Issuu

STAN GOLDBERG & GEORGE GLADIR INTERVIEWS!

ber 20

7 0 1 . No8.95 Septem

82658 00126

™

From the Groovy ’70s Through the Big ’80s, Archie Comics in the Bronze Age!

SABRINA

ARCHIE ON TV

THAT WILKIN BOY

CHERYL BLOSSOM

RED CIRCLE COMICS

ctive owners. RetroFan is

TM TwoMorrows Inc.

Resurrecting The Creepy Cool Culture We Grew Up With!

All characters TM & © their respe

#3: SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE Director RICHARD DONNER interview, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of AQUAMAN, ’60s and ’70s horror/sci-fi zines, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL’s Superman Celebration, SEA-MONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages & collectibles, a fortress of Superman and Batman memorabilia, and more! SHIPS DECEMBER 2018!

NEW! Edited by Back Issue’s

MICHAEL EURY! RETROFAN #2 is our HALLOWEEN ISSUE, sure to satiate the trick-or-treat cravings of your inner child! MARTIN PASKO peeks into the tombs of TV horror-hosts ZACHERLEY, VAMPIRA, SEYMOUR, MARVIN, and our coverfeatured ELVIRA! ANDY MANGELS welcomes us to Saturday morning’s Horrible Hall, home of the Groovie Goolies! ERNEST FARINO tunes in to the creepy, kooky Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters! The Oddball World of SCOTT SHAW! takes us on a Jurassic lark through the long-buried Dinosaur Land amusement park! Learn the history of Ben Cooper Halloween costumes in an interview with IRA J. COOPER! Super collector TERRY COLLINS shows off his collection of character lunchboxes! Plus: collecting superhero View-Masters; Sindy, the British Barbie; and more fun, fab features! Photo cover spotlighting Elvira herself, CASSANDRA PETERSON! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 • (Digital Edition) $4.95 • SHIPS SEPTEMBER 2018!

SUBSCRIBE NOW! Four issues: $38 Economy, $63 International, $16 Digital Only

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History.

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

#4: Interviews with the Shazam! TV show's JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) GRAY, the Green Hornet in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the way-out Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British scifi TV classic Thunderbirds, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the King Tut fad, and more! SHIPS MARCH 2019! Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

Volume 1, Number 107 September 2018 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! TM

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Dan DeCarlo COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Jack Abramowitz Andy Mangels Lou Manna Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Darrel McNeil John Jackson Miller Mark Arnold Bill Morrison Steve Banes Dan Parent Greg Beda Fernando Ruiz Craig Boldman Glenn Scarpelli Jerry Boyd T. Casey Brennan Steve Skeates Jerry Smith Brian Buniak J. David Spurlock Ron Cacace Roy Thomas Ed Catto Maggie Thompson Gary Cohn Steven Thompson Mark Evanier Stan Timmons Holly G! Mark Wheatley Don Glut Steven Wilber Victor Gorelick Bingo Wilkin Grand Comics Database Barry Grossman Robert Hack Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Heritage Comics Auctions Bruce Jones Christopher Larochelle

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

www.twomorrows.com

FLASHBACK: Archie Comics in the 1970s and 1980s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 There’s more to Riverdale in the Bronze Age than you might think! INTERVIEW: Archie’s Pal, Stan Goldberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The late, great artist, captured in a rare interview INTERVIEW: Archie and George Gladir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 A pair of discussions with the legendary Archie scribe, who passed in 2013 WHAT THE--?!: Everything’s Archie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Meet Millie, Harvey, Binky, Vicki, and the other Archie clones PRINCE STREET NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Archie’s pals and gals over the years, in a new cartoon by Karl Heitmueller, Jr. FLASHBACK: Sabrina the Teenage Witch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 An enchanting look at the Archie-verse’s most bewitching character BACKSTAGE PASS: The Archies on TV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Awkward dancing and bubblegum pop, from the comics pages to the TV funhouse FLASHBACK: Who Was That Wilkin Boy?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 The other star in the Bronze Age Archie Universe ROUGH STUFF: Riverdale Rarities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Sketches and curiosities featuring your favorite pals ’n’ gals BEYOND CAPES: Red Circle Sorcery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Gray Morrow’s short-lived—but unforgettable—spooky Archie titles FLASHBACK: Red Circle Superheroes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 A mighty remembrance of Archie’s comeback Crusaders FLASHBACK: The Saga of Cheryl Blossom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 How a crimson-coiffed third wheel became an Archie breakout star PINUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 A classic ’70s Archie cover in original art form BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Reader reactions BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $76 Economy US, $125 International, $32 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Dan DeCarlo. The Archies and related characters TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2018 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows, except Prince Street News, © Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

For the past few years, Archie has been undergoing something of a renaissance. High-profile storylines like the introduction of Kevin Keller (Riverdale’s first openly gay teen), Archie’s alternate-future marriage to Veronica, and even the title character’s death have spawned such innovations as an entire horror line, a primetime television series, and a whole new approach to the core characters. This is unlike the 1970s and 1980s, when everything was predictable and formulaic in Riverdale. Or was it? As we shall see, Archie Comics was far more daring in the Bronze Age than most people credit!

THE DECLINE AND FALL?

Circulation Figures Courtesy of John Jackson Miller and Comichron, a chart tracking over four decades of sales for the title Archie.

Covers TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

When the 1970s started, Archie Comic Publications, Inc. was riding high. The real-life pop group the Archies had two Top Ten hits in 1969, “Jingle Jangle” and “Sugar, Sugar,” with the latter spending four weeks at Number One. The Archie animated franchise, which started in 1968, would expand to include Josie and Sabrina series in 1970 and 1971, respectively. One of the greatest demonstrations of Archie’s reach occurred when the company went public in 1973; “A Share of Happening” in Everything’s Archie #29 ran the gamut from merchandising to a chain of Archie’s Restaurants. Unfortunately, many of the promised developments never appeared—no animated series for Li’l Jinx or That Wilkin Boy, and the restaurant chain never expanded beyond its flagship location in Joliet, Illinois. In the realm of comics, the Archie title was selling about 560,000 copies in 1968. In 1970, that number had dropped to around 490,000. Sales on the title were about 400,000 in 1972 and under 300,000 in 1974; they were below 100,000 before the end of the decade. On paper, Archie appears to have been in a tremendous slump, but was such really the case? John Jackson Miller, a New York Times bestselling author, also runs the Comichron research website. According to Miller, “1968 is the peak for the main title [Archie], but 1969 is the important year because john jackson miller in ’69 it ends up beating every other title. Archie becomes number one in 1969, as a direct result of the TV show and the song “Sugar, Sugar.” The drop-off in the early ’70s is actually not that bad compared to [other titles]. Archie is still hanging in there in the early ’70s relative to everybody else.”

2 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

by J a c k

Abramowitz

Miller describes a series of price increases in 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1986, and 1989. The first increase in this series took the cover price from 12 cents to 15 cents; the last took it from 75 cents to $1.00. As Miller explains, “Archie is more price-sensitive than any publisher in comics, and that’s why prices were so low for so long. Because who’s buying the Archie comics and where are they being sold? At least until recently, they were all being sold at the newsstand, and it was parents buying them, so they cared [about the price]. Regular comics fans do not care about price.” Were sales really so terrible? Context is extremely important. While sales on Archie in 1974 were half what they were in 1968, look at the market. “Archie with 272,000 in ’74 on the main title, my guess is that would be the #3 or #4 title in the business,” Miller says. “It’s higher than Charlton, it’s higher than everything at DC except for Superman. Superman was 285,000. Richie Rich was at 210,000; that’s the top Harvey book. Amazing Spider-Man, which was the #1 book in ’74, was 288,000. The only thing that could be close is FF [Fantastic Four], and that’s 218,000.” So Archie, even at a fraction of its sales just six years earlier, was still one of the top-selling books in the industry that year. In truth, Archie Comics was doing surprisingly well given the state of the industry. “The story of the 1970s is the collapse of the distribution system plus inflation,” Miller explains. “The ’70s were a bloodbath. Comics nearly died. If it had not been for the direct market, we wouldn’t be around. And the direct market helped Archie less than [it helped] anybody.” Why should the direct market treat Archie so poorly? Victor Gorelick, editor-in-chief of Archie Comics, explains: “The [retailers] didn’t want to handle [Archie]; they were only taking the Marvel, DC books, the books that came out with #1 issues every two weeks. … A lot of the stores at that time in the direct market, they weren’t interested in kids’ books, which was a big mistake. CBG [Comics Buyer’s Guide] did an article about that years later, that Archie comics—young readers’ books like Harvey, Archie—we bring in young readers who eventually would go on to the other books. A lot of [the retailers] just wanted to take in what they wanted to read themselves. Now we’re pretty solid in the direct market, but it took years to do that.” Despite the adversity of inflation and a direct market that didn’t want them, Archie not only survived, it thrived. This was largely thanks to the innovation of digests.

