The daily began February 4, ; the Sunday, later the same year on October The comic book character debuted in Pep Comics No. It is still going. Bob Montana drew the newspaper strip from the beginning until he died at age 54 on January 4, , of a heart attack while cross-country skiing; he is last credited on the daily of March 1, The first-named of these two volumes reprints selected Sunday strips, beginning with the first and concluding with September 24, At Archie Comics, they steadfastly maintain that Archie was the creation of Goldwater, one of the trio that founded the company.
But that is not true. At first blush, it looks like Goldwater was the creative impetus. On second blush, it gets complicated. Like many who have had a role in the early history of comics and who have survived their contemporaries, Goldwater doubtless exaggerated somewhat his claims to fame.
By the early s, no one was around anymore who could contradict him. It seemed wonderfully pat. Here, then, is my unofficial history of John Goldwater, knitting together as many of the known facts and reasonable testimonies as I can—in as charitable and sympathetic a construction as possible with a conspicuous lamination of some likely alternative interpretations. About that, no dispute. His arrival, however, was according to Goldwater accompanied by melodrama enough to be a credit to an aspiring dramatist.
According to various sources for which Goldwater supplied the information , his mother died during childbirth, and the father, overcome by grief, abandoned the child and died soon afterward. Growing up in a foster home, Goldwater attended the High School of Commerce where he developed secretarial skills and some facility as a writer. At seventeen, he hitch-hiked across country, stopping first in Kansas at the little town of Hiawatha in the northeast corner of the state where he found a reporting job on the local newspaper.
According to Goldwater, girl trouble was prominent in his young working life. Everywhere he went, to hear him tell it, his life was as complicated as that of Archie Andrews—and all because of girls. At the Park in Arizona, he violated a rule barring males from the female employee housing facility and was fired. Remaining in San Francisco, Goldwater worked at a variety of jobs and squired two girls around town, a blonde and a brunette. After about a year, he returned to New York via the Panama Canal, en route becoming involved again , he says, with two girls in a shipboard romance that went nowhere else.
Back in New York, he worked for various publishers and then became an entrepreneur, buying unsold periodicals, mainly pulp magazines, from publisher Louis H. Silberkleit and exporting them for sale abroad. Observing the success of the Superman character in the infant comic book industry in , Goldwater joined with Silberkleit and Maurice Coyne to launch a publishing firm with himself as editor while continuing as president of Periodicals for Export, Inc. MLJ Magazines named with the first-name initials of the partners produced its first comic book, Blue Ribbon Comics , with a cover date of November These titles featured a cast of heroic characters similar to those in other comic books of the period—The Shield the first patriotic comic book superhero , The Black Hood, Steel Sterling, Mr.
Archie Andrews, the irrepressible freckle-faced carrot-topped teenager, debuted in the back pages of Pep Comics with issue No. Drawn by cartoonist Bob Montana, Archie quickly became the most popular character in the MLJ line-up and would eventually become the archetypal American teenager. In , the publishing company officially became Archie Comics Publications. Archie subsequently appeared in a television animated cartoon series and in two live-action television movies.
One of Goldwater's earliest successes was the creation of the Archie Comics app in , making it easy to find digital copies of Archie back issues and new releases. The next year, the company would become the first major American comics publisher to offer new digital issues on the same release date as the printed copies , and the app modernized the company's distribution model as the content on the page gradually began to evolve.
September 1, , was a huge day in Archie Comics history: Veronica No. Goldwater showed his commitment to diversifying Riverdale with Kevin, who would go on to star in his own comic series, and Life With Archie ultimately proved a successful creative experiment that revealed the value of embracing more mature subject matter. Writer Paul Kupperberg had Archie and the rest of the Riverdale gang dealing with real adult problems like financial hardship and the difficulty of sustaining long-term relationships.
Like her late husband, Silberkleit is a staunch supporter of the increasingly antiquated classic Archie image, and she allegedly disapproved of these initial attempts to modernize. But Goldwater and Kupperberg pressed on, and, staying true to form, the series ended in with Archie giving his life to stop an assassination attempt on Kevin, who was now a senator. Life With Archie No. The issue sold exceptionally well — it was in the top 30 best-selling comics of its release month , selling nearly 30 times as many copies as the preceding issue.
Additionally, just like the introduction of Kevin, the death of Archie garnered significant attention from the mainstream press. The creative team is using these genre elements to explore the world of Archie Comics from a new angle, and this fresh context brings out different aspects of the character relationships while upending expectations of what an Archie story should look like.
Afterlife With Archie quickly became another major success for the publisher, inspiring Goldwater to continue down this dark path with a new Sabrina series. And their early success pointed to a larger market interested in darker Archie properties, a market that appreciated and wanted new perspectives. Relaunches are trendy in comics right now, with both Marvel and DC ending series so that they can come back with new first issues that ideally make the books more accessible to new readers.
Marvel is currently in the midst of its latest Marvel Now! The main Archie series had run for more than issues when Archie Comics announced in December that it would be canceled and replaced by a new Archie title with the A-list creative team of writer Mark Waid Daredevil , Kingdom Come and artist Fiona Staples. The new Archie No. Her slick digital art was a far cry from the classic Archie style, but it still captured the playful spirit of these characters and their world. These books featured intriguing creative teams, but a major publisher asking its readers to fund its books received an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the comics community, resulting in the cancellation of the Kickstarter after five days.
These titles would still see publication, but not on the schedule proposed by the crowdfunding campaign. Comic book crossovers grew in popularity, and Archie and the gang featured alongside The Punisher, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more. The Archie audience grew younger, leading writers to create a more wholesome version of Archie and the gang.
Josie and the Pussycats had their own live-action film. New additions were added to the comics, including an alternative boyfriend for Betty.
The Veronicas became a real-life musical duo. Recently, Archie Comics has been revamped in a new show titled Riverdale , which is about to begin its second season. Created by Chief Creator of Archie Comics, Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, this show offers a dark twist on the traditional, all-American comic series we know and love.
Bloom, Vic, and Montana, Bob. The Best of Archie Comics. Archie Comic Publications, Gorelick, Victor, et al. The Art of Betty and Veronica. Archie Books, View all posts by Audrey Bell. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.
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