MLJ clearly hit gold with Archie Andrews in 1941.

Not right away, of course. It did take a year or so for Bob Montana to finally land on the formula that lasted for more than 40 years.

But what was that formula? What was it about those initial characters that resonated so well?

I started wondering about this a few years ago (maybe a few decades ago; time slides by when you're old) when I realized what was up with Jughead. No, he's not an "ace." No, he's not stoned. His original characterization — let's just call it "story niche," which is all it was — is pretty obvious if you read the very early Archies.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are my initial impressions, and I hope that all of you can chime in with your understanding of cultural mores and entertainment tropes from a time long gone.

ARCHIE

I suspect this character springs from Andy Hardy. Hardy and his family debuted in a stage play in 1928, and the movie series, starring Andy Rooney and occasionally Judy Garland, launched in 1937. There were nine Andy Hardy movies before Archie. Two more in 1941, the year Archie debuted.

The premise of the series was that Andy was a good-hearted but impulsive teenager who always got in over his head due to immaturity, selfishness, recklessness or some other teenage character flaw. His stern, implacably moral but kind-hearted father would then explain how Andy had gone wrong, and what he had to do to correct the problem. Which Andy would do, reap the rewards of Doing the Right Thing, and learn a lesson.

Which sounds a lot like Archie. Except that the "Father Knows Best" aspect was left out entirely. And he never learned any lessons.

But was Andy Hardy even the first to exemplify this concept? Given that my description would also describe the later Leave It to Beaver, I don't think it's exactly rare in American pop culture. Can we trace it back to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens?

And it's not like "teenagers" were a thing in 1941. The idea that there was some state between childhood and adulthood was late to bloom in Western culture. The idea didn't really exist until the invention of the automobile, which let courtship escape front porches, sitting rooms and the watchful eyes of parents.

So maybe that's it. Maybe Archie was the first fictional character to represent the teenager with his own car, freedom from his parents, and therefore a dating life that was all his own (badly managed, which was funny). Betty and Jughead didn't have cars, and even wealthy Veronica wasn't depicted driving one that I recall. (Reggie, of course, had a car. More on him later.)

But if that were so, I'd expect that concept to be preceded in movies, or for the great unwashed to otherwise be familiar with it before Archie's debut. Are there any examples of that?

I think it's also important to note that it was tweenager "Chick" Andrews, not Archie, that debuted in 1941. As I said above, it took a few years for Montana to find the formula. And part of that, I suspect, was aging Archie up a few years, to semi-independent high school age.

Whatever it was, something clicked with readers, keeping Archie popular until the '80s. Which is when his popularity began to flag. Which was also when the Internet happened. Is that a clue? Did a different kind of freedom for youth supercede the old version?

Anyway, I'm interested to hear what y'all have to say.

JUGHEAD

I teased this earlier. But it was something I had to think about. It was not a revelation that came quickly or easily.

I accepted Jughead, like all the Archie gang, prima facie. They were there before I was born, so they were background as I was growing up and I never had any reason to ask any questions. Like Jesus, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Dracula and Mickey Mouse, the Riverdale gang had always been there, since the Dawn of Time — as far as the Li'l Capn was concerned. They were immutable concepts, Easter Island statues that didn't need explaining.

It was quite a revelation to the Li'l Capn when he discovered that Superman was created after his father was born. I had to think about that. To him, Superman was like Wolverine to me — a "new" character that came along after he had already been living his life for some time. Whoa!

But I didn't really think about Jughead until I read some early Archie comics (possibly Dark Horse's HC collections). In those issues, when we saw Jughead at home (which was rare), he had the giveaway hallmarks of a certain type of character I had seen in a million 1930s movies, TV shows and cartoons. Those being walls with cracked plaster (with those mysterious stripes showing through), chairs with broken legs tied together with twine, and a mattress with springs sticking out.

Jughead was poor! He was the poor friend! Now I get it!

In the '60s, when I was reading Jughead comics by Samm Schwarz, we would occasionally see him at home. But he had a typical middle-class Riverdale home, just like Archie's and Betty's. The joke was that both his mother and father looked exactly like him: skinny, closed eyes, flute snoot and all.

But in the '40s, Jughead was the guy from the wrong side of the tracks that was the middle-class guy's sidekick. This seems a familiar trope, although I can't tell you where I know it from. It just feels right.

