The complicated Reggie - Cora Relationship
it strikes me as insane that Reggie had two titles running for him. Though Reggie debuted several months before the Betty and Veronica title, clearly sales lagged and it took a nine year hiatus -- and then had four issues in three years full of reprints. And where when Betty had two titles, the premise for the second one -- Betty's Diary -- allowed some room for the inner life of Betty, Reggie's second title -- a collection of one and half page gags -- did the opposite, flatten the character further to spare the reader from considering the inner life of Reggie.
Lest one thinks there was no room for complex narrative in the Reggie's Wise Guy Jokes title, note the third issue drops five pages of interactions with a girl named Cora. The first page Cora looks different than the other four -- by which I mean she has a different hair style. It as though the writer dropped the character name Cora, whether just out of laziness or not, and the artist picked up on the use for Cora and settled for that hair style on the third pages onward. It is a different Cora, though, as when we next meet a Cora she is clearly not someone who has rejected his advances a hundred times.
Hard to say what happened between the first and second instalment of this on again off again relationship between Reggie and Cora. Or maybe more hard to say what happened before the first installment that made Cora so into Reggie in the first place.
Clearly after a few dates, Cora loses interest. Years later, we have an epilogue where Reggie still has Cora on his mind. Which Cora, hard to say.
