-hero fare. This was at the height of World War II, when superheros became symbols of American nationalism — think of Captain America, and his Nazi nemesis Red Skull.
Goldwater, however, set his sights on a more reality-based series that would appeal to kids and teens alike. Enter Archie Andrews, the quintessential American teenager. Archie and his friends — girl-next-door Betty Cooper, posh girl Veronica Lodge, gastronomically inclined Jughead Jones, and many more — would provide an idealised representation of (white) American teenage life set in the fictional town of Riverdale.
By 1942, amidst the characters’ soaring popularity, Archie had got its own title (till then Archie stories continued to appear in Pep), and within two years, MLJ Magazine started to phase out superhero stories in favour of expanding the Archie universe. By 1946, MLJ changed its name to Archie Comics Publications (ACP), and beginning in 1949, with Archie’s Pal Jughead, a number of spin-off titles emerged, each as popular as the next.
“Much of Archie’s enduring appeal comes from the books’ idealised portrayal of small-town America… Archie’s creator, Bob Montana, deserves a large measure of credit for inventing this long-time formula for success,” Lavin wrote. While Goldwater came up with the idea behind Archie, cartoonists Bob Montana and later Dan DeCarlo, ultimately created the look and feel of the comic universe. Montana “gave the strip the emotional strength of his own nostalgia to create an idealised picture of teenage life that we all recognize, but none of us quite lived,” Charles Phillips explained in Archie: His first 50 years (1991).
In many ways, this was a “wholesome” alternative to popular comics of the time, often rife with depictions of violence and sex. Archie comics, on the other hand, were strongly rooted in “American values” and “morality”.
“He’s basically a square, but in my opinion the squares are the backbone of America,” Goldwater told The New York Times in 1973, speaking about the character of Archie. “If we didn’t have squares we wouldn’t have strong families,” he said. Square is an American slang for a person who is conventional and old-fashioned.
In fact, in 1954, as moral panic spread across the US regarding the content of massy comic books, John Goldwater helped found the Comics Magazine Association of America, whose Comics Code Authority persuaded magazines to ‘voluntarily’ weed out ‘offensive’ content as well as advertisements for guns, knives and war weapons. He would be at the helm of the organisation for 25 years.
In 1973, Goldfinger licensed Archie to Spire Christian Comics which began publishing stories steeped with evangelical Christian messaging. Although Jewish himself, Goldwater told The NYT that the sentiments expressed in Spire Archie comics were in line with his wholesome family message. Spire would end up publishing 19 Archie titles.
