The Jughead Romance Crisis, revisited revisited
I have been cleaning up old entries, mostly just giving titles of the stories as opposed to a smattering of half clever titles and a pile of place holders -- a change I had made when drrtyriver asked/suggested I cite these --, but also putting up clearer images to some of them. A smattering of posts that were left untitled I have deleted, titled, and reupped, and ditto a few that look demanding of expansion. I think it is obvious on the page -- like, maybe I should do the arduous work and back track to resize the huge block images to stop that blurring? -- but maybe I just won't.
The matter of Jughead's asexuality sprung up, for me the second time here. I am part of no Tumblr community and the only manner I am reading things on Tumblr are through the smattering of whoever is liking posts here. But from backlinks I saw some disagreeable and lopsided enraged fury on the portrayal of Jughead in Riverdale. I suppose part of my agitation at this person was just dropping in to view "fan culture" and its misplaced sense of proprietorship. Every reason to believe that this warrior for asexual representation in media and this character specifically would never read this Tumblr page, I indirectly and only tanganteally responded -- tangentially because I am sort of after something bigger than a specific person's overheated gripes of, mainly wanting to place matters into a historical, cultural, and business context -- here something that does not leave the creators of Archie here as evil men twirling their moustaches as they gleefully shove parts of the lgbtq community over a cliff. It does strike me that I should have this in a tagline -- perimeters for "The Jughead Romance Crisis" a little fungible -- my initial premised 4 parter dropping out with Daryl Edelman's mohawked run and today I would have a new part 1 so this would be a 5 parter and I would be inclined to go beyond fitting into the "reprint revision" framework. And one additional comment on the initial "Jughead hat pin" bunch of stories -- the weird and stupid "all the girls flocking to this hat pin" with a newly square-jawed Jughead exist coinciding regular Jughead stories -- some with altered appearance and some not -- where nothing is different except the pins on his hats -- which there do not lend him power.
So a 1992 interview with Ed Brubaker at the start of his career, back when he drew. He is wrong -- Samm Schwartz drew fat, overweight, plus sized, and / or obese people all the time. Ed Brubaker, I note, did a six page Archie spoof with his hooligan low level criminal semi autobiographical characters -- not reprinted in the inaccurately titled 'Complete Lowlife' collection. But I do wonder how the "sissies" moniker lands to different population segments -- or, I do not think it is definitionally "you're gay!" but it is adjacent - - you're a boy reading girl's stuff! Antiquated at that. And here we have a quick comment from Sara Dyer interviewed in late 90s 'Indy Magazine', dropping just in case you forgot just what an odd duck Archie has been in Comics land.
And Interesting to me -- a somewhat wishful thinking Archie President Richard Goldwater in 1982 staring at the shifting comic book retailing market. Newstands, where Archie Comics can do a lucrative business, are getting pushed aside and comic book stores, which were not conducive to selling Archie, are becoming the dominate mode of sale. For a while Archie is able to ride astride this -- heck, as Marvel and DC vacate they take up more space in this retail market, right?
I will say elsewhere I do see Goldwater -- or maybe Silberkleit? -- playing for me the moustache twirler baddie role and living to his father's history in supervising the Comics Code rules. But that is mostly beside the point. Mostly.
It is the Nate Butler local newspaper profile, as he started revamping Jughead, that would complete my observations and attempt at a grounding in just what they thought they were doing. The comment is along the lines of "the readership is not relating to Jughead anymore" -- and there I point out that you should note that the Betty and Veronica title never changed content-wise even as it restarted numbering. I will note the further direction for Nate Butler -- he became a born again Christian and his later comic book work shares an ideological space with Jack T Chick.
Dave Strom's "Harper's Index" homage / parody at the back of Amazing Heroes making contemporaneous points here. I toss in the "use of cheesecake" jab to mutter under my breath "that included Archie, right?"