Little Archie #50 (November, 1968), by Dexter Taylor, Joe Edwards, et al.
review by BK Munn
My big comic book purchase this week. The Adventures of Little Archie #50. I'm a sucker for Archie Giants and this one just kind of gave off a "Summer" glow. Luckily, Ray Mitchell threw it in when Kara and I bought a mannequin from his store.
I don't normally go for Little Archie. I prefer the mind-numbing antics of Archie and his gang as teenagers (or as teenage cavemen, or as teenage superheroes, or as teenage spies, etc). The Little Archie series to me has always been slightly terrifying. Not only are the children drawn in a hideous style, all with uniform buck teeth, but the very concept, that Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and Reggie have been locked in the same grotesque cyclical relationships since childhood, is very disturbing.
Everytime I sit down to read one of these stories, I try to put aside my prejudices. After all, the Hernandez Brothers are huge fans and some of my favourite Love and Rockets stories are basically built on a Little Archie template. And this issue in particular has a lot to offer. I think most of the stories are by Dexter Taylor, the man who took over on the title from Little Archie's original creator Bob Bolling for most of the 1960s. This is from 1968. Peak period. This is the year of "Sugar Sugar" and the Archie band's pop music breakthrough, so a couple of the stories have Archie and the gang trying to rehearse at the Lodge mansion. As well, there are adventures at the soda shop and in school.
As I get older, I identify more and more with the adults in Archie's world, especially the constantly humiliated Mr. Weatherbee (he ends up in front of the School Board and an auditorium of children in his boxers in one story here) and of course Pop Tate, the owner of the soda shop. Even snobby self-made millionaire Mr. Lodge gets my sympathy here, forever tormented by Little Archie and Little Jughead. In the story in #50, he runs for town council but when Archie mixes up his photo with the mugshot of a crook on a wanted poster, he keeps getting dragged into the police station by every prole in Riverdale until he finds and beats up "Bruiser McTuff" himself. You can kind of see a mid-life wish fulfillment thing going on in many Archie strips. The main characters are so eerily monstrous and unsympathetic (whether children or teenagers) and the put-upon parents, supposedly the moral compasses and bourgeois standard-bearers of the comics universe, often play-act at non-conformist rebellion, whether it's Mr. Lodge taking up prize-fighting and vigilantism, or "The 'Bee" trying out for Ed Sullivan. But of course, regardless of what they are doing in the final panel, all is safely back in its proper place by the first panel of the next story.