Just as the regular digests were a better page-to-price ratio than regular comics, the Double Digests were a still better bargain. According to Miller, the Double Digest format—launched in 1981 or 1982—“was triply outselling the standard 128-page digest” by the end of the decade. Craig Boldman, an Archie writer since 1992, explains the broader impact of the Archie digests. “It was significant in light of the comics industry in general because, as the distribution system started changing, those digests were comics that were getting into regular people’s hands continuously, as opposed to other comics, which started migrating to

AN EASILY DIGESTIBLE FORMAT

“Archie Digest starts in earnest in 1972 or ’73,” Miller says. “The first numbers appear in ’74. Archie Digest—not Double Digest or anything, just the vanilla Archie book—[sold] 137,000 in ’74, 145,000 in ’75, 153,000 in ’76, 158,000 in ’77—it’s going up while the rest of the business is going down. Why? Because those first four years, the digest is 128 pages, but it was 60 cents. Compare that with the regular comics of the time, which were 30 cents in ’76, and that was for 32 pages. The digests also took advantage of the fact that, through the Comics Magazine Association of America, Archie had invented the supermarket counter dump. That’s part of the reason Archie survived so long, doing so well on the newsstand.” Gorelick explains the origin of the digests. “John Goldwater, he was the head of the company—not the Jon who is the head now but his father, John L. Goldwater. They had been talking to our distributor. They came out with one digest to start with. They had discussed it with our distributor at the time and they wanted to do something a little different; they wanted another market. Because the fact is, the digests would have a lot of presence in supermarkets, at the check-out stands, and that was the place they wanted to get into. So they gave it a try and it worked. We came out with quite a few—Jughead with Archie, [Archie’s Girls,] Betty and Veronica, Reggie, too. They were doing so well that one of the people in the accounting department who was keeping track of the sales came in and said, ‘Why don’t you do a Betty and Veronica book?’ We had a couple of these books and the regular Betty and Veronica book was doing very well. I was actually putting all those books together. At that time it was all reprint material. Now we have some new material in the digest books, but at that time it was all reprint and I had to start gathering material. It was a big job. The Betty and Veronica book took off—it was doing better than any of them. So we just kept expanding the line. We went to different sizes. The first ones that came out, I think were about 128 pages, then we went to Double Digests at 256 pages. It sold better than any of our other books. We had to pay for that [supermarket] space. It was expensive, but it paid off.”

Check ’Em Out at the Checkout (top) Here’s an Archie rarity from 1970: the Archie: Knack Yak mini-comic, a giveaway distributed with double packs of Fairmont Potato Chips. (bottom) Archie’s beloved digests have long been a staple at grocery store checkouts and other mass markets. TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

Funky Faculty (top) Miss Grundy and Mr. Weatherbee boogie down on this original cover art to Laugh Digest #63 (Mar. 1986), by Dan DeCarlo. (bottom) A trio of covers from cartoonist Bill Woggon’s 1983 Katy Keene revival. Note that the first issue bears Archie’s “Red Circle Comics” brand. There’s much more about Red Circle elsewhere in this issue! TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

the comics shops, so you actually had to be a comic fan to discover them. The great thing about the digests was they had that rack space at the checkout counter in grocery stores. While you’re waiting for the checkout line to inch forward, you could grab one and start reading it. You may as well put down 35 cents and take it home instead of putting it back on the rack.” Looking at the broad and varied output that Archie produces today, many mistakenly think that Archie in the 1970s and 1980s was “all Riverdale all the time,” but such was not the case. Notably, Archie reintroduced the MLJ/Mighty Comics superheroes and launched the Red Circle imprint, as detailed elsewhere in this issue. Archie relaunched another of its classics characters at this time, under its main Archie Comics imprint: fashion icon Katy Keene. A number of factors converged to reintroduce Katy Keene. A January 9, 1979, New York Times article (“Clothes-Crazy Katy Keene Comes Back” by Ron Alexander) describes how fashion coordinator Marilise Flusser (misspelled “Marilese” in the article), a longtime fan, brought Katy back as the backdrop in the window of Saks Fifth Avenue. Other fans who contributed to the character’s revival include Craig Leavitt, who published Katy Keene Fan Magazine with Archie’s approval; John S. Lucas, a contributor to the fanzine; and Barb Rausch, at the time perhaps best known for her work on Cutey Bunny and Neil the Horse. (These latter two Katy fans would ultimately serve as artists on the revived series and garner additional industry credits.) There were also a number of “Katy-Kons” held in Santa Barbara, California. Archie revived the fashion queen in 1983. “One of the things that really got their attention about Katy Keene was there was an article where all of these famous fashion designers said that one thing that got them interested in fashion was sending in their drawings to [series creator] Bill Woggon and Katy Keene,” Gorelick recalls, possibly referring to the 1979 Times article. victor gorelick Barry Grossman worked at Archie for decades in a wide range © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. of capacities. “I started when I was 13 years old, in the stock room— opening mail, getting lunches,” he says. From there, he would go on to work as a colorist, as well as writer and editor of the innovative and acclaimed Archie’s Riverdale High. He almost spearheaded the Katy Keene revival. “I was offered to be editor of Katy Keene and I was so excited because I was going to do all new things with her,” Grossman recounts. “She was going to travel the world, she was going to be a super-sleuth. I was going to really modernize everything. Amanda [Conner, artist] and I were really going to modernize Katy Keene. But Katy Keene was brought back and it was basically the same Katy Keene. It didn’t have the kick that it needed.” The revived series would last 33 issues, until 1990, but Katy’s popularity seems directly tied to creator Woggon. According to Gorelick, “Michael Silberkleit, who was one of owner Lou Silberkleit’s sons, and Richard Goldwater, who was managing editor, wanted to come up with new Katy Keene books. We went through a couple of different stages with different artists, but it never really did that well.”

INNOVATIONS

Archie didn’t only revisit such former successes as the Mighty Crusaders and Katy Keene, they also tested the waters with new ideas, to varying degrees of success. For example, take a look at the cover of Pep #393 (Mar. 1984). The cover features the typical Riverdalegang gag, but flanking the logo on either side are Thunder Bunny and Marvelous Maureen. Sure enough, each of these heroes has a feature in the book, alongside those stories starring Archie, Jughead, and Katy Keene. 4 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

A FASHIONABLE REVIVAL

Meet Marvelous Maureen (left) Cartoonist Lori Walls created the strip “Marvelous Maureen,” which premiered in Pep #383 (Apr. 1982). In the photo, culled from old newspaper files and submitted by Jack Abramowitz, Lori sketches her sister Maureen, her strip’s inspiration. (right) The first Maureen strip. Marvelous Maureen © Lori Walls.

“They were an experiment to see what kind of a reaction we’d get to them,” Gorelick explains. “Marvelous Maureen was created by a girl who worked in the art department. She came up with the character, based on her sister, actually. We let her take back the rights to that character if she wanted to try it someplace else. They were all experimenting; we did a lot of that.” Marvelous Maureen, the story of an Earth girl’s adventures in space, had a longer run than one might expect—she appeared in 23 installments in Pep and Laugh, plus a few puzzle pages and such. Lori Walls, creator of Marvelous Maureen, based the teen hero on her youngest sister. In an interview in the May 10, 1982, edition of the Shrewsbury, New Jersey, Daily Register, Lori explained that she left her native West Virginia in 1975 to pursue a career as an artist. After a while, she was sent a photograph of her sibling, then age 13. “I hadn’t seen Maureen in four years when I got the picture,” she said. “She was just adorable. I had to draw the photo, and then I played around with it,” ultimately adding the spacesuit and goggles. Despite best efforts, I was unable to contact either creator Lori or the real-life Maureen for this article, but an interesting fact arose: there’s a third Walls sister. Middle-sister novelist Jeannette is perhaps best known for her 2005 memoir The Glass Castle, the tale of growing up in an impoverished, dysfunctional family. This book was adapted as a 2017 motion picture starring Brie Larson [who will star as Carol Danvers in Marvel’s upcoming Captain Marvel movie] playing the author. So Maureen has inspired versions of herself in each of her sisters’ works. Thunderbunny’s tenure at Archie was far less straightforward (see sidebar on the next page).

