SERIOCOMIC (16): Betty (Archie)

One in a weekly series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels.

By the time I started reading the disintegrating stack of Archie comics at my grandparents’ off-the-grid Vermont cabin, the references were already outdated.

Archie Andrews was created by John Goldwater and Bob Montana in 1941 (though authorship, as in so many illustrated universes, is in some dispute) as an everyteen. Maybe my mother and her sisters, who bought most of the comics, had occupied that high school world. Hanover, New Hampshire, their hometown, still has a functioning soda shop within walking distance of Hanover High. But for me it was as distant as outer space … except for Betty. Betty Cooper was blonde like me. She had a ponytail like me. She was smart like me. Would I grow up to be a Betty?

In Archie lore, people say our red-headed hero never decides between Betty, the girl next door, and Veronica, the rich brunette vamp, but that wasn’t my perception of events. In comic after comic, Veronica swoops in for the clinch. She needs Archie. She pays for Archie. She drives off into the sunset with Archie. And Betty is there, holding the socket wrench, grease on her snub nose, having fixed that car. Maybe over Archie Comics’ 77-year history Betty did, once or twice, get her man. I haven’t read them all and I suspect no human could. After a while, the hijinks become numbing. How many times can Archie fall into Veronica’s pool?