Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Archie and Jughead Forever?



I devoured the Archie comics when I was a kid. But that was before the innernets. With this in mind, the brains over at Archie Inc. decided to spice things up this year and have Archie propose to Veronica. To recap, Veronica is Archie's cruel-hearted, raven-haired object of affection, while future-great-mom-and-all-around-sweetie Betty is the girl who lusts after him.

The marriage of Archie and Veronica dismayed fans. “The polls that I’ve seen ran about 80/20, Betty over Veronica,” a comic-book historian told the New York Times. And so this month, Archie finds himself back at a literal fork in the road, where he chooses an alternative destiny and marries Betty. In Archie's dream world, the man will now have two wives.

The stunt worked; sales are up. But the question is for how long. How relevant can a 70-year-old comic strip featuring white people possibly be? Not long, I'm guessing. Unless Archie Comic Publications writes a third destiny for their hero. Just consider the rest of the quote from that historian: "The polls that I’ve seen ran about 80/20, Betty over Veronica, with Jughead continually coming in a strong third."

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