As a little boy, I was baffled by the appeal of Archie comics about the not particularly entertaining lives of high school students Archie Andrews, Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper, and Veronica Lodge.
Sure Jughead was funny. Sure there was this dazzling Americana future to look forward to (I was a Soviet boy growing up in Australia).
But really: Veronica and Betty. Who wouldn't want Veronica and Betty fighting over you? I also knew then I was a Veronica kind of guy, and that archetype stuck for me as I grew up (brunettes, less earnest).
I hated the Archies with an irrational passion when I was about 10, lol. It actually persisted all the way through college, now at last I can laugh about it.
I *think* I thought it was funny that Shaggy and his dog had the same personality. I was amused by the way Scooby talked. I liked it when Shaggy jumped in his arms. They had a real bond.
And the villains really put some effort into where they hid the loot: old mines, funhouses, theaters.
(Whispering): it had a good theme song, at least by a child's standards.
I was mad for SD, was 4 when it came out, never missed an episode. I was attracted to the artwork and it never pandered. The backgrounds were different style than the characters, and each character was quintessential early 70’s. Still love the style of that era.
And then there was the spinoff pop group - I'm not sure what the business relationship was between the musical entity and the comics, and not sure how much, if any, The Archies were a real band as opposed to a purely studio creation. But they had a massive bubblegum hit in 1969 with Sugar Sugar.
There was a TV cartoon as well, which I have vague memories of watching.
Before I was old enough for Playboy and Penthouse, my dream date was Veronica.
A hot brunette with great style, rich parents and a bad attitude!? Those are the kind of women that'll burn down your life and make you wish she did it again.
I grew up and dated a few simulacra, but there will only ever be one Ronnie.
We'd read anything in comic book form when I was a kid, entertainment options were limited so we couldn't afford to be choosy. If we couldn't get Superman or Mad, we'd read Little Dot, Classics Illustrated, or Archie. Never romance comics, though. Archie comics were reasonably funny. Betty and Veronica looked exactly alike except for hair color, so preference was a Mary Ann vs Ginger sort of thing. Veronica was rich, she had that going for her.
The next door neighbor girl, who was ~7 years older than me and adopted read romance comics incessantly as an adolescent. Prior to seeing that, it had baffled me who would read these text-heavy comics that completely lacked action that might appeal to a 9-year-old boy. Though her adoptive parents were Jewish, I think the neighbor girl's biological parents must have had some kind of Latinx mix (or maybe Sephardic?) because she was all sensuous lines, long dark hair, olive skin, and interest in boys. She was kind of a classic 1970s beauty. Like Ali MacGraw, but more endowed. Or a younger, softer Raquel Welch. When she got a boyfriend, she was extremely and unembarrassedly attached to him. While visiting my friend—her younger brother—I often passed the two young lovers locked in embrace in the corridor, which I assumed must be a normal thing in a household with an older sister. While still young (~19?), they had a child out of wedlock, which was still a bit scandalous at the time, the social revolutions of the '60s amd'70s notwithstanding. They eventually married and had more kids, AFAIK.
So I guess you could say her intensive romance comic reading was preparation for the next stage of her life.
I was never into comic books of any stripe as a child, as baseball cards and video games had taken over the zeitgeist. Kevin Smith owns a comic-book store in Monmouth County, New Jersey. One day when I was in the neighborhood, I was looking around but I wasn't looking to buy anything. When the manager asked me if I needed help, I asked him if he had any old Archie Comics. Of course, he didn't.
> But why is Archie the main character rather than Veronica or Betty?
I want to say that there was a separate series of comics named after Betty & Veronica. Or maybe it's like Amos & Andy, where the main character is really the Kingfish
I read them (female here). I wasn’t a huge fan and can barely remember the characters now. We were living in a town in central BC that didn’t have TV. We definitely read more without TV.
I'm that age and never read them except by accident. They certainly had no correspondence with my own HS experience from 9/68 to 6/71. I'm impressed that the target demographic could be identified at this remove notwithstanding that the comics are still on sale at supermarket checkouts.
You may be on to something. I was born in 1976 and the only kid I remember being into them was a gay guy of about 10 years of age. There are deeper mysteries to be explored here, though: how did Mary Worth, Judge Parker, and Apartment 3G ever get into the papers.
And Funky Winkerbean. Whom I remember as some sort of Shaggy/Archie mashup.
But you just read them all.
You read about Dagwood and his hilarious sandwiches. Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: I'm pretty sure I never understood what I was even looking at with that one.
The Mary Worth storylines moved very slowly.
The one I passed over was Prince Valiant. You just can't jump into that, seemed like you had to be there from the beginning.