But this explains it all. Why does Jughead overeat? Because he's hungry! Why is he not interested in girls? Because he's hungry! (And romance falls a little lower than starvation on Maslow's scale.) Why is he so skinny? Well ... you get the idea.

And he wears the beanie because that's what poor kids did in the '40s. He even had patches on his clothes in some early Archie comics. And he wears a school sweatshirt from the wrong school because he can't afford a Riverdale varsity jacket, like Archie — what he's wearing, the reader must imagine, is a hand-me-down from a never-seen older brother, or his father, or an uncle. Wearing inappropriate, downscale clothes was a poverty signifier. 

Jughead was poor, but was going to a school with wealthier kids. One of the things that attracted me to the character in the '60s was that he clearly didn't care what anyone thought of him. But in the '60s, that was copping an attitude. In the '40s, he didn't care what people thought because he couldn't change his circumstances, which was probably true of a lot of kids coming out of the Depression. He knew people looked down on him, but there was nothing he could do about it. All he had was Archie, to whom he was doggedly devoted.

So Jughead isn't mysterious. He's a Jack Kirby character from the Lower East Side!

BETTY

Betty was also introduced in Pep Comics #22 in 1941. She was a tweenager with a crush on "Chick" which went nowhere. And that pretty much sums up her character for the next 40 years.

She's a girl, so she didn't get much characterization early on. She pined after Archie, who pined after Veronica, and that was pretty much the joke. She got more agency — and a little bit of a sneaky streak, which always backfired — in the '60s. Her tomboy aspect — good at sports, good at fixing cars — was emphasized in the '70s and '80s. That made her a better match for Archie than Veronica, which I think was the point then. (After that, I don't know.)

VERONICA

She's rich. That's pretty much the whole deal.

In those early days, it wasn't explained why a rich guy like Hiram Lodge would build a mansion in a backwater like Riverdale. But that's because Riverdale being a little town in the middle of nowhere is a '60s invention.

In the '40s, it wasn't clear what or where Riverdale was exactly — but it was very likely a suburb or seaside vacation town of a big Northeastern city like Boston. Sort of like the vacation towns that Bob Montana worked in on the stage or as a waiter.

So a rich girl isn't a strange sight in a town if Riverdale is what I think it was.

And why does she date Archie? In the early years it was because he was convenient (and had a car) and later on it was because Betty wanted him. (Even though they were best friends in every scenario where Archie wasn't present.)

Like Betty (and initially Jughead), Veronica was more story construct than character. But it was a familiar story construct. Like the rich bubbleheads in movies like Bringing Up Baby.

REGGIE

I had a "friend" like Reggie. We lived in the same neighborhood, so regardless of our preferences, we were thrown together a lot. He hated me, and I felt sorry for him. But it's not like we could avoid each other, especially if there was a pickup football game. So I didn't wonder much why Archie and Reggie shared so many stories, when they clearly couldn't stand each other.

But there's more than that to Reggie, pop culture-wise, that I'm not sure about. It has to do with his slicked-down hair. And the money (he wasn't Veronica rich, but he had a car and great clothes). It reminds me a little of fast-talker leader types in kids movies in the '40s, like Little Rascals and Dead End Kids. They weren't bad guys, but they were certainly sneaky.

And in '40s movies, it was always the slicked-down-hair guy who was the baddie, the chief torpedo or the sneaky rich guy or the smarmy playboy that the genuine guy had to compete with romantically for The Girl. And, generally, Slick Hair would have money, whereas Genuine Guy would not.

Think King Wesley in It Happened One Night, or John Sloan in Christmas in Connecticut

Have I got it right, Legionnaires? What can you tell me about Slick Hair guys?

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  • ARCHIE: As you pointed out, Archie debuted as a much younger character than the one we think of today. In that respect, perhaps Percy Crosby's "Skippy" was an antecedent. Skippy was immensely popular, spinning off into media such as radio and movies, even a popular peanut butter brand still available today.

    JUGHEAD: I never thought about it before, but I've read those Dark Horse archives, too, and I agree with your assessment 100%.

    I discovered Archie first in the Sunday funnies, then on Saturday morning cartoons, but I never bought an Archie comic book during my childhood. I associated Archie with my dentist's office and girl cousins. Girls read Archie; boys read Marvel. At least that was my experience. 