ALL IN THE FAMILY

One non-Riverdale feature did launch from a tale of Archie and the gang. “Star Struck” in Archie #330 (July 1984) guest-starred Glenn Scarpelli, a teen idol from the television program One Day at a Time, who also released a self-titled LP in 1983. This led to a recurring feature entitled “Glenn Scarpelli in Hollywood” that appeared 15 times throughout 1984 and 1985. Glenn would again share a cover with the Archies for Archie’s TV Laugh-Out #101 (June 1985), but his comics debut appears to be the only time he interacted with the main cast in a story. It also bears mentioning that Glenn Scarpelli is the son of classic Archie artist Henry Scarpelli. “I never thought I’d be in Archie comics!” Glenn recalls. “I had been an actor since I was eight… but it wasn’t until One Day at a Time that I started to get into the teen magazines—Tiger Beat, 16, all those magazines—which, back in the day, were quite powerful, specifically for that demographic, the younger audience. The thing about Archie is,

even though the characters were in a certain era, they didn’t actually age. They were always relatable to whatever generation was reading the comic book that day. I think one of the motivations for them putting me in is, I was also kind of visible in a very young-girl demographic, which was kind of their audience. They wanted to maintain and kept bringing Archie into the present day, though the Archie characters never aged.” One might think that Henry Scarpelli would provide the art for his son’s four-color escapades—and for the most part you’d be right—but Glenn’s initial outing was actually drawn by the master, Dan DeCarlo, with inks provided by son James DeCarlo. “I was such a big Dan DeCarlo fan,” Scarpelli recounts. “I just thought his work was so incredible, and so did my dad. When I first got in the magazine, I was so excited that Dan drew me. ‘Oh, my God! Dan DeCarlo is drawing me! Are you kidding me?’ ” Some online commentators are cynical about the “Glenn Scarpelli in Hollywood” strips, but if you think about it, the feature actually makes a lot of sense. Archie often does cross-promotion with pop-culture figures, and not all of them as high profile as Glee. Australian pop duo the Veronicas appeared in Veronica #167 (Mar. 2006), as well as Archie and Friends #100–101 (July–Aug. 2006). (This was seen as a mutually beneficial settlement of a trademark infringement suit.) Another pop act, the School Gyrls, appeared in Archie #607 (May 2010) because… well, actually, that is a head-scratcher! So getting Glenn Scarpelli, a bona-fide teen idol of the time, without unnecessary complications from lawyers, agents, and managers, must have been a very desirable thing! “A lot of people have accused it of being nepotism,” Scarpelli says, “and I’m like, ‘Well, I guess maybe there was a little nepotism there.’ [But] it was one of those natural things that happened. Here I was, very visible to the young American public, and they wanted to keep Archie current. At that point, it was a natural fit. … I certainly did a lot of publicity in the teen magazines. I remember my dad drew these large,

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

down. Dan DeCarlo never really slowed down that much. He had two sons—they were fraternal twins—and they were working for Archie as well. They were a big part of the future of the company, those two kids. Unfortunately, they both passed away.” Gorelick explains how, as new talent entered the company, the veterans would mentor them: “We had the young artists coming in, we had them working with the older guys. Like Dan DeCarlo would look at their artwork and go over it. Samm Schwartz would, the inkers would. “Certainly, [then-newcomer] Rex Lindsey’s style was very different from Dan DeCarlo’s; the faces were very busy. Then we had Pat and Tim Kennedy, Fernando Ruiz, Dan Parent, and Bill Golliher. Those were all new guys who came in gradually, over a number of years. But you have to start bringing in new talent because not everybody is going to be around forever. Which is true now—they’re all gone. The only one who’s still left is Bob Bolling [of Little Archie fame], and he doesn’t do much for us [anymore]. “Most of these [newer] artists came to work for us… right out of the Joe Kubert School. Everybody told them to [draw] like Dan DeCarlo and they did the best they could, but it really took a while before they

Playing Favorites A certain Miss Cooper picks her fave artist in Betty and Veronica vol. 2 #7 (Dec. 1987). Script by Rod Ollerenshaw, art by Dan and Jim DeCarlo. Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com). TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

could really come into their own. [For example,] Pat and Tim Kennedy are now working on this book, Jughead: The Hunger. If I showed you the artwork that they first drew, it wouldn’t be the same. They’ve really come a long way.”

FURTHER EXPERIMENTATION

As the 1980s drew to a close, Archie Comics was once again experimenting. 1987 saw the launch of The New Archies. Featuring Archie’s gang in junior high school, midway between Little Archie and the regular Riverdale adventures, this was a relatively short-lived series, lasting 22 issues until 1990 and 14 digests from 1988 through 1991. Nevertheless, the comic far outstripped the animated series on which it was based; the cartoon lasted a mere 14 episodes, from September through December 1987. In 1989, four brand-new takes on the classic characters were launched: Archie 3000, Archie’s R/C Racers, Dilton’s Strange Science, and Faculty Funnies. The premises of these series were, respectively: Archie and the gang set 1,000 years in the future; Archie and Reggie racing radio-controlled cars across the country; Dilton and new love interest Danni confronting weirdness in strange times and places; and Mr. Weatherbee, Miss Grundy, Coach Clayton, and Professor Flutesnoot as superheroes. If you think these are eclectic takes on the characters to have been launched more or less simultaneously—well, you’d be right! “At that time we had a licensing department set up in the office,” Victor Gorelick explains. They were trying to come up with a lot of things to create more licensing for the company, for toys and apparel and things like that. The problem with those books was that there were just so many Archie books out there, it was killing the sales. It was just too many books out there, taking away from the sales of all the other books. Those books—R/C Racers, etc.—I don’t think they sold all that well. Archie 3000 was good but as a book at that time, it didn’t do that well.” Archie 3000 was, in fact, the most successful of the bunch, lasting 16 issues, until mid-1991. R/C Racers lasted ten issues; Strange Science and Faculty Funnies lasted five issues each.

END OF AN ERA

When asked to encapsulate the Archie comics of the 1970s and 1980s, Barry Grossman says, “They were the kind of material that children looked forward to. They enjoyed it. Kids would call in and they would want to talk with Archie. A lot of times, the calls would go into the art department. I would be Archie’s dad and say, ‘He’s in school now.’ Archie was like Santa Claus to little kids. To kids, these characters were really alive and that was because of the artwork that we had and the storytelling that was the backbone of Archie. “I miss the Archies of the ’70s and ’80s,” he continues. “I feel the stuff coming out today is different characters with the same names. And it’s hard for me because I always loved Archie because he was so naive. He always got a kiss here and there, which made him happy. That’s all he really wanted. But today, in order to sell Archie, I guess you have to do some different things that modernize it, but that’s not my Archie.” Regarding his father’s work, Glenn Scarpelli says, “One of the things that brings me the most joy is that the work that he did with Archie will live forever. I’m just so proud of his legacy.” That’s true not just of Henry Scarpelli but also of Dan DeCarlo, Harry Lucey, Stan Goldberg, Al Hartley, George Gladir, and so many others. Their work lives on not just in back issues but in those wonderful Archie digests. Those pocket-sized comics, the best bang-per-buck ratio in the industry, once helped the company to thrive against all odds. Now, almost every week, they introduce new readers to Archie’s rich and truly varied history. Special thanks to Steven Thompson and Maggie Thompson (no relation) for their assistance with this article. JACK ABRAMOWITZ is a writer, author, and educator living in New York City who coined the term “Archieverse” in CBG #1169 (April 12, 1996). His bucket list, in its entirety, is to get his name in an Archie comic, either as a writer or a character.

12 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

by J e r r y

I bumped into Stan Goldberg (1932–2014), whom I had long admired, at a San Diego Comic-Con sometime in the ’00s. He was seated near Larry Lieber and Sal Buscema on the main floor, and being near three of my Mighty Marvel heroes paralyzed me for a time. I wanted to get into the lines and get set up for some commissions, but a more urgent matter prevailed, and I decided to walk on and meet up with them later. The next time I went to that area, the three men were gone. However, I did make their guest panel and got comics signed by all three—a real delight. I stayed in touch with all three men, and in August of 2011, I decided to do a phone interview with Mr. Goldberg about his Marvel Comics work, specifically Millie the Model. I came across Mad About Millie #2 in 1969 and became an instant fan-for-life then. Mr. Goldberg and I shifted the conversation to his work at Archie Comics (and I’m glad we did!), and here’s that never-before-published interview…. – Jerry Boyd JERRY BOYD: Mr. Goldberg, I first saw your exquisite coloring for Marvel, but I didn’t know it was you! [laughter] STAN GOLDBERG: No one did! [more laughter] Stan [Lee] was very good about giving credit to everyone involved with the comics, but somehow, the colorist didn’t make the credits box until the 1970s! BOYD: You colored a lot of the titles… GOLDBERG: I colored them all, early on! Marie Severin came in at some point and we overlapped for a while. She worked at EC Comics in the 1950s and did superb coloring work, so all I had to teach her was the Marvel system of doing things.

