Hey Guys.
I Have a little challenge for the hardcore Archie fans here! I was told this image is from an Archie Comic. Would anybody know if this is true? If so does anyone know what issue it is from?
Thanks a ton guys
It's easy to see how this might happen to Archie, but I don't recognise the artist as an Archie artist
Not an Archie Comic. Andy Hardy, actually -- from DELL FOUR COLOR #480 (July 1953).
(https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/11/119838/2586085-fourcolor480.jpg)
There's an apocryphal story that says that John Goldwater was inspired by seeing a long line of teenagers queued-up to get tickets for an Andy Hardy movie, which in turn inspired Goldwater with the idea that he ought to publish some teenage humor comics. Some speculate that the film in question might have been Life Begins for Andy Hardy, which was released on August 15, 1941. That would fit the production lead time for PEP COMICS #22 (cover-dated December, 1941), which would have been on the stands sometime in October of that year. There's one big problem with that theory, however... in his first appearance, Archie -- and Betty and Jughead, who all appeared in that first story -- weren't teenagers. They were about 12 years old. MLJ Magazines DID have a teenage humor character prior to Archie Andrews, though... Wilbur Wilkin. Wilbur first appeared in ZIP COMICS #18 (cover-dated September 1941), which would have been on the stands sometime in July 1941. Too early to be inspired by THAT particular Andy Hardy picture, but Goldwater could have been inspired by an earlier film, like Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, which had been released in February 1941, enough time to get a writer and artist working on cobbling together a story about hapless teenager Wilbur.
Translating the idea of a popular movie genre into a comic book wasn't any particular stroke of genius, either. The concept of the humorous antics of teenagers in comics goes back as far as The Love Life of Harold Teen, a newspaper comic strip (later shortened to just Harold Teen) that first appeared on Sunday, May 4, 1919 in The Chicago Tribune (later famed as the home paper of Dick Tracy). "Harold Teen" could truly be said to be on the cutting edge, in the sense that the very concept of the teenager (and coining of the word itself), as a distinct social group with its own independent ways and fads and foibles, was only just beginning to be recognized by adult society after the first World War, as the nineteen-teens turned into the nineteen-twenties. Henry Ford had given them the mobility to congregate in small groups free of parental supervision, at just about the same time that the idea of a parental gratuity called an "allowance" was taking hold.
Hey Delcarlo, Thanks for in info!
Good job, De Carlo.
...On the old board I started to post about - But never finished - my reading of a pre-1920s novel titled SEVENTEEN, by Booth Tarkington, a humorous novel about a (pretty well-off, actually) Midwstern teenager of that time.
I think that may be able to lay the claim to bring the first " teenager " work of fiction!
Seventeen was first publishing in 1916, so I guess it's a possible source of inspiration for The Love Life of Harold Teen, which appeared just 3 years later. Or maybe it was just the times, when adults first began thinking about "those crazy teenagers".
...From what little I've seen of Harold Teen, I've always wanted to see more, but like a whole lot of rather "homey " newspaper strips of old, there appears to be little if any available reprints of it. The strip was known for its trying to keep up with contemporary teenagers' slang, apparently -A touch different, since it appeared in daily newspapers back when essentially anyone literate bought one - And read the comics therein!!!!!!!!! ;) :D - so maybe it meant that HT tried to be more literally fashion-forward, as it were, than classic Archie, which -
arguably?? -updated itself, but always in a juuussst cozily, mildly, behind the times manner? Maybe that's not so. Discuss this?
Quote from: ASS-P on March 08, 2018, 07:55:08 PM
...From what little I've seen of Harold Teen, I've always wanted to see more, but like a whole lot of rather "homey " newspaper strips of old, there appears to be little if any available reprints of it. The strip was known for its trying to keep up with contemporary teenagers' slang, apparently -A touch different, since it appeared in daily newspapers back when essentially anyone literate bought one - And read the comics therein!!!!!!!!! ;) :D - so maybe it meant that HT tried to be more literally fashion-forward, as it were, than classic Archie, which -
arguably?? -updated itself, but always in a juuussst cozily, mildly, behind the times manner? Maybe that's not so. Discuss this?
Then again, it might just be a difference in perception, given that both Harold Teen and Archie were stories about teenagers most likely being written by middle-aged men (and somewhat later on, women). Maybe it only SEEMS like Harold Teen "kept up with contemporary teenagers' slang" because it was before your time, so it's hard for you to judge, while you can start reading Archie stories when you're a child, and age into a teenager and eventually a middle-aged man while Archie and his friends still remain teenagers.
When I was a kid, I could still read Bob Haney's dialogue in the original TEEN TITANS comic book and (not knowing any better) think it was "hip" teenage slang, but when I got to be a teenager, I realized how ridiculously hokey it sounded... and now it seems "
endearingly hokey".
...I lost a draft of this :'( .