This is "Look Back," a brand-new feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2019 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue in terms of a larger scale (like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago.
Let's get all of our Augusts done quickly!
We start with August 2009's Archie #600, by Michael Uslan, Stan Goldberg and Bob Smith, featuring Archie getting engaged to Veronica!
I've written in the past that so-called "anniversary issues" are a surprisingly modern invention. Don't get me wrong, in the 1940s, comic books would often mark on the cover when a comic hit 100 issues, but the stories inside did not have anything to do with the "anniversary" within. And even there, not all comic books even ACKNOWLEDGED the anniversary aspect of their issues. Archie, for instance, didn't acknowledge it for their 100th issue...
or their 200th issue...
Archie Comics (later just Archie from #114 on) was also a sort of bi-monthly title for MANY years (they would skip a few months a year,so they weren't always PRECISELY a bi-monthly book), so there is a large gap between #100 (somewhere in the late 1950s) and #200 (1970). By the time #300 rolled around in 1981, Frank Doyle, Dan DeCarlo Jr. (the son of the great Archie artist) and Rudy Lapick did, in fact, do an anniversary issue...
The concept is that everyone is planning an anniversary for Archie, but to pull off the surprise element, they have to hide it from him and he just thinks that everyone hates him all of a sudden...
1992 saw Archie #400, which also celebrated the anniversary aspect of the issue...
The great Bob Bolling wrote a really clever story for Stan Goldberg and Henry Scarpelli (the first of three straight anniversary issues drawn by Goldberg) that sort of went through the entire history of Archie's relationship with Betty and Veronica, going all the way back to his Little Archie days (Bolling, of course, was the famed creator of the Little Archie concept).
A more regular shipping schedule led to Archie #500 occurring just a little more than eight years later in 2000, with a script by Angelo Decesare and with Bob Smith now inking Goldberg.
This issue opens with the cast going on the Oprah Winfrey Show (well, a stand-in for Oprah) to celebrate the anniversary. Archie is late, since he is bringing 500 Archie comics to the show, and while they wait for him, all his friends and family remember how irritating he is and they all decide to storm out rather than celebrate Archie. However, when he crashes outside the studio and sends all of the comics flying all over his friends and family, they can't help but flip through the books and remember all the GOOD stuff that Archie has done over the years and how much of his irritating qualities come just from his haplessness and not from any ill intent. So they end up celebrating Archie anyways!
The second story also plays into the anniversary theme by having Veronica inform Archie that they're about to have their 500th date. However, Betty then tries to get him to go out with her on THEIR 500th date together. Archie, naturally, is in a jam for the 500th time. All throughout the issue, we get reminded that every instance is the 500th time it happened (Reggie's 500th dirty trick, Jughead's 500th free burger, Weatherbee's 500th detention slip, etc.) until Jughead comes up with a plan to save Archie from heartache (he just has to take a punch from Moose to do so)...
So that brings us to 2009 and the 600th issue of Archie.
Michael Uslan, the famed producer who brought Batman to the silver screen in 1989 (and has been credited on every Batman film ever since), is not someone that you normally associate with Archie Comics, but he explained to CBR back in 2009 that his connection to Archie had gone back to the early 1980s...
Let me take you back to circa 1980. I don't know if you know this but I wrote with Jeff Mendel, the book for G.P. Putnam's Sons, "The Best of Archie." And it was the first hardcover and trade paperback that reprinted Archie stories going back to the originals. I wrote the introduction to that with Jeff and we did a history and we analyzed the strip back then and in order to do that book, Jeff and I sat and read every comic book in their whole library as of 1980 or so.
It has a mystique. It is so basic that even though it's simple themes and basic stock characters, anyone from any generation, maybe it's because it's so simple and basic, has always been able to identify with Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and the Gang. And here they are now. We're coming up to the 70th anniversary of Archie. In 2011, it will be 70 years and it's still about a bunch of kids in a high school situation, going to the beach, going to the malt shop, having fun, getting into trouble, in school and out of school, with the parents, the teachers, the other kids, it's still those basic stories. And anyone, male or female, can still relate to them. And they do. So I think there is something very, very magical about it.
That same interview saw Uslan explain how he got the gig for this major issue...
This is something that's been on my bucket list. I just always wanted to write an Archie comic. And I wanted to do something significant. And I'm getting grey enough that it's time to start scratching a couple of things off my bucket list so I had to find a way to do this. And very happily, I was able to sit down with [Editor-in-Chief] Vic Gorelick, who I've know since the day I walked into Archie to read all of those comics in the library, almost 30 years ago, and told him what I wanted to do and he was just completely supportive and introduced me to Fred Mausser. It was the first time I had really met Fred, and bingo! And with the support of John Goldwater and everybody else over there, I think we have something that people while they may not agree with it all, they're really going to have fun time taking the ride with us on this.
