Archie Comics: A Mirror to Our Culture

Beginning in the 1970s, the President and co-creator of Archie Comics, along with his partner Bob Montana, decided Archie was not going to just entertain readers, but in the vernacular of the 1970s, “Tell it like it is.” To me, this is a puzzling statement from an established business. Archie has always, at least, reflected its times and the teenage experience. 

For example, in 1960, the talented writing and artist team of Frank Doyle and Harry Lucey turned their talents to a witted satire on the gang problem that was plaguing many U.S. cities. In the issue of March 1960 of Archie Comics #108, in a titled story called Rumble Fumble, Doyle brilliantly and incisively takes on this subject that was regularly in the news. 

Archie and Reggie decide to found their own gang! Jughead is perplexed, but Betty and Veronica are horrified and determined to keep the boys out of jail in spite of themselves. With their arguments about the stupidity and futility of gang life on deaf ears, Betty and Veronica decide to form an all-girl gang dedicated to keeping lads at home for anyone who belongs to a gang! With this, the boys surrender their black leather jackets. This was not only topical but quite sophisticated, as it borrowed its solution from a famous source, the Italian play Six Characters in Search of an Author. 

In another story from 1961, and on a much lighter note, Archie Comics satirizes the beatnik culture. This wasn’t as timely as the issue decrying gangs, as the Beatnik craze was running its course, and would within a few years be displaced by the hippies. In a Betty and Veronica issue #68 from August 1961 titled Take Me to Your Leader, Betty has been bitten by the beatnik bug and has taken up the bongo drums. She listens to “far out” records. Veronica, appalled by this “new” Betty, enlists Archie and even Reggie to go on various “missions” to cure Betty and completely change them. Then she finds she is trapped with hilarious consequences. 

That same year when President John F. Kennedy formed the Peace Corps, and told the youth of America, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” and there was a greater world perspective, Archie dealt with the benefits of learning a foreign language. 

Jughead tells Betty after their class that he doesn’t see why learning Spanish is so important in his life. When she disagrees, he retorts that it’s just a waste of time. On his walk home, he encounters a boy who has been hit by a car. It looks bad for the boy’s chances of survival, as his distraught father cannot speak English, and tells the paramedic the boy’s blood type. Only Archie, who knows Spanish, is there - and he can save the boy’s life by translating for the father and the paramedic. 

These are just a sample of the stories in the Archie Comics which have kept it contemporary and relevant over the past eighty-plus years. 

Author’s Note: The story The Interpreter appeared in Archie #114 from 1960, not 1961, but the atmosphere of growing internationalism was still in evidence before President Kennedy’s election.