BOYD: I don’t know if any little boys ever told you anything like this, but growing up in my Washington, D.C., neighborhood from 1966–’68 meant reading Marvel superheroes was too cool, but reading Patsy Walker and Millie the Model titles were not cool! [laughter] But after that unwritten but rigid restraint, I moved into a new neighborhood a few years later, and actually made a few new friends at my school, guys and girls, who loved Millie. It was around that time I saw Mad About Millie #2 on a spinner rack and fell in love with your great cartooning style! GOLDBERG: Did you want to read Millie or Patsy comics while you were living in D.C.? BOYD: Actually, no. [laughter] I was in 7th Heaven with the superhero titles! But I did read Archie… Archie was fine and dandy with all concerned. We knew we’d all be heading to high school one day, and Archie was kind of a blueprint about how to handle yourself when you hit 16… at least that’s what we thought! [laughter] GOLDBERG: I was working on Archie material in 1967, along with coloring chores at Marvel. A lot of my stuff amounted to one-page gags in Archie’s Mad House. I had a very fast style, which is what we all wanted. The more pages you produced, the bigger the check. So, like Jack Kirby, Mike Sekowsky, Jack Davis, and others, I developed a fast cartooning style that would give the impressions I wanted to convey. In the late 1960s, this was a good deal for me—Stan Lee as editor, my Millie and Archie writers, and so on. It allowed me to get a lot done. BOYD: Stan was writing the three Millie the Model titles around 1969, when I got there. Millie must’ve been

Boyd

The Other Stan the Man Artist Stan Goldberg in a 2008 photograph by Luigi Novi, plus a sampling of the many, many, many covers he did for Marvel and Archie Comics. Photo © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. Millie, the Punisher, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Sabrina, Archie, and related characters TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 13

conducted by J e r r y

Archie’s Mad House Man Archie Comics writer/cartoonist George Gladir in an undated photograph courtesy of Jerry Boyd, plus a sampling of covers from comics containing his stories. TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

One of the wonderful things about fanzines is that fans take it upon themselves to find out where their favorite creators live and sometimes bring them out to meet new audiences at conventions, or interview them, or get commissioned artwork from them. Because of their efforts and the graciousness of their creator friends, rarely seen or never-published interviews and artwork survive. I had the good luck to run into George Gladir (1925–2013) at San Diego Comic-Con and after hitting it off, I asked him if I could someday interview him and he consented. Mr. Gladir (rhymes with “bladder”) had been one of the Archie gang’s chief writers for more than half a century. While in his mid-teens, Gladir got off to an early start in the comics industry by submitting what became a winning entry in the Buffalo Bob cartoon contest. This was a part of Tip Top Comics, a Golden Age favorite. Later, he worked briefly for the comics packaging shop of Eisner and Iger. When WWII came, he served as a combat infantryman in Europe. After the war he enrolled in the Cartoonist and Illustrator’s School in New York City. For a number of years, he submitted gag cartoons to a variety of magazines. In George’s words, “I picked up invaluable experience in being able to tell a story in just one panel and understanding visual humor.” In 1959, he heard Archie Comics was hiring writers. He began doing one-page gags for Archie’s Joke Book, and then branched out to the other titles with complete stories. Simultaneously, he scripted humor stories for Cracked Magazine, often working with the great John Severin.

Boyd

Mark Arnold, one of BACK ISSUE’s frequent contributors, used to publish The Harveyville Fun Times!, largely dedicated to the wonderful Harvey Comics lineup. After I interviewed George Gladir on the subject of one of his finest creations, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, for THFT #71, I felt I needed to do a follow-up chat with him to discuss the Archie comics he worked so well on in general terms and stretching over the years. Luckily, he was happy to answer more questions, and here they are. The queries were submitted by email on Oct. 19, 2009 and answered on Jan. 17, 2010. Mr. Gladir, who passed away on April 3, 2013, also provided most of the art that follows, along with Archie fan supreme Greg Beda. – Jerry Boyd [Disclaimer: Since this was done long ago for another fanzine, there is an emphasis on Mr. Gladir’s time at Archie that precedes the Bronze Age.] JERRY BOYD: How did you initially come to write for comic books, Mr. Gladir? GEORGE GLADIR: I finished two years of a gag cartoonist course at the School of Visual Arts (then called the Cartoonist and Illustrator’s School) and started submitting gag cartoons to various magazines as a freelancer. Some two years later, in 1959, a friend and fellow cartoonist, Orlando Busino, informed me that Archie was looking for writers. Because of my experience as a gag cartoonist, I had no problem connecting with Archie, doing one-page

16 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

Archie’s Real-Life Pals ’n’ Gals (top) A San Diego Comic-Con photo (presumably late 1980s) featuring (front, left to right) Jughead and Tippy Teen cartoonist Samm Schwartz and Archie editor Victor Gorelick, and (back, left to right) an unidentified figure and George Gladir. (bottom) Dan DeCarlo’s with his wife Josie on the left and George Gladir is with his wife on the right side. They’re having a good time outside of a restaurant in the San Diego area following a day at SDCC in ’02. Mr. Gladir provided both photos, shared with BACK ISSUE by Jerry Boyd. gags and cover ideas. Soon, I expanded into writing cartoon articles for Archie’s Mad House and doing occasional Archie stories. Within a couple of years, I branched out by writing simultaneously for Cracked Magazine, a MAD-type publication. I credit my gag cartoonist experience for giving me the ability to do all of the above. As a gag cartoonist one learns how to convey as much as possible in just one panel. Also, by doing my writing in a rough storyboard format, I learned how to anticipate all the visual and verbal problems that a cartoonist might face. BOYD: Shortly after you got to Archie, they started up two way-out titles, [Tales Calculated to Drive You] Bats and Archie’s Mad House. There were funny and semi-serious monsters stories, and ongoing characters like Lester Cool and Chester Square, Captain Sprocket, and so on. What do you recall about writing for those books and artists like Mr. Busino, who drew for both? GLADIR: Almost immediately after starting at Archie, I took to writing for Archie’s Mad House and was writing much of it, creating all of the characters you mentioned as well as others. I introduced my friend Orlando Busino to Archie and Archie’s Mad House, and together we created Bats. Orlando was one gifted artist and his amazing artwork was responsible for what success Bats enjoyed in its short run. Unfortunately, there were great demands on his time. He simultaneously had to do gag cartoons for many of the major magazines (at a much more lucrative rate than comic books could afford to pay). Also, the Comics Code Authority put some very inane restrictions on what we could do with monsters, even though all of our stories were humorous in nature. BOYD: Did you have a favorite Archie character to write? Was Jughead “easier” since he disliked girls, loved to eat, was lazy, etc., or were Betty and Veronica, Archie, or Reggie stories easier or more fun to concoct? Was it easier for you, being a man, to write material for the boys, than it was to write for Josie, B&V, and Sabrina? GLADIR: Initially, I preferred writing the Jughead stories because his stories tended to be wilder and more imaginative in nature. Also, I had no problem with Archie stories. While I had a somewhat more limited range with Betty and Veronica, I did like coming up with stories that fit their personalities. And since I created Sabrina, I had no difficulties in writing her stories. BOYD: There was a produced but unsold Archie TV pilot done in the early 1960s. The team that produced Leave It to Beaver put it out. I’ve seen it once. Did you ever see it, and if so, any recollections? GLADIR: No, I never saw it. BOYD: Archie titles followed the seasons very well. In summer, the beach and surfboard stories showed up, snowball fights and Christmas shopping in the winter followed suit, and spring meant prom dances and school sporting events like baseball and soccer. Did you have a preference when it came to seasonal stories? GLADIR: No preference. BOYD: When Samm Schwartz (who concentrated his art on the Jughead titles) went over to edit, write, and draw for Tower Comics’ Tippy Teen titles in ’65, did he ask you to join him? GLADIR: Yes, he did, and I did go to his office, but somehow we did not connect. Writing for both Archie and Cracked at the time, my schedule was pretty much filled up.

BOYD: By the mid-’60s, superheroes were making noticeable inroads in American pop culture. The Archie gang became costumed crimefighters (except for Veronica). Did you like that transition? GLADIR: I had nothing to do with the Archie superheroes. I was already involved with Captain Sprocket, a Mad House superhero I had created back in 1963. BOYD: Archie followed the wildly popular spy craze, as well. Did you write the “Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E.: stories, and were they enjoyable? GLADIR: No, I did not write any of the R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. stories that I can recall. [Editor’s note: Frank Doyle was the chief Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. writer during the 1960s.] BOYD: G. (I believe his first name was “Gerald”) LeMoine became an Archie writer-artist in 1967 or so [his first name, or at least his nickname, was Gus—ed.]. He was an African-American, I believe, because in the late ’70s he went to Fitzgerald Publications and did a “black Archie” knock-off (which I loved, by the way) called Fast Willie Jackson. At Archie he specialized in one-page jokes and did wonderful work on Reggie’s Jokes, Archie’s Joke Book, and Jughead’s Jokes. Do you remember him at all? GLADIR: No, I regret to say I do not. Usually, the Archie writers and artists met only once a year at the Archie Christmas party, and by 1969 I had moved to California. BOYD: Suddenly, by ’68–’69, the Riverdale kids were rockers. Even Little Archie (then done by Dexter Taylor) got morphed into the Little Archies! Did you get a kick out of hearing the Archies’ hit singles on the radio? Did you ever get up on Saturday mornings and watch the cartoons? GLADIR: Yes, I did. Also, working at Filmation in 1969, the California studio where the Archie cartoon show was produced, gave me the opportunity to hear the Archies perform.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 17

