Questions of Earth-Shattering Importance Asked (and Answered)

[jamesq]

hadriel and garething's daughter K is of an age (almost 10) where she's reading a lot of Archie comics (a lot). Seeing her while having a casual dinner with hadriel, wendy_licious and wackynephews it occured to me that I had read a lot of Archie comics when I was her age. So had my older siblings. In fact, kids that age have been reading Archie for longer then I've been alive. There must be thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Archie stories written.

So I got to thinking if they ever recycled the stories. Obviously they reprint some of the stories (that's the whole point of the digest editions), but with nearly 70 years of material they could get away with just redoing the art or retooling the dialog forever. After all, the target audience will typically only read the books for five years or so before graduating to more serious fare. They therefore have more material then they could ever need if they went that route.

As an aside, Archie is expanding the signature style of it's art. The Betty & Veronica titles have a somewhat more realistic art style (sort of an updated version of the old romance comics but with a cleaner line). I've also seen manga style Archies. Mind you, manga has been consuming all western pop culture for years now (I saw a Manga version of Star Trek the Original Series the other day at Words & Pictures. Of course, that just means the west gets to return the favour.

The topic changed as these things do, but it was still in the back of our minds. That's why wendy_licious spotted this strip and brought it to the rest of our attentions:



Note the circled bits. Do they seem a bit... odd to you. The word balloons are just a little too large for the text within and of course, they didn't update the artwork to match. I suppose the kids should be glad that they didn't simply strike out the record CD player.

So that settles it, they really do recycle stories from the depths of time (i.e. a time when teens used phonographs instead of those newfangled compact disc players) - they just do a half-assed job sometimes.

Thanks K, for letting me borrow your book long enough to scan.

Comments

[petranef.livejournal.com]

It needs to die. I mean, does anyone actually buy this outdated crap anymore?

[jamesq]

Hey! Let the ten-year olds read their kiddy comics. They'll grow up soon enough.

[wendy-licious.livejournal.com]

Hey, it was outdated crap in 1978 when I was reading it. Remember Archie's old jalopy? I'm pretty sure it was a model 'T'!
Besides, the story lines are classic. Boy caught between two girls, boy screws up everything, slapstick.
When you're that age that all seems very funny and relevant.

[laughingmagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL - Brilliant piece of detection!

[petranef.livejournal.com]

When I was ten I was reading MAD magazine.

I've always hated Archie. And Jughead's stupid hat.

Couldn't someone make a modern comic for the wee set?

[jamesq]

I suspect you were an atypical ten-year old.

As for making a modern comic, if someone wanted to try, I'd say go for it. My small amount of experience around kids suggest that typical ten-year olds like Archie for a reason and it probably is the formulaic nature of it. If someone could beat a 60+ year publisher at their own game I'd be suitably impressed.

As an aside, wackynephews told me yesterday that Archie Comics pays pretty good money for a new original story set in their universe. Probably because it's hard to skirt the fine line between "engaging to the target audience" and "being too edgy for the target audience". I wouldn't want to try it.

Not just archie comics

[nosarious.livejournal.com]

I used to read a lot of comics back int he 70's and 80's. I even had a lot of Casper and Richie Rich ones. I had a lot from my siblings and then started buying my own and noticed the story lines were recycled.

Then as I got older and the comics I bought changed I noticed that there the plots of the super heros comics got recycled as well. Those are going through an upheaval of sorts now, though, as they are constantly trying to reinvent themselves, no doubt because of the success of independents. successful independents which do not rely on the same character or background, etc.