Let's Talk: Race and Riverdale

Every now and again, I see people refer to comics as "out of date."  Flipping through pages of a rich guy dressed like a flying rodent beating up poor people with mental problems apparently doesn't hold up as much now as it did back in the day, in their opinion.  They treat all comics as "silly stories," with nothing to draw people to them other than "POW BIFF WHAM!" and people in spandex with ridiculous body shapes.

This isn't exactly true.  You have stories such as Pedro & Me, where Judd Winick recounts his experience on The Real World with a roommate who was HIV positive.  You have Persepolis, a true story of a young woman's life growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution.  There are plenty of comics that keep their finger on the pulse of the world and present it through words and imagery.

And then you have Archie comics.  For the most part, Archie and his crew have remained the same for years, just with updates in technology, slang, and occasionally an obscure or out of date look at what's going on in the world.

They'd try to touch on current "hot topics" such as giving Archie an "emo" look in one issue, or having Veronica travel the world to learn about new cultures (though I'll point out that Veronica didn't get her own book until the late 80s), but these were mixed in with issues of things like "Oh, yeah, it turns out Jughead's hat actually allows him to travel through time and he has a girlfriend in the 29th century which is why he doesn't care about any of the women in Riverdale.  Oh yeah, and he's a time cop."

We're going to save the discussion about the fact that his canon-established girlfriend is a descendant of Archie for another time (way too much subtext there) and move on.

My point is that the late 80s and early 90s were weird.

Wait, no, that's not my point.  My point is that for the longest time things didn't really change dramatically in Archie comics.  Especially not when it came to race.  You had characters who weren't white, but they tended to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend of their own race to become the "token ethnic couple."  Chuck Clayton has Nancy Woods, for example.

However, in the past few years, Archie Comics have really started to shake things up.  They introduced their first gay character, Kevin Keller, and let him get married to another man.  Oh, and after his husband was shot (seriously) he ran for office and became Senator Kevin Keller and tackled gun control.  Cheryl Blossom had to deal with the risk of breast cancer.  Miss Grundy, the long-suffering teacher of Archie and his friends, actually died of cancer.  Another storyline that's coming out now involves Archie Andrews and the zombie apocalypse.  No, seriously.

With a unique art style that doesn't match anything that's happened before, the living dead are unleashed upon Riverdale when Jughead's dog Hot Dog gets hit by a car (!) and dies (!!).

That's Sabrina the teenage witch, who uses her magic to bring Hot Dog back to life...but anyone who's seen Pet Sematary knows that it's never a good idea to do that, and soon Hot Dog bites Jughead, turning him into a zombie, and then Zombie Jughead gets unleashed upon the Riverdale High School Halloween Dance.

It's pretty awesome, and it's only two issues in.

But I'm also not here to talk about that, I'm here to talk about race, something that Archie has been dragging its feet over for a long, long time.  In 1992, Archie Comics decided to do a total revamp of the book Betty And Me to make it focus more on Betty.  It was decided she'd get a job as a reporter, have an insufferable boss, and (*gasp*) have a new friend who she'd feel romantically drawn to who also happened to be a co-worker (a college freshman who was working as a cameraman).  It was to give Betty the same romantic triangle business that fueled Archie for years. His name would be Dexter Howard.

Oh, and he'd be black.

I wasn't there, so I'm just going to quote Dwayne McDuffie here.  Remember, the name of the higher-up has been changed to Dr. Doom.

Darryl called Matt with the bad news.  Dr. Doom had literally thrown the issue at him.  He hated the stuff, wanting to know why Dexter was so much more accomplished than Archie.  "What is he, super-Negro?"

Dwayne goes on to point out that he isn't sure that's what was actually said.  He thinks his co-workers were trying to soften the blow by not repeating what was actually said.

Again, this was 1992.

Dexter was recolored to be white (not fooling anybody) and the writer was canned after two issues.

This isn't the last time something like that happened.  In 2008 (Two Thousand And Eight) a storyline was introduced where Cheryl Blossom dated a series of new male characters in a contest and readers could vote on who would become her new steady boyfriend.  One of them was Brandon, who in solicitations was clearly a black character.  However, in the book itself?

Um, his skin wasn't that light before...

Oh dear.

So where does that leave us?

Well, in 2010, Archie Comics broke a milestone:

That's Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats, a long-established character in Archie history.  And she's kissing Archie.  I haven't seen every Archie comics cover, but last I checked Archie had never kissed a black girl on the cover of a comic book.

Again, this is 2010.

It seems Archie comics were in a real hurry to make up for lost time, because not long after Archie's relationship with Valerie started they wound up publishing a "what if Archie married Valerie" that involved them having kids and growing old together, facing adult problems.  This was much in the vein of the previously done "what if Archie married Betty" and "what if Archie married Veronica" books.

But still, for this company to do something like that...well, it doesn't make up for Dexter, but it's a good start.  I think what surprises me is that it took his long to handle something like that.  The same year you have a long established character die and introduce your first in-canon gay character is the first time you spotlight an interracial kiss?

While I respect Archie Comics for being willing to take on such adult issues, I just regret it's taken this long for the All-American Guy to realize that the America he represented in his books was no longer the America everyone else lived in.

Maybe someday we'll get that truly momentous comic that will blow everybody's mind:

(Thanks to comicsalliance.com for that final image)