Quote from: Thrillho on July 01, 2016, 12:55:47 PM
Likewise with Jughead, he sets people up for self-indulgent reasons, and I know as a reader, we are supposed to cheer for him and find him clever. I remember one story where Veronica tells Jughead she will either invite Jughead or Reggie to her party, so Jughead sets up Reggie to get beat up by Moose immediately as Reggie enters the story.
Yeah if he did the things Veronica does here he probably wouldnt be punished as badly or criticized as much, hell even I wouldn't be mad at him, I hate to say it but he has charm that's like a get out of jail free card sometimes.
Quote from: Thrillho on June 30, 2016, 12:35:29 PM
I just remember Al Hartley wrote a story where Veronica and Reggie were evil Germans and Betty, Archie, and Jughead were the good Americans in a WWI story.
I don't see any wrong with Al making R and R German WWI villains, I think I read that story and it was no worse than the roles George Gladir and Frank Doyle gave them in their history spoofs. If it had been World War TWO that would be something else.
QuoteHe also wrote the Spire Christian Comics were Reggie date raped a girl. That made me think he might not like them much.
Okay I think I found the site that might have given you that idea. http://80pagegiant.blogspot.com/2011/09/archie-metaphors-sex-and-al-hartley.html Are those the panels?
I also found the page they come from.
In context it doesn't look like date rape. The Jughead oranges story is more like a metaphor for a guy who tells girls he loves them to get them to sleep with him, it doesn't work as analogy for rape. Besides it would make more sense for this sermon to tell girls "don't put out just because a guy says he loves you" (standard Christian warning) than to say "don't get date raped," there's no way a girl can avoid that unless she doesn't go on dates or doesn't kiss boys in cars, the other story on that site shows Al wasn't against girls going on dates and kissing boys in cars. It DOES look skeevy that Reggie's jumping on her with a sneering smile but he always drew Reggie sneering and always put characters in that pose when they're going after something they want, it probably symbolizes Reggie's a predator in the emotional not physical sense.
I just found another site where this story is discussed: http://www.toonzone.net/forums/threads/archie-goes-there-talkback.5224681/
and someone else says the same thing I'm saying, he also points out the lipstick marks on Reggie's face and the girl's appearance are probably meant to show it wasn't rape, a good point. (Then another guy says date rape victims don't always look raped and that kiss marks are just comics shorthand for sexual activity of any kind, well actually, they're just shorthand for CONSENSUAL making out, what comics would use them to convey rape? I mean you might see them in real life date rape and yeah, real victims don't always look victimized but in cartoons they do, the cartoonists tend to make sure we know what happened. Al Hartley's drawn rape victims in other stories and they did not just look bewildered with messy hair like this girl. Then this guy tries to claim Al mixed his metaphors (why?) and was "too stuck in the 50s to understand that date rape was what he was portraying", er, if he didn't understand he was portraying it then it's probably not what he was portraying. At this point I just can't take him seriously, for some reason he's hellbent on seeing the worst in Al no matter how weak his arguments are, same for the site that took those two panels out of context. I guess they're venting in revenge for all the Spire comics or something. )
I think the most important point the other guy makes is that Al Hartley wasn't the kind of guy who would show Reggie raping someone (if ACP even would have let him, unlikely). Frank Doyle is the one who came closest to writing Reggie as an in-context date rapist, Al's portrayals of him weren't that bad.