It has been a source of surprise to me to see how little this comics magazine is ever discussed along with other high art comics. It is as popular among Indian readers as readers in its native land. So many of us have grown up with it and it has influenced our thinking in so many ways.
Archie Comics Digest Magazines.
Why have Archie comics been overlooked as one of the colossus of the comics medium? Like Agatha Christie is to novels, I am almost certain that these magazines sold more than any of the more famous of the medium. And particularly for us in India, I feel that they have been crucial to moulding us into receptacles of the language of comics.
The visual medium came to me before I could understand the words and stories. I didn’t read them, but yet I read them through their unique visual language. These old tattered issues, probably bought second hand, worth their weight in gold to a pip like me, were addictive. Stories upon stories about absolutely lovable characters, with names that were alien (for the longest time I called Reggie with a ‘g’ as in ‘guy’ and not a ‘g’ as in ‘rage’) but with lives that we understood every part of and dilemmas we could foresee and yet waited for.
I was lucky enough, recently, to find some issues of the Archie Americana series, that I’d always seen advertised in the mags, but since I didn’t live in the US or Canada, was barred from ordering. These are collections of vintage stories that have been collected decade-wise as, as the name implies, cultural memorabilia of the American 20th century.
These are great collections since, for one, each story is like a history lesson in the development of the Archie family, and secondly, they are journeys in culture. Each decade is distinct, each have different illustrators and different outfits and different languages and different hairstyles and different pop phenomena and on and on.
And what I realized is that like everything else America does, these comics have influenced us. Do not ask me to justify such a statement, but when I watch a movie (American) about two people (Americans) speaking, and understand why one finds it funny when the other uses the slang “Neat” to describe someone attractive (“It went out at the turn of the century I think”). It isn’t important, but it’s there.
So hula hoops, and beatniks and pencil skirts and puffy hair, these are all collected as representative iconography of the decade as depicted in that decade’s volume. Archie comics, being a regular publication magazine, had enough inspiration from the times and incorporated them all into the teenage lives of the characters. But they also adapted these more so than the daily comic strips, which remained isolated from the outside world, and whose clothes or furniture never changed. And if you think that this is just philandering to foreign cultures, please look at Indian movies of the same eras and see the closeness of cultural influences in the cinema and the comics. People doing the twist to music played on LP’s can be a page from one story. Stories of our parents’ times of hippies in cities can be from another. Archie comics were just my portal to understanding this.
The whole jingbang of cultural melees has a lot to do with their popular depictions that travel across the globe, easily palatable. It is a testament to the power of the comics medium that a trade magazine, with no pretensions of being cultural markers, is one of the greatest ambassadors of the American Dream/Way to those who have little, if ever, actually otherwise thought about it.
Peachy keen, I say.
Archie Comics Digest Magazines.
Why have Archie comics been overlooked as one of the colossus of the comics medium? Like Agatha Christie is to novels, I am almost certain that these magazines sold more than any of the more famous of the medium. And particularly for us in India, I feel that they have been crucial to moulding us into receptacles of the language of comics.
The visual medium came to me before I could understand the words and stories. I didn’t read them, but yet I read them through their unique visual language. These old tattered issues, probably bought second hand, worth their weight in gold to a pip like me, were addictive. Stories upon stories about absolutely lovable characters, with names that were alien (for the longest time I called Reggie with a ‘g’ as in ‘guy’ and not a ‘g’ as in ‘rage’) but with lives that we understood every part of and dilemmas we could foresee and yet waited for.
I was lucky enough, recently, to find some issues of the Archie Americana series, that I’d always seen advertised in the mags, but since I didn’t live in the US or Canada, was barred from ordering. These are collections of vintage stories that have been collected decade-wise as, as the name implies, cultural memorabilia of the American 20th century.
These are great collections since, for one, each story is like a history lesson in the development of the Archie family, and secondly, they are journeys in culture. Each decade is distinct, each have different illustrators and different outfits and different languages and different hairstyles and different pop phenomena and on and on.
And what I realized is that like everything else America does, these comics have influenced us. Do not ask me to justify such a statement, but when I watch a movie (American) about two people (Americans) speaking, and understand why one finds it funny when the other uses the slang “Neat” to describe someone attractive (“It went out at the turn of the century I think”). It isn’t important, but it’s there.
So hula hoops, and beatniks and pencil skirts and puffy hair, these are all collected as representative iconography of the decade as depicted in that decade’s volume. Archie comics, being a regular publication magazine, had enough inspiration from the times and incorporated them all into the teenage lives of the characters. But they also adapted these more so than the daily comic strips, which remained isolated from the outside world, and whose clothes or furniture never changed. And if you think that this is just philandering to foreign cultures, please look at Indian movies of the same eras and see the closeness of cultural influences in the cinema and the comics. People doing the twist to music played on LP’s can be a page from one story. Stories of our parents’ times of hippies in cities can be from another. Archie comics were just my portal to understanding this.
The whole jingbang of cultural melees has a lot to do with their popular depictions that travel across the globe, easily palatable. It is a testament to the power of the comics medium that a trade magazine, with no pretensions of being cultural markers, is one of the greatest ambassadors of the American Dream/Way to those who have little, if ever, actually otherwise thought about it.
Peachy keen, I say.
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