Article: Archie Celebrity Redesign

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[…] Your Drawn! links of the day are a pair of items related to Archie Comics’ recent announcement of it’s new, more realistic Betty and Veronica. According to a report by John Brownlee on Wired’s Table of Malcontents blog, Archie’s Rik Offenberger is responding to the howls of outrage among the many, many people who haven’t read an Archie comic in years by offering his reassurances that it’s just for four issues. Over at Rich Gentlemen Hide, Lachlan Phillips reimagines the Riverdale gang in the styles of a variety of other artists, including Frank Miller and Mike Krahulik. (Above: I have absolutely no idea who drew this, but it’s used to illustrate John Brownlee’s report, it very well could have been drawn by Dan DeCarlo, and let’s face it: The drawing got you reading, now didn’t it?) […]

The PVP version is actually quite good! It keeps a cartoony flavor that’s accessible to all readers but isn’t mired back in early 1950s/60s design.

In all honesty, the official redesign cover sucks… but I actually find the try-out page a decent makeover.

Change is sometimes good, and sometimes bad.

Good stuff. The PA cover is hilarious!

Dugg.

Maaaannnnn, I could have told them it’s not the artwork that’s losing the money, it’s the consistent regurgitation of the EXACT SAME STORIES for the past 50 years. people are tired of buying the same archie comix with new cover art. And THAT’s the truth.

Personally, i think its time you all just let go. The only people who own this comic are the publishing house and really if they want to change it its there perogative. There are only 2 things in this world that are certain : change and that things that don’t make a profit don’t last long. Either way I guess your all screwed. If archie doesn’t start making some money soon there may not be an archie all together. Now, im sure none of us are interested in that are we…….

P.S.

I think veronica looks SMOKIN HOT with short hair. Mmmmmmmm…..

Ok dude…….Archie has been a huge part of my existence!. in fact, i was quite a keen Archie comics reader, often visting book exchange stores to swap already read comics with unread ones.

A few things…..the first archie comic was bought out in 1941. That’s actually almost 70years ago.

Now, during this period Archie comics, have always kept up with contemporary culture. always. Just look at the bikini’s and pump shoes on betty and veronica in the 80’s,the peddle pushers of the 1950’s, the psychedelic phrases used in the 1960s editions (round john lennon style glasses etc) and who was that skank cherry blossom (extremely hot) chick that made her debut in the 90’s (the era of badass is sexy)?

so if they feel the need to update to fit in with contemporary society than so be it. That has always been the case. I can totally see jughead as a myspace junkie, reggie as a coke head, and Betty and Veronica discussing sex in a cafe in the city. The only thing that remains a constant…is that Betty wants Archie, Archie wants Veronica…..but he always go back to good ol’ reliable Betty in times of need, and Veronica is a head fuck but dammmmmed attractive. oh yeah, and Jughead is gay.

;)

ha! dude he is gay.

anyway, do you remember Midge……. Now she was hot.

Also the Betty Veronica dichotomy……..true true…..but why was Veronica always hotter…..is it the brunette thing? or is it because she beleived she was and always played hard to get, while Betty (the cute blonde) always desperate for Archie’s love seemed ‘weak’ but sweet. The love triangle thing is such a universal concept , hence why the comic always did so well. Cherry Blossom was lame and hard. It almost made the audience have a softer spot for Veronica who seemed ‘pure’ in comparison.see….the lesson…….

anyway, Jughead is not heaps Zen. He’s often grumpy and thinks girls are gross. the only girl he has ever gotten along with is Betty (the tomboy). He uses food as his passion because he cannot come out of the closest and the frustrations he experience result in his typically cynical attitude towards everyone. The dude is an adolescent homosexual that does not quite realise it yet!

This debate has raged on the Internet for several months now. It amazes me how many people make much ado about how they don’t really care about Archie or Jughead or Betty and Veronica, and yet take the time to make posts about them. As Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet,” “The lady protests too much, methinks.”

Archie first appeared in, ironically, December 1941, the same month that Japan attacked the American Pearl Harbor. Archie and Betty were preteens or very young teens then (Veronica didn’t appear in the first story), but almost immediately were transformed into older teenagers.

Before the Comics Code Authority began in 1954, Archie and his high school friends were a little risque–the girls’ tight tops showed pointed breasts (hinting at nipples); Veronica undressed and changed clothes in the back of a car while Archie was driving; a drawing of a girl (I think Veronica) getting ready to dive showed the comic symbol that would mean her butt was wiggling; etc.

After the code began, breasts got rounder, butts didn’t wiggle, etc.

While fans of Archie and friends are now often thought to be preteens, especially preteen girls, originally the characters were popular with service men fighting overseas in World War II. The stories and characters reminded those in combat of their much safer lives back in high school, when the worst problem they had to face was ending up with two dates for the same dance.

True, Riverdale doesn’t truly represent anyone’s home town or anyone’s teenaged years now or then. But, like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, it represented what those lonely servicemen could imagine their hometown and teenaged life were like. Archie and friends remain high school teenagers, just as those young servicemen whose lives were lost remained so in memory.

By the way, I’m long past my preteen years, and still like Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the gang. And while I like Bob Montana’s original published drawings, I love Dan DeCarlo’s transformation.

Whatever Betty and Veronica look like, there’s one aspect of their appearance I wish to remain: they look identical, other than their hair. The irony of Archie being torn between two essentially identical twins with opposing personalities is, for me, a major part of the fun of the eternal triangle.