(Cue music) Everything’s Archie! Harvey’s here, Vicki’s here, And Chili is, too, Debbi’s here, And here comes Binky, And Scooter, too! So, Everything’s Arch— Hey… wait a minute, gang! Those folks aren’t the Archies! What’s going on here? Well, there’s a reason Archie Andrews was once known as the world’s most popular teenager. Everyone wanted to be just like him. Even other comic-book teenagers and a few four-color 20-somethings! Created as a humorous backup feature for MLJ’s Pep Comics in late 1941, Archie Andrews became so popular so quickly in the World War II era that before long, the entire company had changed its name to Archie Comics and, with rare exception, stopped regularly publishing anything that wasn’t at least in some way Archie-related. This is, of course, similar to what had happened on a larger scale with DC’s Superman just a few years earlier. After that character’s unexpected mega-success in Action Comics, superhumans and mystery men were suddenly omnipresent in comic books. In a bizarre sort of immaculate conception, Superman begat everyone from Batman, Wonder Man, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and Bob Phantom to Kangaroo Man, Stardust, Phantom Lady, and Captain Flash. After Archie hit big, the so-called “Mirth of the Nation” quickly began a long tradition of begetting clones of both sexes including Ginger, Suzie, Ezra, Howie, Chuck, Henry Brewster, Frankie, Dexter, Willie, Patsy Walker, Hap Hazard, Jeanie, Cindy, Georgie, Kathy, Rusty, Margie, Mitzi, Buzzy, Cookie, Jetta, Freddy, and Tippy Teen! Whew! And I’m serious when I say that’s only a few of the Archiesque characters leading up to the Bronze Age! There’s no question that Stan Lee’s Timely, a company that never saw a bandwagon it couldn’t jump on, led the way in early Archie rip-offs. A lot of that company’s teen titles of the 1940s and ’50s were very well done, though, with likable characters, clever stories, and great art from the likes of Al Hartley, Stan Goldberg, and Dan DeCarlo, all of whom would later end up at Archie!

by S t e v e n

Thompson

MEET MILLIE

Perhaps it was this early success with teenage comics that led Stan to hang onto a handful of the characters such as Kathy (“The Teenage Tornado”), Millie the Model, Chili, Patsy Walker, and Hedy Wolfe well into Timely’s Marvel era. Kathy, which Stan Goldberg told me in 2010 was his favorite comic to have worked on, stuck around until 1964. The others had transformed into something more akin to romance comics with some soap opera mixed in. Patsy Walker (“The Girl Who Could Be You!”) lost her own long-running title in ’65, with Patsy and Hedy hanging on ’til the end of ’66. Patsy and Hedy had even turned up at Reed and Sue’s wedding in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (Oct. 1965), placing them squarely in the Marvel Universe, where Patsy would later be revived as Hellcat. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #40 for Hellcat’s story.] Logically, it would seem there was no room for Millie the Model, herself perhaps inspired by Archie’s fashion queen, Katy Keene, to keep hanging on at Marvel as things got increasingly cosmic… but then, in 1967, an odd thing happened. Millie and her friends got RE-Archiefied! “Here’s an announcement we never thought we’d make!” said an item in Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins. “We’re gonna recommend that you take a peek at—of all things—the latest ish of Millie the Model! We’ve changed the mag around completely—new type of artwork and stories—and Honest to Aunt May, it’s really kinda funny.” According to Roy Thomas, still relatively new at Marvel at that time, “Stan’s idea... he wanted to see if he could make them sell. (And Millie had had a bit more of an Archie look years before.) They did sell for a while.”

Crisis on Earth-Riverdale From the late Silver Age, a groovy quartet of DC’s Archie doppelgangers: (top) Binky #63 (cover by Bob Oksner and Tex Blaisdell) and Binky’s Buddies #1 (cover by Oksner), plus (bottom) Date with Debbi #1 (cover by Samm Schwartz), featuring its Archie-looking star, and Swing with Scooter #19 (cover by Henry Scarpelli). TM & © DC Comics.

22 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

Marvel’s Model Citizens The House of Ideas’ longtime fashionista’s Archie makeover! (top, left to right) The spinoff Mad About Millie #1 (Apr. 1969). The revamped Millie the Model, issue #180 (Mar. 1970). Millie Annual #12 (1975). (Note that the “Queen-Size” logo’s font replicates Marvel’s “Giant-Size” brand of the day.) The other Millie spinoff, Chili. Issue #13 (May 1970). All covers by Archie legend Stan Goldberg. (bottom) Familiar gags, albeit wonderfully drawn by Stan Goldberg, on the covers of Marvel’s Harvey #1 (Oct. 1970) and 2 (Dec. 1970). TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

As if there remained any doubt that this was all an attempt to tap The other Stan, Stan G. (as he was called at Marvel), had stuck with Millie and friends through the years of more serious art and stories but into Archie’s lucrative teenage market, there were also a number of stories showing Millie’s adventures as a teenager, where her freckles told me that he was thrilled to go back to the cartoonier style. As far as sales on the Millieverse titles, they sold well enough, in fact, made her look like a combination of Betty and Archie himself! for a second regular mag, Mad About Millie #1 (Apr. 1969), to come along, followed shortly thereafter by Millie’s longtime redheaded rival HERE’S HARVEY finally getting her own title just a month later with Chili #1 (May 1969). While Millie and her pals and gals were still cavorting around, along came Harvey. Harvey was one of the most Archie-like books of the Bronze There were also Queen-Size Specials! Age non-Archies. It was also, in its time, an almost completely Millie and her friends and beaus weren’t teenagers, but they ignored title, and now an almost completely forgotten one. might as well have been. The new stories hit on the teenage tropes of jealousy, dates, dances, and cars. The new colorful When asked if he remembered anything about Harvey, fashions of the ’60s and ’70s were highlights of every issue. Roy Thomas recalls, “Nope, don’t know anything about You could also find lots of long hair and references to Harvey, except that it was Stan’s idea and concept. rock music, protests, and the Generation Gap. I doubt if even he’d recall much about Harvey in The new/old art style by Goldberg was close particular now.” Harvey came and went in a mere six issues enough to Archie art that a casual reader would spread out over slightly more than a two-year period. The first two issues of Harvey arrived in late 1970 probably assume them to be put out by the same with no fanfare whatsoever and presumably no sales, company. (According to Mark Evanier, writing on so the series was almost immediately abandoned. Just his blog, later stories signed by Sol Brodsky were still actually drawn by Goldberg who, at that point, two years later, though, during the period when didn’t want his new regular employer—Archie—to corporate Marvel was seemingly doing everything it know he was still moonlighting at Marvel.) could to drive the competition out of business by roy thomas Most important of all, the stories and one-page flooding the newsstand with product, Harvey made © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. gags, generally signed by Stan Lee himself, tended his unlikely comeback. Amidst the dozens of pointless to be actually funny! No longer just “comics for your sister,” boys were reprints of mostly subpar 1950s strips, the returned Harvey stood out now reading Millie and Chili issues as well, myself included! from the crowd with all-new material. After all, he hadn’t been around Millie Collins and Chili Storm work for a modeling agency, long enough to have anything to reprint yet! Harvey Hooper—but for his red hair looking more like Archie’s own which gives them a valid excuse to wear outrageous fashions all the time. Millie’s boyfriend is photographer Clicker and their boss is Mr. in-house double, “That Wilkin Boy”—debuted in Harvey # 1 (Oct. 1970) Hanover. Her other friends include Toni, Daisy, and Marvin (who as the hip, handsome new student at Midvale High in another story signed only by Stan Lee the way he used to do it back in the 1950s. vaguely resembles a slightly hipper Jughead). Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

One teenage girl, powers beyond that of mortals, high school hijinks… nothing could ever go wrong with that combination, right? Sabrina the Teenage Witch has been a consistently entertaining character since her debut on the comics page well over 50 years ago. When considering her longevity, though, it’s apparent that Sabrina isn’t just a comic-book character. For most of her history, Sabrina has enjoyed plenty of success in various incarnations on the “small screen.” With a new Netflix original TV series (show creator Robert Aguirre-Sacasa’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, starring Kiernan Shipka) around the corner at this writing, what better time than now to see where Sabrina has been so far both on the page and screen?

by C

hristopher Larochelle

BEWITCHING BOW

In 1962, Archie Comics introduced a new character that brought an entirely different dimension to the publisher’s lineup. Taking up a mere five pages in Archie’s Mad House #22 (Oct. 1962), writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo brought readers up to speed on what life is like as a “modern witch.” It’s not all about “living on some dreary mountain top… wearing some grubby old rags, and making some nasty old brew.” Rather than any of that imagery, Sabrina purports that “we modern witches believe life should be a ball!” In this short story, readers are also treated to brief introductions of two important supporting characters in the Sabrina mythos: Salem, Sabrina’s cat familiar; and Della, her “head witch.” [Editor’s note: According to the Grand Comics Database (comics.org), this prototypical Sabrina tale drew inspiration from the 1958 film adaptation of the play Bell, Book and Candle, starring Kim Novak, and Gladir named the teenage witch after a woman he knew during his adolescence, later recalling that her name was actually Sabra, not Sabrina. Incidentally, pop culture’s other popular spellcaster, Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens on the long-running ABC-TV sitcom Bewitched, first rode her broom in the fall of 1964, some two years after Sabrina’s debut.] The early Sabrina comics of the ’60s were not exactly numerous. Sabrina appeared in just a scattered few short stories per year. Bits and pieces of Sabrina’s character came together in tales relegated to Archie’s Mad House, and while there might not have been a lot, it’s obvious that Gladir and DeCarlo were dedicated to letting the spotlight shine on their latest character. It’s quickly established that the teenage witch has a hard time staying “undercover,” living with her Aunt Hilda (a witch much more in keeping with the stereotypes that Sabrina railed against in her debut story). Sabrina just can’t help herself and constantly gets into trouble when magic spells go wrong. Some huge things happened to change Sabrina’s course as a character as the decade of the ’70s drew closer. The character’s footprint on the comics page became magnified when a new series called Archie’s TV Laugh-Out was launched. In the first issue of the series (cover-dated Dec. 1969), a major character was added to Sabrina’s cast in Harvey Kinkle (the teenage witch’s most prominent paramour). By the second issue of TV Laugh-Out, Sabrina had been fully integrated into the Archie microcosm, even joining the Archies on stage for a performance! What prompted the publication of a new Archie series entitled Archie’s TV Laugh-Out? The behindthe-scenes reality is that Archie and the gang had all turned into Saturday morning cartoon characters, and Sabrina was along for the ride!