  • A few thoughts:

    1. It may be that Arcnie was influenced to one degree or another by the comic strip Harold Teen (1919-1959)., or the radio sitcom The Aldrich Family 1939-1953), both of which were a big deal when the Old Man was a little kid.
    2. Like Jeff, I first encountered Archie and his pals in the 60's animated shows.  I haven't read many of the Golden Age stories, but the ones I have read, Archie and pals seem like weird, alternate versions of the characters.
    3. There is a "Riverdale" not far outside Boston.
    4. I still think of Firestorm as too "new" of a character to rate being in the Justice League, even though this year will be his 45th anniversary.  He's been around longer than Superman had been when I started reading comics.
    5. It occurs to me that the Star Wars characters are "forever" characters to anyone much under the age of fifty, just as the Star Trek characters are "forever" characters to me, but probably aren't to anyone a few years or more older than I am.
    6. I never knew about the "Jughead as poor kid" element of the character. It would explain why he's a good deal more cynical than Archie was.
    7. As for Reggie, I suppose there needed to be someone who was kind of an @$$hole to create story conflict.  Reggie seemed to go from being an utter jerk to someone who was basically decent (if a little obnoxious) as the story needed.   Watching the cartoons, it seemed odd that Archie would agree to have this clown in his band, and that an egomaniac like Reggie would agree to be in a bad named after someone else.
  • ARCHIE: As America's typical teenager, he did pretty well for himself - his own car, pretty free to come and go as he wished, and TWO beautiful girlfriends. I don't recall that he had any major money issues, even though he didn't have a job - good enough situation for any kid!

    JUGHEAD: Everybody has a best friend, and so with Jughead and Archie. Cap, I think your analysis is exactly on point; the Jones family was poor, and that explains Jughead. He wasn't Wimpy; he never sponged off his friends. But if someone was buying, he'd say OK. 

    BETTY: I always felt bad for Betty. She was a pertty girl (obviously exactly as pretty as Veronica!) but Archie didn't seem to want to date her, Reggie and Jughead didn't date her (Jughead? Good heavens!) and she was in a rivalry with Veronica, her best friend. THIS is America's typical teenager for my money.

    Cap, I think your analysis is really good and really accurate!

  • Did anybody ever call Archie "Chick"?

  • According to this, it didn't last long.

    ClarkKent_DC said:

    Did anybody ever call Archie "Chick"?

  • I, too, discovered Archie and the gang through the late-60s show that is the reason Hot Dog became a thing*. Later I discovered the comics, but I was never too big on them. When I read, it was Life with Archie, which was a little edgier than regular Archie. Life with Archie #125 genuinely creeped me out; the lead story still holds up as a "scary" kid tale. I still occasionally look in on Riverdale, but mostly if it's a crossover of some kind. I even own an "Archie meets Ramones" t-shirt.

    Your analysis sounds good to me, especially your take on Jughead. I also like the current, asexual take. But neither is the Jughead I encountered in the late 60s and early 70s. What is interesting to me: I rewatched a little of the old TV show in 2008 and realized (1) it was terrible and (2) it shaped my perception of teenagers. I see a few distant shadows of Riverdale in the stories I've written about the small town of Rose Point, at least when they concern teenagers.

    Jesus, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Dracula, Mickey Mouse, and the Riverdale gang. Hell of a party, Cap!

    *Text of my "Hot Dog" piece, for the morbidly curious:

    In 1968, Archie and the perpetual teens from Riverdale had their first opportunity at television. The rather flat Filmation series, buoyed by Don Kirschner-produced pop tunes, became a hit. Its versions of the characters would appear in several spin-offs through to the late 70s, and on a series of kiddie-oriented pop albums. The show also established Hot Dog as a member of the gang.

    Filmation had specifically requested a dog character be added to Archie's inner circle. We don't know the exact reasoning1, but Archie comics happily introduced the pooch in Pep #224. Communication between the studio and the comic company appears to have been poor, because Hot Dog clearly belongs to Archie in his debut. In the series and in all subsequent comic books, he is definitely Jughead's dog.

    Much of the tv show's attempts at humour came from Hot Dog's reflected asides and quips about the teen antics. So important was he to the show that the large white sheep dog often turned up at Riverdale High and stowed away on class trips. His prominence in the comic books varies over time. Like many comic-book and kiddie-media pets, he disappears and reappears as the plot requires.

