Broken Frontier

I was standing in a rather long line at the grocery check-out a few months back, and noticed a Jughead Double Digest on the newsstand.  Somebody had returned it to the wrong place in the rack.  Having left Archie behind decades ago, I’m pretty sure I only noticed it because it was out of place.  With nothing else to do, I pulled it down and began reading.  When it was my turn to pay for my groceries, I stuck it in my cart.  And now, Archie Comics have become a somewhat expensive and guilty pleasure.

What’s so great about these cartoons?  Anything?  They are simple in concept and execution, and repeatedly refer to a small pool of recurring plots.  The characters never grow or develop, and for the most part, don’t even look very different from each other.  I remember once I opened my front door to a Jehovah’s Witness who showed me an illustrated book about heaven, where everyone was white, with the same build and wearing the same clothes.  Archie Comics are kind of like that, like a Kingdom Hall heaven with pizza and sundaes.

But I love them.  As I wrote in an earlier column, they are flush with classic American literary tropes.  The proud get their comeuppance, selfish schemes are thwarted, and some noble soul – typically Jughead – marches to his own drummer, never caving to the pressure to lose his identity to the group.  Above all, lots of food is consumed.  I don’t merely enjoy this parade of values, though.  Frankly, I love the jokes.  When I read Archie Comics, I laugh.

I took a couple of digests to my friend Agatha, who is 10.  She read one of them all the way through once, and then went back to the beginning and began a closer re-read.  At one point she showed me a page, saying, “I don’t think I’m reading this right.  Who is that?”  She pointed to a trim young woman in a pony tail, and I had to read the page to deduce that it was Archie’s mother.  This was clearly an editorial lapse, as Riverdale mothers are usually quite easy to identify by their gray hair or stately build.

So when I read that Betty and Veronica Double Digest #151 was slated to debut a new kind of story using a new kind of art, I thought, not such a bad idea, if a 10 year-old reader can’t tell the current characters apart.  The new look comes in a story called “Bad Boy Trouble,” and hit the newsstands May 15.

The amount of detail and variety is shocking when viewed against the decades-long parade of sameness that is Archie Comics!  “Bad Boy Trouble Part One” is 25 pages long, and there will be four parts, for a probable grand total of 100 pages.  This is in stark contrast to the standard 5-page story. 

The new realistic drawing style allows Betty and Veronica to show new depths of feeling not seen on their faces before.  Inker Al Milgrom and colorist Stephanie Vozzo create mood and setting, for example when they move to black and white while the girls are inside a movie theater. 

There is even some foreshadowing.  The girls go to see a movie called “Night of the Killer Zombees!”, and a promotional prop for the movie, a model of a creepy, drooling man-bee effectively foreshadows the coming bad boy trouble by menacing the girls in the theater’s lobby.

Still, there are some things not to like.  It’s hard to predict just how welcome a shift from cartoon to soap opera will be over the long term.  Betty and Veronica have feuded over Archie for over six decades, and as long as their feud was a device for funny jokes about human foibles, it wasn’t annoying.  But take away the jokes, and begin writing lengthy, multi-part soap operas, and pretty soon Archie Comics will have to start explaining why Archie is such a catch.  I doubt they can. 

Also, while Betty and Veronica are lovely as ever, their figures, which were believable, are now a little too Barbie-like.  A realistic drawing style would ring a little more true if the girls’ figures were a little more human, and a little less toy-like.

If you are a traditionalist, or if you just prefer your Archie Comics to be funny, then never fear.  The bulk of Betty and Veronica Double Digest #151 is old school, and comes with plenty of idiocy from Archie and laffs from Betty, Veronica, Mr. Lodge, and the whole Riverdale crowd.  The fun things are still there, too – the letters, the games, the fashion pages, and the “learn to draw” pages.  There’s no threat – yet – that the good stuff will fade away.

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In other Archie news, Archie Comics Publications plans to put Archie and the gang on sale on newsstands in India at the end of the year.  There will be few changes to the strips.  The kids will speak in Hindi, and Veronica will pursue the latest Indian fashions.  But for the most part, the middle class ideal of Archie will travel intact to India.

There’s no good reason for Archie Comics to attempt a genuine cultural translation, since symbols and products of the American middle class are hot, hot, hot for the Anglophone Indian middle class.  The hot teen jobs are low-paying, fast food jobs at places like McDonalds.  If the American middle class ideal is part of the “in” thing, then Archie Comics will find an avid following, and the venture will be profitable.  Some have speculated that the avid interest in all things American will contribute to the continuing erosion of the caste system and the tradition of arranged marriages.

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Note from the world of comics scholarship:  Sean Ford, a student at The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) in White River Junction, Vermont, is the first recipient of a new scholarship, called The First Helpings Scholarship. 

As the first recipient, Ford will receive free admission to the MoCCA Arts Festival, a one-year membership in MoCCA, and a $100.00 gift certificate to MoCCA.  He also receives a 5-day internship at First Second Books, and his manuscript will receive editorial comments from Mark Siegel, Editorial Director for First Second.  As a benefit to both Ford and the public, Ford’s work will be posted on the First Second website. 

While this scholarship does not have the traditional tuition and assistantship value attached – and hopefully in the future it will – it does give the recipient’s work exposure, and allows him or her to gain first-hand experience of the publishing industry.  It’s a real advantage to serious students, and a wonderful recognition of talent and promise. 

Go to the CCS’s website, www.cartoonstudies.org, for more information.