Magical Multi-Tasker Miss Spellman’s a jill-of-all-trades on this Dan DeCarlo/Rudy Lapickdrawn cover to the first issue of her own series, Sabrina the Teenage (Teen-Age) Witch #1 (Apr. 1971). TM & © Archie Comics Publications, Inc.

32 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

AS SEEN ON TV

As detailed in Andy Mangels’ “Backstage Pass” article following, in 1968 animation house Filmation Studios had gotten to work on a new Saturday morning cartoon for CBS entitled The Archie Show. The ball was rolling, and the animation studio would keep reformatting, reusing, and rerunning Archie cartoons for the next decade. The second incarnation, The Archie Comedy Hour, began airing in 1969 and brought Sabrina the Teenage Witch directly to the forefront. Sabrina was a new student at Riverdale High, and her adventures bookended those of Archie and company in each hour. With the beginning of The Archie Comedy Hour, Sabrina became not only a character that readers of comic books could enjoy—it brought her to an even bigger audience of fans who were sitting in front of their television sets. This bigger audience of TV viewers enjoyed both rebroadcasts and new episodes of the Sabrina cartoon as Filmation and CBS tried different formats. Following The Archie Comedy Hour, 1970 saw the debut of Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies, a show that brought new characters to the mix. Aired alongside Sabrina reruns from the previous show, The Groovie Goolies regaled audiences with the adventures of several of Sabrina’s friends. Drac (a Dracula stand-in, of course), Frankie (as in Frankenstein’s monster), and Wolfie (a wolfman) were joined by plenty of other monsters. The Groovie Goolies show featured plenty of jokes, riddles, and musical numbers, but never seemed to garner the success that would be required to push the series past its initial run of 16 episodes (though in 1971 CBS did rebroadcast the episodes without the “backing support” of Sabrina’s name on the title). Returning to the Filmation Sabrina cartoons, 1971–1974 saw Sabrina the Teenage Witch broadcast on a regular schedule. Not surprisingly, this version of the Filmation cartoons included both reruns and new episodes to keep things fresh. By this time, Sabrina had been on TV for five straight years. It was time for a break—one that would last for a few years. In 1977, The New Archie and Sabrina Hour debuted (notice the co-headlining credit there!), and while the Archie segments were reruns, Sabrina segments were all-new episodes. Filmation had experimented with formats and lengths in many ways throughout their years of producing Archie cartoons, and the hour-long format didn’t seem to work as well as the studio might have hoped. After 12 episodes were broadcast, The New Archie and Sabrina Hour folded before 1978 arrived.

intercepts… and proceeds to chew out Archie for his diverted attention! Things just aren’t going well for Sabrina, and the situation gets worse when Harvey comes by to explain himself. It turns out that Sabrina never had a thing to worry about, since the “new girl” is actually Harvey’s cousin. This first story in the Teenage Witch’s first solo title would provide a thematic blueprint for many Sabrina tales that followed over the course of 77 issues. With 77 issues full of short comics stories, it would be impossible to discuss them all. Within these many stories, the wide-ranging cast of characters took turns in the spotlight.

SABRINA THE SOLO STAR

The editors at Archie Comics realized that Sabrina’s success on the small screen meant that they had another tentpole character in their lineup. Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch #1 arrived with a cover date of April 1971 and served as Sabrina’s home on the comics page throughout the ’70s, ending in 1983 after 77 issues. The cover art for Sabrina #1 really does say a lot: Sabrina has now taken center stage as she lounges on a couch. Archie Andrews himself is performing a song on a hovering TV screen as the witch uses her magic powers to do several different things simultaneously. Algebra homework is getting finished, a history report is spitting out of a typewriter, and Sabrina is drinking from a straw (all hands-free!). “You know, Salem,” Sabrina says to her puzzled cat familiar, “there are times I really dig being a teen-age witch!” With this Dan DeCarlo masterpiece, the tone for the entire series was set. While paying homage to his first illustration of Sabrina from Archie’s Mad House, the cover of Sabrina #1 more clearly asserts the young witch as the star of her own show… she’s a plucky kid who will push the limits of her powers and have to deal with the consequences thereof. Sabrina #1 wastes no time in making it perfectly clear that there is a new person in town to interact with Archie and the gang. Sabrina talks to Ethel and notices Harvey, now officially known as her boyfriend, walking into the Chok’lit Shoppe with another girl. Naturally, this peeves Sabrina and she decides to make Harvey jealous by casting a love hex on none other than Archie Andrews. Archie is suddenly magnetized to her. Archie fawning over Sabrina at the Chok’lit Shoppe doesn’t immediately have the intended effect, however. Before Harvey notices a thing, Veronica Lodge

Winsome Witches, Before and After Sabrina (top) Kim Novak enchanted moviegoers in the 1958 film comedy Bell, Book and Candle. Autographed lobby card courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (bottom left) Elizabeth Montgomery starred in the long-running TV sitcom Bewitched—as well as this comic-book adaptation published by Dell Comics. (bottom right) Sabrina’s first cover appearance: Archie’s Mad House #27 (Aug. 1963)—but curiously, the teenage witch doesn’t appear inside this issue! Bell, Book and Candle © 1958 Columbia Pictures. Bewitched © Sony Pictures. TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 33

In issue #77 (Jan. 1983, which brought Sabrina’s first headlining comic-book to a close), an all-Christmas issue, Sabrina celebrates with those she is closest to. Aunt Zelda (always the rarely seen aunt) appears in one story, but the last story boils everything down to basics: just Sabrina and Aunt Hilda. It turns out that Hilda has a hard time in the chilly winter months and magically zaps Sabrina and herself to a much warmer place. While the older witch is really hoping to convince her niece that it’s so much better this way, Sabrina can’t do without everything that she expects to see every year. Sabrina mentions the things she misses, plus adds that she “can’t find anything Christmasy about suntan lotion!” Hilda figures it out, and it’s soon back to the previous setting: a warm, cozy home with a gigantic and authentic Christmas tree, a fireplace, and snow piling up outside.

SABRINA THE SUPERSTAR

One major part of the Sabrina story debuted on television in the fall of 1996. Without a doubt, the character’s jump into a live-action TV show reached a bigger audience than any other incarnation up until that point. Melissa Joan Hart, a young actress who had already proven herself as a series lead with the Nickelodeon show Clarissa Explains It All, landed the title role in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The series lasted for seven years (coming to a close in 2003) and brought much of the spirit of Sabrina’s previous on-screen and off-screen adventures into the realm of live-action television. From Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda (portrayed by Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick, respectively), Harvey Kinkle (Nate Richert), and Salem the cat ( brought to life partly by puppetry and voiced by Nick Bakay), Sabrina’s core supporting cast were present throughout much of the series. The show never delved into any connections with Archie Andrews or Riverdale at all, but definitely showcased the inherent dangers of a teenager wielding magical powers in vivid ways. After a few years, Sabrina wasn’t really a teen anymore, however, and for the first time Sabrina fans got to see what would happen next with the character’s story as she attended college.

robert hack

Sabrina Today Miss Spellman and Salem as rendered by Robert Hack on the cover of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #6 (Sept. 2016). TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

One of the only things that remained constant in Sabrina the Teenage Witch was change. Many performers came and went as the show progressed. Some characters were written out (such as Jenny, Sabrina’s best friend from the first season), and some performers moved on to other things (such as the rather abrupt disappearances of both Aunts Hilda and Zelda). Perhaps because of all of this change, the show was never able to really get stale, and the show’s run lasted for well over 150 episodes. Sabrina also made a return to the realm of animation not long after the success of the Melissa Joan Hart series. In fact, while Sabrina: The Animated Series featured a younger 12-year-old version of the witch voiced by Hart’s younger sister Emily, the live-action star took on the roles of Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda for this version.

