Remember archie comics?

Does anyone here remember archie comics? I mean, I know they are still around, but does anybody here still remember when they were decent?

Archie comics were a revoulutionary timepiece when they came out, but nowadays they seem to be nothing than a comic book sold in a grocery store pay counter. Nobody seems to pay attention to them anymore. Is it becouse they are nothing more than but a comic book made for kids to read on a rainy day with nothing better to do, or is it becouse the archie comic has decreased in quality and is no longer worth reading? For those who picked the 2nd choice, you are the people who I wrote this article for.

Maybe I should start the article already. So without further ado, heres a list of the main charecters of the comics.
ARCHIE ANDREWS.
.
Archie is the leader of the whole gang.(until recently, where jughead took over) Archie is a klutz, an ideot, and a guy madly in love with females. Although he seems to be sort of a loser, he is lucky enough to get 2 chicks- betty cooper and veronica lodge.

FORTSYTHE 'JUGHEAD' JONES
.
Fortsythe jones, better known as jughead, is a smart aleck who has an obsession with food and sleep. He is archies best friend, though they do get into scuffles occasionly. He was at first a supporting charecter, but recent archie comics have started to focus mostly on him. He is also my favorite charecter.

BETTY COOPER
.
Betty is a nice, do-gooder blonde who is one of archies girlfriends. She is probably the only teenage girl in the whole world who actually loves archie, though he at times seems completley unaware of it.

VERONICA LODGE
.
Veronica is the rich stuck up self centered brat of the group. She is archies other girlfriend and archies favourite out of the two, though she does not return the love.

REGGIE MANTLE.
.
Reggie mantle is the other brat of the gang. He enjoys playing pranks on his ''friends''. Veronica seems to love him more than she loves archie, possibly becouse they are so much alike. Its odd how she always insists on hanging out with archie instead of reggie.

Though these are the main charecters of the gang, they arent the only people that are seen in the comics. There is actually a lot more.

.
This picture here dosent even begin to show all the charecters in the comics. But to show and to tell you about ALL the charecters, I would have to devote the rest of the article to this. So instead I will jump to a timeline of how the series started.

Archie comics had its humble beginnings. It first started out as a backup story of the MLJ comics of the 1940s. The MLJ comic book first centered around mostly superheroes that were popular at the time, and from time to time a little story would be feutured in the comic about a group of teenagers. The teenager that was the center of attention was, you guessed it-archie, although he looked nothing like he is now.

.

This is probably where the comic writers figured out that archie was a nerd and otherwise unattractive.
Beside archie you can see betty, who looks a lot more mature.

Some may wonder JUST WHO came up with the charecters in archie comics. If you mentioned BOB MONTANA, you are correct! Bob montana was a cartoonist at the time who liked to draw funny comics about college kids. Around 1941, he was assigned to do a comic about teens. He dident know anything what teens did (hey it was the 40s, nobody knew anything about them until the 50s) so he decided to just make a couple of college kids who just happened to be 17 and in high school. The picture above is a sample of his artistic talent.

So anyway, this is where archie comics were born.
The comics soon became more popular than the super heros who were the main focus of the comics. The comics were changed from MLJ comics to pep comics and the comics diverted its entire attention to the group of teens.

In the 1950s, DAN DECARLO took over the comics. He is often considered the writer who shaped archie comics into what they are today.

Also when dan decarlo came along, there was only one kind of archie comic-pep comics. But dan changed that. Suddenly archie got his own comic, betty and veronica got thier own, even jughead got his own.

Heres some samples of archie comics from the 50s.







Yep, dan decarlo was a great archie writer. You can see here in these pictures that archie still hasent evolved into the way he looks now, but as dan drew archie more and more archie got moderized.

In the 1950s teenagers started to get more noticed as in the things they liked to do, the way they acted, and so on. Dan recognized this, and fitted this into the comics. Archie went to pop tates( a hamburger joint) a lot, and archie got a band.

Dan decarlo was also the one responsible for inserting josie and the pussycats, sabrina and the teenage witch, katy keene, and the wilkens boy into the comics.

And so this was the way archie comics were for the 50s, 60s and 70s. Dan decarlo was the main writer of the series, although other writers did thier contributions as well. Things stayed pretty much the same in the archie universe, though the charecters kept changing thier appearance into what they are today. many spinoffs were made of the comics, Such as archie got his own radio show, archie got his own novels. etc,etc,etc.

In my opinion, the golden age of archie comics was in the 1980s. Dan decarlo was finally drawing him the way he is recognized now,and Archie was at his funniest. All the charecters were at thier funniest, and the environment where they lived was lush and colourful. Everything was incredible. Everybody in the strip was loveble, and reading the comics were a great experience for anybody. In fact, the 1980s comics were what got me interested in archie.

However the 1980s were the end of some elements in the archie universe. For example, ''archies girls betty and veronica'' and pep comics had thier final issues in the 1980s.





But the 1980s were still a great time. Plus in the late 1980s and early 1990s archies gang started to get a bunch of spinoffs. Here are a few.



















None of these spinoffs lasted very long, but they did influence archie comics a lot, so they are worth mentioning.

In the early 1990s, stan goldberg took over the comics. He was also a great comic writer, becouse he was a lot like dan decarlo.

In 1994 he made a spinoff comic entitled archie meets the punisher.



The 1990s were a great time for archie comics as well, though they werent quite as exciting and entertaining as the orignal comics. Maybe its becouse people lost intrest in the comics and so stan goldberg had a hard time making archie comics as great as they used to be.

Then came the 2000s. Archie comics entered its dark ages. Jughead became a self-centered brat. Veronica became a good girl. Betty started to act like a blonde. the comics no longer focused on Archie, but more on Jughead. as much as i like Jughead, I lost intrest in the comics when he took over. The comics werent intresting anymore. As if that wasent bad enough, stan goldberg left archie in 2006. I dont know whos doing Archie comics now, but anybody whos familier with Archie nowadays knows that the comics are AWFUL.

In may 2007, archie was announced to have a different design. it went from this-



to this (brace yourselves)-




Isent this awful? In my opinion archie has sunk to its very worst. No wonder archie isent popular anymore. This picture is just a disgrace to archie comics, period.

But in the meanwhile archie will continue as one of the most influentical comics ever made. Maybe one of these day somebody should go to the current comic writers and tell them to go back to the previous style or just end the comics altogether. Lets hope that they go along with the 1st one, and im pretty sure that everybody here agrees with me.

So, I guess ill get outta here. Ive made my point, and I hope you enjoyed this article, and agree with it as well.


davidyck out.