I’ve always had a soft spot for Archie and the gang, for reasons I prefer not to try to understand. Back in the 1980s, I read Archie comics in digest form—the small, bound reprints of stories from the various comic series—and I’ve kept a small collection of them around to read every so often in nostalgic fits.
Recently, I decided to hunt around on eBay for more of them, the way you do when you remember suddenly that everything you once had in your childhood can be bought online, and I picked up a small lot of Archie digests from the early 2000’s. (The fact that I used cash from a recent wargame sale to fund the purchase most likely invalidates my grognard credentials, but I’ll face up to that shame another time.)
Sitting down with the new digests, though, I was struck by how the basic plots were repeated from earlier digests: Archie can’t choose between Betty and Veronica, Reggie and Archie match wits against Mr. Weatherbee, Moose punches someone in the head for being on the same planet as Midge, etc. Of course, now Jughead was phoning in orders to Pop Tate on his cell phone and Dilton was doing research for Ms. Grundy via the Internet, but it was still Archie, right down to his 1950s-era jalopy.
And then I realized that some of the stories were exactly the same. Of course, a digest is a vehicle for repurposing stories that have already appeared, so I wasn’t too shocked. But when I ran across a old gag that relied on contemporary references, I noticed that the art may have been the same (though more crisply printed), but the text was updated:
Curiously, the 1987 panel, from Betty and Veronica Comics Digest Magazine #25, originated in the 1970’s, judging by the shows referenced. It’s unclear why the writers felt comfortable using one real show name (Six Million Dollar Man) but resorted to fake names for Happy Days and Hawaii Five-O. The 2002 digest panel, from Archie’s Double Digest #134, uses shows more in line with the publication date, all of them real.
I suppose the update was made feasible by improvements in handling the artwork, a digital cut and paste perhaps simpler than an actual paste job would have been in the ’80s.
Not all Archie gags can be so easily updated, though…