(1966)

"Servant Problem" in Archie Giant Series #157, December 1968, written by Frank Doyle, art by Samm Schwartz

moose, midge, jughead continued

Since this was brought up -- may as well go to an out of context conclusion.

March 1961

Samm Schwartz

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Archie and Betty: prowler pervos.

Courtesy of Archie Comics, here's a classic story that'll appear in World of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #135, which will arrives Nov. 22. It's by Frank Doyle, Samm Schwartz and Bill Yoshida.

Suzie #98, April 1954 Suzie Comics, Archie Comics Samm Schwartz - Terry Szenics - Joe Edwards

Preview: Archie Milestones Digest #15

Archie Milestones Digest #15 preview. When Archie is floored by Reggie’s superior moves at the roller disco, Jughead offers to teach him how to boogie down in the rink #comics #comicbooks

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BOOKS IN COMIC BOOKS : : :

The Superhero Manual can’t hold a candle to the Junior Woodchuck Manual, obviously. Cover to Archie’s Madhouse #40 (1965) by Samm Schwartz and Dann DeCarlo (border). #booksincomics

my hottest take? harry lucey and samm schwartz drew better than dan decarlo

On Characterization

I still have a crate packed with old Archie digests, somewhere. Near the tail end of my reading these, I'd started getting a kick out of seeing certain characters evolve (or devolve) in the context of a single issue. The most striking case, to me, was Mister Weatherbee.

Early Issues: your token Joyless Adult, even more stern than the kids' parents, dressed in the sorts of suits you would've found on Tintin back in 1925.

First Twenty Years: his body habitus gets locked in, but isn't as extreme as others will render it later on. What began as a bald and irate ride-sharing partner for Archie is now the heavyset principal that terrorizes the Andrews kid. He isn't terribly loquacious yet, his tendency to pontificate hasn't developed.

The Late Fifties: Samm Schwartz' predecessor renders Weatherbee as a monolith in a sack suit, a solid rectangle of a man with the alacrity and vivaciousness of the kids he's meant to shepherd. Fat jokes start to be seen in a few arcs, but aren't prominent yet.

The Sixties: Al Hartley and Bob Bolling run the show. The first one renders Weatherbee as a shape, an utter unit of a man, beset with too many neuroses to count and packing on all the precursors to Type II Diabetes the Flower Power years ignored. In the 50s, you could assert that Waldo was close to six feet for about three-fifty pounds, but Hartley scoffs at that deduction. His Weatherbee is clinically obese - morbidly so - and is oftentimes shown as being a slave to an underlying gluttonous penchant that leaves even Jughead surprised.

As for Bolling, he keeps the same shape he coined for the Little Archie strips, adds about two hundred pounds to the man and dresses him in sack suits that do nothing for his figure. Bolling's Weatherbee is sort of milquetoast, not quite packing the dynamism of the previous or of its following incarnations.

The Seventies: Samm Schwartz renders Weatherbee in a way that's at once more sedate and more expressive, with a more restrained paunch and a clear double chin. The character's signature lapel clasps start to underscore moments of self-satisfaction, Waldo's tendency towards self-aggrandizement being adequately exploited. Schwartz pulls the fifties' more grandiose characterization out of the mothballs, giving the principal an occasional Richard Griffiths-esque twang. He yells, huffs and puffs - and frequently outdoes the teens in terms of cartoon antics. He's also more of a pedagogue during this decade. Hartley's questionable closeness between the Bee and the kids is left well and truly in the dust.

The Eighties: Dan DeCarlo is a pinup guy through and through, and his designs for the Riverdale grownups betray a certain sense of constriction. In a way, it helps Weatherbee's case, whose color palette and proportions standardize into tones of brown and about two-fifty pounds. Only rarely does he deign to ink a "fat joke" strip, usually for his Archie and Me run.

The Nineties: Rex Lindsay is too busy trying to make the kids seem hip in order to care about the adults' proportions. Under his pen, Weatherbee is either slightly heavyset, morbidly obese, flat-chested or shaped like a reverse V. Proportions sometimes shift multiple times in the same story. The only mark of consistency is the little half-moon on the character's bald pate, meant to indicate a permanent spot of chrome-dome shine.

The Aughties and Onwards: the classic digest runs keep the same fluid dynamics, but the Chip Zdarsky serials shave ten years off of the Bee, while adding a bit of muscle definition. He's an accomplished outdoorsman now, with the calves to match. It's here that he's effectively toned down, perhaps as a result of the multiversal storyline that marked the years between 2018 and 2020. Having needed a steady emotional core to be believable as Geraldine Grundy's husband, he brings that mixture of empathy and no-nonsense rationality forward in setting perhaps better-suited for more vivacious spirits, like Jughead's zombie-themed limited Horror run.

It's strange, seeing how a medium needed almost a hundred years to go from "Golly, aren't adults boring?" to "Hey, guess what? Your authority figures have rich inner lives too!"

"Veronica's had some mighty queer looking boy friends in the past..."

"A Long Tail!" in Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica #14, August 1954, written by Frank Doyle, art by Samm Schwartz

what's in a name?

The habit of changing some extra and one time characters' hair color pops in at an unexpected point.

The silhouetted panel gets kinda abstract.

They just have a few squiggly lines laying around. May as well drop them in.

January 1961

Jughead calls Betty a major leaguer in PEP 400, PEP Comics #400 (1985).