SABRINA TODAY

In recent years, Archie Comics has made some bold moves to push characters in new directions, attracting many talented comic-book creators who might not have necessarily been interested in being associated with the company in the past. Sabrina is no exception when it comes to playing a part in the company’s new efforts. A straight-up horror comic called Afterlife with Archie began publication just in time for Halloween of 2013, and the series paved the way for another series starring Sabrina. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is definitely not a version of the character that the whole family can sit down to enjoy, but its genuinely haunting pages have been painstakingly crafted by writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Robert Hack since 2014. Hack expresses how Chilling Adventures plays into what drew him to Archie Comics in the first place: “One of the things I loved so much about Archie while growing up was all of the ‘niche’ universes: Caveman Archie, Archie 3000, Jughead’s Time Police, Little Archie, Pureheart the Powerful, Mad House—all of these out-there takes on the characters. The Archie gang is flexible enough to take these little jaunts into other genres and have fun (or in our case, abject horror) and bend back into shape. We’ve built our own little quirky niche neighborhood of suspense—and it worked! It certainly helps that we all absolutely love the characters… I don’t think the books would be successful if we didn’t. It’s horror wrapped in the world of Sabrina, but the characters and the heart are still there.” When it comes to Sabrina’s staying power over the last 56 years, it’s not too difficult to think of reasons why new incarnations keep coming up. “Humor and heart and a great character design by the brilliant Dan DeCarlo certainly help,” according to Robert Hack. Sabrina has already been featured in so many different ways: as a comic-book character with all of the “Archie style” goodness (plus magic!), as a plucky cartoon character, the star of a family-friendly seven-seasonlong weeknight comedy, and her more modern revision focusing on the dark side of being a teenage witch. It’s clear that there are many more Sabrina stories to be told! At a young age CHRISTOPHER LAROCHELLE discovered superheroes on the small screen in cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men. He got his first comics a short time after that and still adds to the collection today.

36 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

WRAPPING IT UP

by A n d y

Mangels

He was America’s favorite teenager. Created in Pep Comics #22 (Dec. 1941) by publisher John Goldwater, artist Bob Montana, and writer Vic Bloom, redheaded Archie Andrews was the high schooler who could never choose between two gorgeous girls: blonde Betty Cooper or brunette Veronica Lodge. Along with best friend Jughead Jones and rival Reggie Mantle, the teens attended Riverdale High in a tremendously popular line of comic books that sold millions of copies. Today, Archie is again a star in the CW’s hit series Riverdale, a strange mixture of Dawson’s Creek and Twin Peaks, with murders, incest, mob bosses, biker gangs, drugs, and beheaded statues, all with a sprinkling of pop music thrown in at the top. But even with all of its televised success, Riverdale has not yet achieved the kind of pop-culture prominence that Archie Andrews’ first musically inclined incarnation did 50 years prior… On September 14, 1968, the Archie Comics empire was given a seismic jolt into the contemporary scene when Filmation Studios’ The Archie Show debuted on Saturday morning television. The CBS animated series soon became one of the highest-rated TV shows on the air, with its combination of comedy, teenage characters, music, and dancing. Music producer Don Kirshner created the musical sound of the Archies, utilizing singer Ron Dante, backed by Toni Wine. The Archie Show and its fictional band the Archies were soon everywhere—in magazines, comic books, toys, and even on cereal boxes! The Archie Show would eventually lead to eight different animated series, as well as spin-offs such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Groovie Goolies, and gold records by the score! But how did an animated series based on a teen comic book become one of the highest-rated TV shows on the planet? How did the Archies sell millions of records? And what was the deal with groovy dances like “The Weatherbee” and “The Hamburger”? Let’s find out as we return to the adventures of Hot Dog, the Chok’Lit Shoppe, bubblegum pop music, and all the fun at Riverdale High!

STRIKING A CHORD

From the beginning, the Archie line embraced all the tropes of teenagers, but teenagers in the 1940s and 1950s were changing faster than culture could imagine. As technology rocketed forward, cars, fashion, entertainment, and music evolved to embrace youth and their ever-more rebellious attitude. Teens joined the workforce earlier, bought cars earlier, and chose their own styles of music and dance… no matter what the “square” adults thought. Although the Archie comics attempted some diversity in storytelling tone—including a kid’s version with Little Archie, a superhero version with Captain Pureheart, and a spy version with “The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E.”—as popular music became more and more a part of the teenage experience, the Archie crew tried to find a way to incorporate it, even if the static elements of the comic page made it difficult to convey the actual sound of music. The teens listened

Rockin’ from Riverdale Under the direction of Hot Dog, Filmation’s Archies, Saturday morning superstars. TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

semi-regular stars of Life with Archie, welcoming Betty and Veronica into the group as dancers with #64 (Aug. 1967), and debuting a top-of-cover graphic of the quintet as a group with Life with Archie #73 (May 1968). Archie and his “Pals ’n’ Gals” had transcended the comics page since shortly after their debut, having been the stars of the Archie Andrews radio series from May 31, 1943 to September 5, 1953 (on the NBC Blue Network, Mutual Radio, and NBC Radio). The show ran 15 minutes long from 1942 to June 2, 1944, then became a half-hour show from June 1945–September 1953. Archie himself was portrayed on the weekly series by Charles Mullen (1943–1944), Jack Grimes (1944) and Burt Boyar (1945), while Bob Hastings had the longest run (1945– 1953) as the teen’s voice. [Editor’s note: Bob Hastings, also the voice of Commissioner Gordon on Batman: The Animated Series, was profiled in BACK ISSUE #99.] Post-radio, with the comics still selling millions of copies to teen boys and girls, two live-action Archie television pilots were produced. In 1962, a Desilu pilot was shot starring Leave It to Beaver’s Frank Bank in the title role. Two years later, Screen Gems/Columbia crafted another pilot for ABC in 1964, produced by Harry Ackerman and directed by Gene Nelson. Newcomer John Simpson played the teen lead. Neither pilot was picked up for series, but a few years later, a new animation studio in Hollywood threw their lot in with the kids from Riverdale. An animation union newsletter noted that “an all-new animation series, Archie, is all but in the bag” at Filmation Associates!

38 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

, Inc.

(left) Betty and Veronica dig the folk music scene in issue #101 of their shared title, from 1964. By Frank Doyle, Dan DeCarlo, and Rudy Lapick. (right) The Archies make their debut in Life with Archie #60 (Apr. 1967). Cover by Bob White and Jon D’Agostino.

to music on radio and records, attended concerts, danced, and eventually began creating music on their own. One of the earliest attempts was in Betty and Veronica #101 (May 1964), in which Archie, Betty, and Veronica formed a proto-group called “The Folk Singers.” Shortly after, in Archie’s Pals ’n’ Gals #29 (Summer 1964), the boys of Riverdale (Archie, Reggie, Jughead, and Moose) form a band called the Beetles to sing “I Want to Hold Your Finger” at a school dance. The group turned out to be a dream sequence, much to Archie’s relief. Less than three years later, though, a “real” comic-book band was born with “The Archies,” featuring Archie and Reggie on guitar and Jughead on drums. Debuting on newsstands the same week in February 1967 were Life with Archie #60 (Apr. 1967), featuring the debut of the Archies in a story called “Once Upon a Tune!” and Laugh #193 (Apr. 1967), with the group cover-featured but not included in the interiors. Betty and Veronica struck back with their own group—though it was only coverfeatured— “The Gallant Gals” in Archie’s Joke Book Magazine #112 (May 1967), and an earlier “The Little Archies” band was revealed in The Adventures of Little Archie #42 (Spring 1967). The Archies became the

Tryouts

FILMATION ORIGINS

Founded in the early 1960s by Lou Scheimer, Norm Prescott, and Hal Sutherland, Filmation Associates was a scrappy young company that was changing the face of the nascent Saturday morning culture only a few years after they had broken out of studio animation jobs and formed their own company. Scheimer and Sutherland were both animators who had put in a few years in the trenches at Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and Paramount. It was there that Scheimer met Prescott, who was looking to put together an animation crew for a sequel to The Wizard of Oz, for which he had assembled a star voice cast (a plan unheard of in animation at the time). Prescott had no animation background; he had been a popular syndicated radio disc jockey before moving onto music, merchandising, and post-production with Embassy Pictures. In 1965, Filmation had bluffed their way into getting the job to animate and produce The New Adventures of Superman for National Periodical Publications— now known as DC Comics—for a CBS Saturday morning series. That show featured two Superman segments and a Superboy adventure; Filmation hired mostly radio actors to voice the characters, including previous Archie actor Bob Hastings, who played Superboy. When Superman was a massive success, Filmation began to expand into other animated fare for the new Saturday morning market. Scheimer understood the value of “known” properties, and he and Prescott approached movie studios looking for properties that could be turned into new cartoon shows. A second National/DC series, Aquaman, expanded and was paired with the Kryptonian hero for The Superman/ Aquaman Hour of Adventure in 1967, and Journey to the Center of the Earth debuted as well. Then, another comic-book inspiration struck. “The concept was brought to us by Irv Wilson, who was our agent at the time,” said Scheimer in my interviews with him for the 2012 TwoMorrows book, Lou Scheimer: Creating The Filmation Generation. “Irv had approached John Goldwater, who was one of the guys running Archie Comics, about licensing his books out for a TV show. Irv called me and said, ‘Do you want the rights to Archie?’ And I said, ‘What the hell is Archie? Is it something kids know?’ I had never seen the comic book, even though it had been around since 1942. I didn’t read comic books that kids were reading then, which was a mistake, and I didn’t know how successful a book it really was. He said, ‘Oh, God, Lou, every kid in the country knows what it is.’ “I think I flew out to meet with John Goldwater, who was a very nice man. We made a deal, and it was a very legit deal. We both owned 50 percent of whatever shows we produced. We actually owned the negatives for the film as I recall. And it was an easy show to sell. The show existed in a way already; the comic book was there, the characters were there. So we presented it to [CBS programming executive] Freddie Silverman with a stack of comic books. It was the cheapest presentation we ever made and probably one of the most successful shows we ever produced. The reason I knew it was going to be successful was that Silverman started laughing and clapping, and he never did that at anything. This really hit him right where he understood it; he knew what would happen with those characters, and how they could be used.” The Saturday morning scene, as Scheimer recalled, was “polluted with adventure shows, and there was nothing like Archie on the air. And then we got the idea to make music an integral part of the show.