    In 1990, he received a series of his own which lasted five issues. In addition to the predictable doggy adventures, he received a Dilton Doiley-built techno-doghouse and met canine space adventurers, the Astro-Mutts. They awarded him with an even fancier dwelling which, TARDIS-like, was bigger within than without. Like the existence of spell-casting witches and superhero Archie alter-egos, these fantastic matters have no impact on the more typical Riverdale stories.

    Hot Dog has survived and, while he never proved as popular as Snoopy or Scooby-Doo, he has managed to be more than a Poochie.

    1. Scooby-doo, which premiered the following year, had been pitched as a show about mystery-solving teens, and only in development did the cowardly great dane take center stage. Clearly, someone thought dogs sold kiddie shows. The inspiration may have been Charles M. Schulz. By the late 60s, Peanuts had developed into a cultural phenomenon. Kids and adults read the strip, intellectuals commented on it, and merchandisers cashed in. Snoopy had grown from a bit-part player to top dog, so far as marketers were concerned, and possibly Archie Comics and Filmation had hopes that Hot Dog would follow the beagle's lead.

    Sources:

    "Alternate Universes in Archie Comics." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Universes_in_Archie_Comics

    "Did You Know?" Archives, November 2000. Archie Comics Online. http://www.archiecomics.com/acpaco/diduknow/diduknow_november.htm

    "Jughead Jones." Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jughead_Jones

    The late 60s Archie Show, which I watched as a kid. I recently saw a few reruns. It's really, really bad.

  • ... perhaps Percy Crosby's "Skippy" was an antecedent. 

    I am Today Years Old learning that Skippy peanut butter is based on a long-gone comic strip that I'd never heard of. 

    I associated Archie with my dentist's office and girl cousins. Girls read Archie; boys read Marvel. At least that was my experience. 

    I found myself still hungry for more comics in the late '60s, despite buying Marvel comprehensively (except for Westerns and Millie the Model, if they still existed). I expanded to DC superheroes, and to select Charlton, and to all Tower, and eventually to select Archie. I bought Jughead because I liked the character and Samm Schwartz's art, Betty and Veronica for Dan DeCarlo, and other titles when they featured an artist I liked (mostly Archie itself, but also Laugh, Madhouse, Pals 'n' Gals, etc.). I dropped them all when I reached high school, not only because I'd kinda outgrown them, but also because high school in Archie Comics bore no resemblance to the real thing, which I was finally experiencing. I don't know what happened to most of them -- I may have given them to my sister, or someone else, or my mother may have sold them in a yard sale -- but I think I still have most of the Jugheads.

    It may be that Archie was influenced to one degree or another by the comic strip Harold Teen (1919-1959), or the radio sitcom The Aldrich Family 1939-1953), both of which were a big deal when the Old Man was a little kid.

    There's another comic strips I'm not familiar with, along with "Skippy" above. Comic strips were enormously influential in the early decades of the 20th century, and they almost certainly set patterns that Archie lifted. I need to look for more. Would "Gasoline Alley" have enough teen stuff to be considered? 

    And I don't know much about radio shows in the early part of the 20th century, either. Surely some of them were precursors.

    Like Jeff, I first encountered Archie and his pals in the 60's animated shows.  I haven't read many of the Golden Age stories, but the ones I have read, Archie and pals seem like weird, alternate versions of the characters.

    That was sort of my experience reading the Dark Horse hardcovers of '40s Archies. It had never occurred to me when I was reading Archies in the '60s and '70s that the characters had ever changed -- they seemed, like my Easter Island statue analogy, immutable. But the '40s versions are significantly different from their '70s counterparts, which was why reading both was so educational. I really wish those HCs had continued, as they were just getting to 1950 and some significant history -- specifically, Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica #1 and Archie's Rival Reggie #1.

    There is a "Riverdale" not far outside Boston.

    Bingo!

    I still think of Firestorm as too "new" of a character to rate being in the Justice League, even though this year will be his 45th anniversary.  He's been around longer than Superman had been when I started reading comics.

    I agree with you that Firestorm doesn't belong in the League. Not only because he's so "green" compared to the others, but also because his concept is too complicated and his costume is ugly.

    Speaking of age, it's weird to think that the entire superhero genre didn't exist when my father was a boy, or that it had only been around for about 20-25 years when I was a boy. Superman, for example, was completely enmeshed in pop culture, in comics, cartoons, the TV show, etc. References were everywhere, many not bothering to explain themselves. How could that character only be 25 years old in 1963? 

