Archie, a study in protracted optimism, meets his end – sort of

On July 16, Archie Andrews will die a heroic death. The cartoon icon, for the most part a teenager since his creation in 1941, has been allowed to live (and die) as an adult in the “Life With Archie” series, which has played out different scenarios of his future self for a few dozen issues.  

“He dies saving the life of a friend, and does it in his usual selfless way,” Jon Goldwater, Archie Comics’ CEO, told CNN. “Archie has always been a representation of us — the best of us. Our strengths and our faults.”

What might be more newsworthy is Archie’s longevity, a case in point of success through mimicry and fierce copyright protection. Archibald “Chick” Andrews was created on Dec. 22, 1941, apparently to appeal to fans of Mickey Rooney’s “Andy Hardy” film series, although this was denied by Archie creator John Goldwater, the father of the current Archie Comics CEO. Archie became so popular that the company’s name was changed from Pep Comics to Archie Comics the following year. From then until now, Archie the cartoon teenager with the waffle pattern in his hair has been mostly engaged in adventures with his voracious best friend, Jughead, and competing love interests Betty and Veronica, the light and shade of malt shop hotness, in their hometown of Riverdale, USA. 

According to author Diana Green, “Archie has been a spy, a superhero, a restaurant owner, leader of a rock band, a young detective ... a college student ... and a married man ... but always returns to being a high school junior.”

Being as predictable as they were recognizable, Archie characters were ripe for parody. Mad Comics ran a piece called “Starchie” in 1954. National Lampoon weighed in with “Junkhead” in 1972. The most controversial piece was 1962’s “Goodman Goes Playboy,” in Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! magazine, in which Archie-like characters get drunk, live in sin, steal cars and sell their souls to the devil. Archie Comics sued, and Kurtzman, the cartoonist and Mad magazine founder, settled out of court.

Archie was given new life, in a big way, by the end of the 1960s. In an attempt to capitalize on the success of the Monkees, a pop band formed in 1965 for a television series of the same name, Filmation premiered the Saturday morning cartoon series “The Archie Show” in September 1968. In it, Archie and his friends had a garage band, and each episode featured a dance sequence and a new song. Songwriter Don Kirshner, the Brill Building music publisher behind “Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow,” “Up on the Roof," "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” was asked to develop the music for the series.

“Sugar, Sugar,” a song Kirshner had originally offered to the Monkees, who turned it down, found a home with the Archies. It went to the top of the charts, became Billboard’s No. 1 song of 1969 and was later covered by Bob Marley. The Archies released several albums and singles, and their animated life lasted for nearly another decade. It’s not hard to see how “The Archie Show” influenced other Saturday morning cartoon fare, especially “Scooby Doo, Where Are You!” with its wholesome group of teenage adventurers, including Shaggy, a clear hippie update of Jughead. “The Archie Show” was also the first Saturday morning cartoon series to feature a laugh track, sparking an immediate trend.

Archie Comics has changed with the times, albeit slowly. Its first black character, Chuck, appeared in the late 1960s, although he didn't fully develop a multifaceted personality for another 30 years. Jughead became a punk, temporarily, in the 1980s. Drugs and drug use weren’t mentioned until 1994.

In 2003, an Atlanta theater company planned to debut “Archie’s Weird Fantasy,” in which our hero comes out as gay and moves to New York. Archie Comics threatened a lawsuit, claiming, according to the theater’s artistic director, that depicting Archie as gay would “dilute and tarnish his image.” Seven years later, Archie Comics debuted its first openly gay character, Kevin Keller. His first issue was so popular it sold out three printings. (Ironically, this issue was one of the last comics to be granted the Comics Code Seal of Approval, which not only used to oppose “aberrant sexual behavior” but was also led for many years by Archie’s creator.) Kevin was later given a four-part miniseries and then his own title. Archie writer Dan Parent said Keller “shows that Riverdale is in the 21st century.”

And the 21st century is the time when Archie can finally be killed off — at least in one sense. “Years ago, before I stepped in as CEO, Archie was seen as a dormant, nostalgia brand stuck in amber,” Goldwater told CNN. “We were in suspended animation. People thought the stories were still set in the ’50s.” When asked why Archie should be killed, Goldwater said simply, “I think it’s the natural conclusion to the ‘Life With Archie’ series.”

Archie the teenager, it should be noted, will not die. He will continue his immortal life. We can, as Diana Green points out, credit Archie with at least two innovations: “The first was the presence of a teenager as a star. The second was the romantic triangle with the passive male at its center.”

Archie and his friends are some of the most iconic and long-lived of any popular characters, having appeared in comic strips since 1946. If Archie is the typical American teenager, it’s because he will adopt trends without creating them. In this he is, and will continue to be, somewhat conservative and pro-establishment. Archie is also quintessentially American because he is a study in protracted optimism. He was created by Goldwater’s father as an answer to this question: “Why does every comic book character need to be Superman?”