Funky Winkerbean was another case where the strip ended up becoming about one of the side characters, in this case Les Moore. About the only thing I miss about getting a daily paper is reading the comics. Of course, they are all online if I was truly motivated enough to seek them out, but I'm not.
It is my understanding that Crankshaft was a spin-off of FW as he was the bus driver in FW. They coexisted and Funky sometimes appears in Crankshaft, but he isn't Crankshaft per se; that character's name is Ed
> "how did Mary Worth, Judge Parker, and Apartment 3G ever get into the papers."
I wondered that too. Who reads that tedious stuff? Eventually I noticed that my mother read every comic in the newspaper religiously. So I asked her what interest there could be in Mary Worth et al.?
"Well, it's difficult to explain ...", she said with a long exhalation.
If there was more to her explanation, I don't recall it. She didn't watch soap operas, which she seemed to hold in contempt, so I guess those tedious little comics were sort of a guilty indulgence.
Maybe another reason I never got into comic books was that the newspaper comics filled that void. I tended to stick to the funny ones though, like The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, but I even read the ones that were mildly amusing but not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny.
That was my strategy too, in those pre-internet days.
Then there were the one-frame wonders, like Ziggy, which wasn't exactly funny, more like pathetic in the old sense of "pathos". But it was just one frame, so may as well read it, even though I often didn't appreciate it. I had a (((friend))) though who loved Ziggy: "He's such a loser!", he'd say laughing. That's supposed to be a good thing? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ Maybe it was an Ordeal Of Civility thing.
The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes were The Simpsons and Seinfeld of comic strips, much better than what I remember from my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s.
In what is probably not a coincidence, the authors of those two strips both voluntarily hung up their pens before the strips got stale. I know with confidence that I could pick up a compendium of either strip, turn to any page, and laugh.
Meanwhile, Hi & Lois and Family Circus will run until the end of time. Not that they aren't mildly amusing, but like I mentioned up thread, they are rarely-if-ever laugh-out-loud funny.
Looking back, I consider The Far Side to be intellectual junk food, jokes that make you feel clever for getting them without providing any insights. I'd say xkcd is a modern comic that fills a similar niche, except one in a hundred xkcd comics actually is insightful.
Sadly I find the author of xkcd to be too much of an insufferable douchebag to enjoy his strip. Add in the fact that I'm not inclined to search out comics on the internet and Bob's your uncle.
I’ll take The Far Side any day, though in small doses. However, if you should ever need to buy a book for a little kid, The Thing Explainer is fun. But buying a book for a kid doesn’t really sound like a thing anyone would do anymore without explanation.
I should add that my next-oldest brother loved them too. He'd read them first and then give them to me.
We were a Superman family, not a Batman family, and we didn't call anything Marvel or DC in those days - no one knew or cared about that rivalry unless (maybe, I guess, I don't know) you were a teen boy fanatic. But I don't think there were as many teen boy comic fans in those days as today: I don't remember comics as being fetishized then, they were just comic books. Which is another subject for discussion. A lot of mundane stuff Boomers grew up with later became fetishized.
> "My best guess now is: little girls of, say, 8 to 11 who looked forward to themselves one day enjoying a sophisticated teenage social life of going to the prom and the like."
In my majority black grade school, some of the black girls read Archie comics, but I don't remember anyone else reading them. Nevertheless that may be a confirmation of your hypothesis in that those young black girls were aspirationally reading Archie in hopes that they too might one day live in the 1950s middle class milieu the comic depicted (assuming that's what they depicted—I never read them.) It was a hope that would tragically elude many of them. But maybe it eluded Archie readers the least?
P.S. Obviously, this was in that golden era before identity politics insisted that black kids can only consume designated "black" culture.
I read them ferociously when I was 8 or 9.
I am the eldest and don't buy your theory.
I'll tell you why I read them.
Sure Jughead was funny. Sure there was this dazzling Americana future to look forward to (I was a Soviet boy growing up in Australia).
But really: Veronica and Betty. Who wouldn't want Veronica and Betty fighting over you? I also knew then I was a Veronica kind of guy, and that archetype stuck for me as I grew up (brunettes, less earnest).
I read them at the same age for the same reason.
At the time I thought I preferred Betty. Now I know I was afraid of the truth.
I hated the Archies with an irrational passion when I was about 10, lol. It actually persisted all the way through college, now at last I can laugh about it.
Partial validation for your theory: My sister read it, but I did have a prurient interest in Veronica.
Now the really tough mystery: Why did anyone watch Scooby Doo?
To catch Shaggy in the van smoking a doobie?
Shaggy looked and sounded like he preferred harder drugs.
Zoinkers Scoob he only rode the horse on alternate Saturdays.
Ruh-roh!
Scooby was later. My kids watched it.
So we know somebody watched. Did they ever say what they liked about it?