    It occurs to me that the Star Wars characters are "forever" characters to anyone much under the age of fifty, just as the Star Trek characters are "forever" characters to me, but probably aren't to anyone a few years or more older than I am.

    Pretty weird to think about. I was in on the ground floor of Marvel, Star Trek and Star Wars, and I have to adjust my thinking when talking to younger people, for whom these are "forever characters." (Great phrase!) I was reminded of that just this week when I referenced Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" and one of the twentysomethings was like, "Oh yeah, that song from Bridget Jones' Diary." No, kid it was the theme song to The Spy Who Loved Me ... which probably came out before you were born.

    I never knew about the "Jughead as poor kid" element of the character. It would explain why he's a good deal more cynical than Archie was.

    And didn't have any friends other than Archie or girlfriends at all. He was almost certainly looked down on, meaning no girl would be caught dead with him. I assume the half-closed eyes look was to indicate that he was lazy, as poor people are always assumed to be in our society. I also assume with no evidence whatsoever that Maynard G. Krebs was partly based on Jughead.

    As for Reggie, I suppose there needed to be someone who was kind of an @$$hole to create story conflict.  Reggie seemed to go from being an utter jerk to someone who was basically decent (if a little obnoxious) as the story needed.   Watching the cartoons, it seemed odd that Archie would agree to have this clown in his band, and that an egomaniac like Reggie would agree to be in a bad named after someone else.

    Good points all.

    I'm still curious about the slick hair. Brylcream was in use in World War II and into the 1950s, but I'm not sure of who, culturally speaking, used it. Did wearing it in the '40s show you were, maybe, a hepcat? A biker in the '50s? I don't really know, as "greasy kid stuff" went away before I became a teen. My only clue is the slicked-hair villains or playboys in movies. 

    Also, unruly hair seems heroic, or at least the style for a leading man. Archie's inexplicable cowlicks, for example, and Superman's S-curl. James Bond's forelock. Errol Flynn.

    As America's typical teenager, he did pretty well for himself - his own car, pretty free to come and go as he wished, and TWO beautiful girlfriends. I don't recall that he had any major money issues, even though he didn't have a job - good enough situation for any kid!

    No kidding. He also snow skiied, water-skiied, rode motorcycles, surfed, played every sport, went to beaches, went to mountains, etc., etc. Plus, he's 17 forever, so he has time to do all these things and learn all these skills. Pretty good deal!

    Jughead ... wasn't Wimpy; he never sponged off his friends. But if someone was buying, he'd say OK. 

    Yeah, he was a pretty good guy. Just really hungry! 

    BETTY ... is America's typical teenager for my money.

    Hadn't though of it that way, but agreed!

    According to this, it didn't last long.

    I see Cronin regards the automobile as important to the development of the "teenager," which I mentioned, but also child-labor laws (currently being unraveled), which I didn't. The idea of the creation of a "protected class" that was old enough for labor but didn't have to is an interesting concept.

    Re-reading the first Archie story in Cronin's report reminded me that Jughead also debuted in that story. I had remembered it that he appeared in the second one, so I've corrected the above.

  • I gather that he "HENRYYY! HENRY ALDRICH!" Coming, mother!" bit at the start of this  was an iconic catchphrase back in the day, my Dad would break it out decades later. The Warners cartoons referenced it several times.

  • I never thought of Jughead's half-closed eyes as indicating laziness, I always thought of it more a resigned, "Oh, God, here's more of Archie's nonsensical s**t" look.   Also, Jughead not having a girlfriend allowed him to be the outsider reacting to and commenting on the insane crap the boys do to impress girls.

  • Regarding Gasoline Alley, as I recall, Skeezix served in World War Two, so the strip may well have featured  high school hijinks in the years before the war.

    Captain Comics said:

    It may be that Archie was influenced to one degree or another by the comic strip Harold Teen (1919-1959), or the radio sitcom The Aldrich Family 1939-1953), both of which were a big deal when the Old Man was a little kid.

    Those are two more comic strips I'm not familiar with, along with "Skippy" above. Comic strips were enormously influential in the early decades of the 20th century, and they almost certainly set patterns that Archie lifted. I need to look for more. Would "Gasoline Alley" have enough teen stuff to be considered? 

This reply was deleted.