That was not being done for children’s shows; it became the first time that a children’s show had a group created for them! The Beatles had been adapted, but it wasn’t something new; it was just taking their already existing music and using it.” At about the same time in Spring 1967 that the Archies were introduced as a singing group in the comics—about six months before Filmation was offered the franchise to develop—music producer Don Kirshner was breaking up with the recording group he had been instrumental in turning into a hit: the Monkees. Filmation’s Norm Prescott saw an opportunity, and called Kirshner. If he wanted to create the musical success of the Monkees again, he could do it, free of them, Columbia Records… or even real people! The new CBS series was titled The Archie Show. The series was developed to have two eight-minute stories, a three-minute musical segment, and other “how to dance” or short joke segments. The musical segment would feature the Archies as a band, singing a pop song. Because that music wasn’t specific to any of the plots, Kirshner and his team could work on their own, independent of the animation or storytelling process. And they wouldn’t have to deal with visibly recognizable singers whose success might go to their heads.

Filmation’s Founders (top) (left to right) Norm Prescott, Hal Sutherland, and Lou Scheimer in the 1960s. (bottom) The company’s logo, inside its office. Both courtesy of Andy Mangels, whose Scheimer bio [above] is now in its second printing.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 39

Totally Rad Archies The Archies continue to rock comics readers today… but let’s flash back to how they looked in the Big ’80s. (top) Cover to Archie’s TV Laugh-Out #100 (Apr. 1985) and (bottom) original cover art (courtesy of Heritage) to Everything’s Archie #120 (Nov. 1985), both by Dan DeCarlo. TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

THE ARCHIE SHOW PLAYS AN ENCORE

In 1989, Filmation’s owner, Westinghouse, sold the company to investors from makeup company L’Oréal, and the company was shut down. The Filmation library has changed owners multiple times since then, being owned by Hallmark, UK-based Entertainment Rights, Classic Media, DreamWorks Animation, and now Universal Studios. Archie Comics itself released four individual DVDs in 2004, each compiling segments from throughout the various Filmation shows. In July 2007, Genius Products released The Archie Show: The Complete Series on DVD as a set, produced by the author of this article. The set was missing some elements of the originals that had been lost to editing over the years, but was as complete as could be done, and featured a documentary with Scheimer. A second set, Archie’s Funhouse: The Complete Series, was released in March 2008, also produced by this author, and featuring a documentary with Ron Dante. Genius self-produced their final release in the Archie-verse in April 2008 with Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and other planned releases were canceled. Although Ron Dante wasn’t originally allowed to reveal that he was the lead singer for the Archies due to contractual anonymity, the word of his involvement with the series eventually became industry, then public, knowledge. “I never toured with the Archies. They did talk to me at one point about dying my hair red and putting on freckles, but I didn’t do it. I had my own solo career, I had a jingle career in New York City. But about ten years ago, I decided to go out and perform live, and I’m doing all of the Archies, so people can come and hear ‘Sugar, Sugar’ and ‘Jingle Jangle’ and ‘Bang-Shang-A-Lang’ live now. And it’s amazing to see how many baby boomers come to the show and are just so happy to see it live… The people who grew up on the Archies and love the Archies, they’re good-hearted souls, they really are good people, and they appreciate that kind of music, so it’s always a thrill to meet them after the shows.” As for the legacy of the Archies, Dante noted, “when we recorded for the Archies, we never thought that 35–40 years later they would still be just as popular. And I’m thrilled by it… ‘Sugar, Sugar’ is one of the most downloaded songs on the Internet if you go to iTunes, so I’m very happy to be a part of this enduring legacy that continues. It’s on TV all the time, it’s in commercials. So the stuff lasts, and thank goodness I was a part of it!” A few years prior to his passing in October 2013, Lou Scheimer sat with me in his home office in Tarzana, California. On the walls were memorabilia from Filmation’s decades on the air, including some of the Archies’ gold records. Scheimer clearly was still proud of the various series. “The legacy of Archie was that soft comedy… without violence, can create an audience that is a magnificently dedicated audience. Archie had a great run. We had eight different shows come out of the one series, and not many shows can say that. Super Friends might be one of the few. But Archie was a unique show, and a lot of people tried to do the same sort of thing, using the same kind of characters, but they were never Archie.” The quotes from Lou Scheimer are from the 2012 autobiography written with Andy Mangels, Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, still available from TwoMorrows. Mangels’ interview with Ron Dante was conducted in 2007. Special thanks to Darrel McNeil. ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and co-author of 20 books, including the TwoMorrows book Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, as well as Star Trek and Star Wars tomes, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, and a lot of comic books. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced special features for over 40 DVD releases. He recently wrote the Wonder Woman ’77 Meets the Bionic Woman series for Dynamite and DC Comics. His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com and www.WonderWomanMuseum.com

48 • BACK ISSUE • Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue

by M

ark Arnold

Archie Comics’ That Wilkin Boy ran for 52 issues, from 1969–1982. According to Jeff Branch’s long-defunct fanzine Riverdale Ramblings, That Wilkin Boy was an offshoot or sequel series to Wilbur, which was published by Archie for 90 issues from Summer 1944 through October 1965 (cover dates). Even though the character of Wilbur seems derivative of Archie Andrews, Wilbur actually made its debut before Archie by first appearing in Zip Comics #18 (Sept. 1941)—a full three months before Archie’s first appearance in Pep Comics #22 (Dec. 1941)—in a story entitled “Meet Wilbur,” written by Harvey Willard and drawn by Lin Streeter. Wilbur Wilkin is either the same character or is related to him. It has never been officially explained, although Bingo Wilkin’s real first name in That Wilkin Boy is actually Woodrow. When That Wilkin Boy debuted in January 1969 (cover date), it seemed that the series was artist Dan DeCarlo’s creation, but actually it was derivative of Wilbur. For the first 12 issues, the stories were solely drawn by DeCarlo. DeCarlo (1919–2001) was the longtime Archie cartoonist who developed the “look” of Archie Comics with a style dan parent that lasted from the 1950s until 2015, when the line was revamped to a more © Luigi Novi / realistic look. The DeCarlo style still Wikimedia Commons. regularly appears in Archie digests and in a modern series entitled Your Pal Archie, drawn by Dan Parent and written and inked by Ty Templeton. Archie Comics editor-in-chief Victor Gorelick confirms the idea that Bingo was derived from Wilbur Wilkin. “The publisher wanted to revive one of our oldest characters, Wilbur,” Gorelick says. “The idea was to hopefully interest Hollywood into producing another animated series for TV. Included in the storyline was a band called the Bingoes [That Wilkin Boy’s first name was now Bingo]. Bingo’s girlfriend, Samantha, has a father who’s not too fond of Bingo. In fact, her father was sort of a toned-down Archie Bunker.” Gorelick has worked for Archie Comic Publications, Inc. for over 50 years in a wide variety of roles. After studying at the School of Industrial Arts, Gorelick joined Archie Comics at age 16 in 1958. He began in the publisher’s art department, making corrections and learning how to color and ink. He eventually served as a production coordinator, art director, and now, editor-in-chief. He was honored with an Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2008. Regarding That Wilkin Boy’s roots, Dan Parent agrees with Gorelick: “I was told several times that the That Wilkin Boy series was a reboot of Wilbur.”

THAT WILKIN CAST

And Bingo Was His Name-O The Dan DeCarlo/Rudy Lapick cover to That Wilkin Boy #1 (Jan. 1969), premiering the book’s cast (left to right): Teddy Tambourine, Bingo Wilkin, Samantha Smythe, Buddy Drumhead, and Rebel. Look closely and you’ll spot a few other Archie-ites. TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

With Dan DeCarlo in charge, these characters premiered and were developed: Bingo Wilkin, the star of the comic and of his own rock band, the Bingoes (similar to the Archies). He is obviously (as Wilbur became) patterned after Archie. Like Archie, he is clumsy and raises the temper of his girlfriend’s father. Gorelick confirms the initial setup: “Dan was the artist and Frank Doyle wrote the stories in the beginning. Later on, other writers and artists worked on the book.” Unlike Archie, Bingo only has one girlfriend, Samantha Smythe. Her father—Sampson Smythe—is a bodybuilder and is not very fond of Bingo, or Bingo’s father, Willie Wilkin. Willie, in turn, is not very fond of Sampson and gets irritated that Sampson insists upon calling him Wilkins, with an “s.” Both Sampson and Willie are married to Sheila and Wilma, respectively.

Archie Comics in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 49

Back Issue #107