They were kindergarten age and younger. They would watch any cartoon.
I *think* I thought it was funny that Shaggy and his dog had the same personality. I was amused by the way Scooby talked. I liked it when Shaggy jumped in his arms. They had a real bond.
And the villains really put some effort into where they hid the loot: old mines, funhouses, theaters.
(Whispering): it had a good theme song, at least by a child's standards.
Yes!
I was mad for SD, was 4 when it came out, never missed an episode. I was attracted to the artwork and it never pandered. The backgrounds were different style than the characters, and each character was quintessential early 70’s. Still love the style of that era.
They're still being made with new stories, apparently. I bet they went woke, lol.
And Veronica has a blue buzz cut and a nose ring, groan.
Watch “Riverdale” for a weird modern and serious Archie!
And then there was the spinoff pop group - I'm not sure what the business relationship was between the musical entity and the comics, and not sure how much, if any, The Archies were a real band as opposed to a purely studio creation. But they had a massive bubblegum hit in 1969 with Sugar Sugar.
There was a TV cartoon as well, which I have vague memories of watching.
> But [The Archies] had a massive bubblegum hit in 1969 with Sugar Sugar
Performed by Androwis Youakim, who had hit singles "Baby, I Love You" and "Rock Me Gently" under the name Andy Kim
I remember the Archies and Sugar, Sugar. Only recently learned that Andy Kim is Lebanese.
You forgot Reggie and Big Moose! I read them and thouroughly enjoyed them. It was an alternate life vicariously enjoyed
Before I was old enough for Playboy and Penthouse, my dream date was Veronica.
A hot brunette with great style, rich parents and a bad attitude!? Those are the kind of women that'll burn down your life and make you wish she did it again.
I grew up and dated a few simulacra, but there will only ever be one Ronnie.
We'd read anything in comic book form when I was a kid, entertainment options were limited so we couldn't afford to be choosy. If we couldn't get Superman or Mad, we'd read Little Dot, Classics Illustrated, or Archie. Never romance comics, though. Archie comics were reasonably funny. Betty and Veronica looked exactly alike except for hair color, so preference was a Mary Ann vs Ginger sort of thing. Veronica was rich, she had that going for her.
The next door neighbor girl, who was ~7 years older than me and adopted read romance comics incessantly as an adolescent. Prior to seeing that, it had baffled me who would read these text-heavy comics that completely lacked action that might appeal to a 9-year-old boy. Though her adoptive parents were Jewish, I think the neighbor girl's biological parents must have had some kind of Latinx mix (or maybe Sephardic?) because she was all sensuous lines, long dark hair, olive skin, and interest in boys. She was kind of a classic 1970s beauty. Like Ali MacGraw, but more endowed. Or a younger, softer Raquel Welch. When she got a boyfriend, she was extremely and unembarrassedly attached to him. While visiting my friend—her younger brother—I often passed the two young lovers locked in embrace in the corridor, which I assumed must be a normal thing in a household with an older sister. While still young (~19?), they had a child out of wedlock, which was still a bit scandalous at the time, the social revolutions of the '60s amd'70s notwithstanding. They eventually married and had more kids, AFAIK.
So I guess you could say her intensive romance comic reading was preparation for the next stage of her life.
I was never into comic books of any stripe as a child, as baseball cards and video games had taken over the zeitgeist. Kevin Smith owns a comic-book store in Monmouth County, New Jersey. One day when I was in the neighborhood, I was looking around but I wasn't looking to buy anything. When the manager asked me if I needed help, I asked him if he had any old Archie Comics. Of course, he didn't.
> But why is Archie the main character rather than Veronica or Betty?
I want to say that there was a separate series of comics named after Betty & Veronica. Or maybe it's like Amos & Andy, where the main character is really the Kingfish
The local used bookstore near me has a big sign near the cash register: "We DO NOT buy or sell Archie comics"
I wonder what precipitated the owner finally saying, "That's it! I'm putting up a sign!"
I read them (female here). I wasn’t a huge fan and can barely remember the characters now. We were living in a town in central BC that didn’t have TV. We definitely read more without TV.
I read any comics I could find, but Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman all only came out once a month. Archie was as good as any other to me.
I'm that age and never read them except by accident. They certainly had no correspondence with my own HS experience from 9/68 to 6/71. I'm impressed that the target demographic could be identified at this remove notwithstanding that the comics are still on sale at supermarket checkouts.
I read them in grade school.
You may be on to something. I was born in 1976 and the only kid I remember being into them was a gay guy of about 10 years of age. There are deeper mysteries to be explored here, though: how did Mary Worth, Judge Parker, and Apartment 3G ever get into the papers.
And Funky Winkerbean. Whom I remember as some sort of Shaggy/Archie mashup.