In an interview at Comics Continuum, Uslan also explained his pitch for the storyline....
I approached Victor Gorelick about writing something significant, something important for Archie. He said "Great, what do you have in mind?" I said, "Archie gets married," and he said "No, seriously." I said "Yes, Archie gets married." Victor said "You can't do that." I said "Why not?" and he couldn't think of a reason. So we sat down and we hatched it out and it has been a terrific, terrific opportunity for me to work with Victor, Fred, Jonathan and the legend of all legends, Stan Goldberg.
While I featured the actual wedding as the featured image, the 600th issue was really all about the PROPOSAL from Archie to Veronica...
The set-up for the storyline is that Archie walks UP Memory Lane and ends up walking into his future...
Something that Uslan makes a big point of in the storyline is to stress just how stressful this period is in Archie's life and how economics can't help but play a factor in it all...
It's when Archie's parents give him a financial gift that things change for Archie...
He proposes to Veronica, but sadly Betty just happened to be walking by at the time!
Jughead expresses what many people were thinking, that this really messed up Betty's life...
At the time, Uslan discussed how the whole situation would affect Betty:
When the vast majority of Betty fans scream out at me about Archie marrying Veronica as we approach #600 and 601, I explain to them that I know a lot of people like Betty. I know talented, smart, personable girls, eventually young women who were guys' best friends, did everything, were kind and did everything for everyone and were overlooked as the girl next door, and were passed over in favor of the more exotic beauty that walked on by. I take a look at boys, and I use the word boys, who are in high school and coming to the end of college who really have no concept that the best marriage will come from a relationship with someone you are being best friends with first.
We also have to take a hard look at Betty. She has to really decide some real critical self-esteem, self-confidence issues. Maybe she deserves somebody better. Maybe there is somebody better for her who will appreciate who she is and what she does. So these are very, very real issues that are dealt with over the six issues. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of fun and slapstick and craziness, there is. There is tons of fun in this, but we also deal with some real serious issues of relationships.
Here's the wedding issue, #601...
and here's the actual wedding...
Uslan stays true to the whole "Serious issues of relationships" by showing how much Archie is dedicated to proving Veronica's father wasn't wrong to give Archie a major job in the Lodge organization...
He's all stressed out and then he finds out that Veronica is pregnant!
The next issue deals with the birth of the kids and they all celebrate Christmas together (that issue came out a little before the Christmas season, which was an inspired bit by Uslan) and Archie decides to take a walk on Memory Lane again, only this time, he goes a different route...
And yes, sure enough, that leads to ANOTHER three issues where it is BETTY that Archie proposes to...
and Betty that he marries...
and Betty that he has kids with.
Reflecting on the event recently, Dan Parent and Uslan (who just came out with a 10th anniversary miniseries tying into the original event) discussed the importance of having Archie marry Veronica first...
Dan: I remember when Archie Comics announced Archie was marrying Veronica and left it at that, and it caused quite the outrage, since people thought we were leaving it at that. Fans generally have a preference for Archie marrying Betty, so UNTIL they found out it was going to be a dual story where he marries EACH girl, they were not happy. But the controversy stirred up a lot of attention, which is always good for promotion!
Michael: Hardly anyone would have been upset if they thought Archie ultimately decided to marry the faithful girl next-door, Betty. But we knew that if word got out initially that he was choosing Veronica instead, global hell would erupt! And it did! It created controversy, debate, emotional distress, and all those wonderful things! The key for me, however, was in writing Archie marries Veronica first, that I not fall into the simple cliché that he married for money or exotic beauty and that the marriage would be a failure. I needed to show that as the years pass from high school through college and beyond that each of these characters truly evolve and mature and their choices and actions actually directly impact the life journeys of their friends and families in Riverdale. Each of Archie’s marriages have a butterfly effect not only on Archie and Betty and Veronica, but on everyone around them.
Uslan, Goldberg and Smith then wrapped everything up with a story back in the present where Archie freaks out over the two futures that he saw and inadvertently makes dates with Betty and Veronica on the same night and we see that looking to the future too much can cause problems for your present...
Of course, Archie Comics would later capitalize on the popularity of this story by doing a new ongoing series that showed Archie's life in the two respective alternate universes and now, 10 years later, they're revisiting the concept in this anniversary miniseries by Uslan and Parent.
It really had a lasting impact. This storyline was also the last one that Stan Goldberg ever did in Archie. He continued to work for Archie Comics in other titles until his retirement circa 2012, but this was his last story in the main series. He passed away in 2014.
If you have any suggestions for September (or any other later months) 2009, 1994, 1969 and 1944 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.
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