Quote from: Purgatori on September 01, 2017, 11:03:56 AMQuote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 31, 2017, 05:10:06 PM
And if he concluded that anyone but Bob Montana was responsible for the actual work of creation, I'll be shocked.
From the article, "Bob Montana plotted the first story with help from Harry Shorten, who had a Dell editor gone freelance, Vic Bloom, write the dialog. Vic Bloom named the Jughead character and also the area Riverdale. The 'Wally Williams' strip [created by Bloom for Popular Comics #48] had another character called 'Jughead' Lewis and the name of the city was Rivertown".
It's pretty remarkable though, how little that initial story resembles what became known to the world as "Archie". You've got Archie, and Betty, but considerably younger than what became their standard versions, and Jughead... well, the less said about the prototype Jughead the better. Apart from the hat, it's hard to see much of a resemblance to the character we know as Jughead today. And Veronica, which seems like a key component in the whole formula, was nowhere... a mere afterthought. As I say... the essence was distilled over time, but it all congealed in Montana's newspaper strip.