But you just read them all.
You read about Dagwood and his hilarious sandwiches. Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: I'm pretty sure I never understood what I was even looking at with that one.
The Mary Worth storylines moved very slowly.
The one I passed over was Prince Valiant. You just can't jump into that, seemed like you had to be there from the beginning.
Funky Winkerbean was another case where the strip ended up becoming about one of the side characters, in this case Les Moore. About the only thing I miss about getting a daily paper is reading the comics. Of course, they are all online if I was truly motivated enough to seek them out, but I'm not.
Reading just now: I had no idea that Funky grew up, and also became Crankshaft. Mother likes Crankshaft, I think. I've missed so much!
It is my understanding that Crankshaft was a spin-off of FW as he was the bus driver in FW. They coexisted and Funky sometimes appears in Crankshaft, but he isn't Crankshaft per se; that character's name is Ed
I loved Funky, and Dagwood, and some others
> "how did Mary Worth, Judge Parker, and Apartment 3G ever get into the papers."
I wondered that too. Who reads that tedious stuff? Eventually I noticed that my mother read every comic in the newspaper religiously. So I asked her what interest there could be in Mary Worth et al.?
"Well, it's difficult to explain ...", she said with a long exhalation.
If there was more to her explanation, I don't recall it. She didn't watch soap operas, which she seemed to hold in contempt, so I guess those tedious little comics were sort of a guilty indulgence.
Maybe another reason I never got into comic books was that the newspaper comics filled that void. I tended to stick to the funny ones though, like The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, but I even read the ones that were mildly amusing but not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny.
> "I tended to stick to the funny ones though"
That was my strategy too, in those pre-internet days.
Then there were the one-frame wonders, like Ziggy, which wasn't exactly funny, more like pathetic in the old sense of "pathos". But it was just one frame, so may as well read it, even though I often didn't appreciate it. I had a (((friend))) though who loved Ziggy: "He's such a loser!", he'd say laughing. That's supposed to be a good thing? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ Maybe it was an Ordeal Of Civility thing.
The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes were The Simpsons and Seinfeld of comic strips, much better than what I remember from my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s.
In what is probably not a coincidence, the authors of those two strips both voluntarily hung up their pens before the strips got stale. I know with confidence that I could pick up a compendium of either strip, turn to any page, and laugh.
Meanwhile, Hi & Lois and Family Circus will run until the end of time. Not that they aren't mildly amusing, but like I mentioned up thread, they are rarely-if-ever laugh-out-loud funny.
Wow, I would never have remembered Hi and Lois.
I kinda liked B.C.
Looking back, I consider The Far Side to be intellectual junk food, jokes that make you feel clever for getting them without providing any insights. I'd say xkcd is a modern comic that fills a similar niche, except one in a hundred xkcd comics actually is insightful.
Sadly I find the author of xkcd to be too much of an insufferable douchebag to enjoy his strip. Add in the fact that I'm not inclined to search out comics on the internet and Bob's your uncle.
I’ll take The Far Side any day, though in small doses. However, if you should ever need to buy a book for a little kid, The Thing Explainer is fun. But buying a book for a kid doesn’t really sound like a thing anyone would do anymore without explanation.
The Argyle Sweater (if it still exists) follows in that vein. It was pretty good.
“Mildly amusing but not laugh out loud funny”
You just nailed Fred Basset.
I read the copies my friends had, partly because I watched the cartoon on TV, partly because I liked the comics, but I never had money to buy them
I loved them.
And you guessed it. I had two older brothers, one in middle school, and one in high school when I was In primary school. We spanned the Boom.
I should add that my next-oldest brother loved them too. He'd read them first and then give them to me.
We were a Superman family, not a Batman family, and we didn't call anything Marvel or DC in those days - no one knew or cared about that rivalry unless (maybe, I guess, I don't know) you were a teen boy fanatic. But I don't think there were as many teen boy comic fans in those days as today: I don't remember comics as being fetishized then, they were just comic books. Which is another subject for discussion. A lot of mundane stuff Boomers grew up with later became fetishized.
Video games may have had something to do with that--that seems like another world to me.
> "My best guess now is: little girls of, say, 8 to 11 who looked forward to themselves one day enjoying a sophisticated teenage social life of going to the prom and the like."
In my majority black grade school, some of the black girls read Archie comics, but I don't remember anyone else reading them. Nevertheless that may be a confirmation of your hypothesis in that those young black girls were aspirationally reading Archie in hopes that they too might one day live in the 1950s middle class milieu the comic depicted (assuming that's what they depicted—I never read them.) It was a hope that would tragically elude many of them. But maybe it eluded Archie readers the least?
P.S. Obviously, this was in that golden era before identity politics insisted that black kids can only consume designated "black" culture.