COMIC TRAGEDY
Veronica Lodge with her hair so black, it's blue. Betty with her perky blonde pony tail high on her head. And gormless Archie with his carrot-colored, weirdly cross-hatched hair.
They'd been an adolescent menage for 65 years. Whom did Archie like better, the doting, always cheerfully average Betty, or the shallow, fickle Veronica whose surname alone denoted membership in the upper echelon of Riverdale society? The question was a poser for the better part of a century.
Shockingly, the news came all of a sudden that the time/four-panel-reality continuum would be shattered and that Archie would finally end his 65-year-long (presumed) celibacy and wed one of them, the shock being the implication that they'd had sexual organs all that time.
Though Archie and Betty clearly belonged together in a class sense, Archie evidently wasn't quite as dumb as he looked. Times are tough and he decided to go upscale.
It's hard to know where this leaves them now, comic dynamic-wise. Will he sneak off periodically from his palatial new digs to the low side of Riverdale and "do" Betty occasionally with his new-found naughty bits? Will Veronica Lodge-Andrews have him tailed with her vast resources? We wouldn't put it past her and remember, she has the makings of a real bitch.
There are other things to consider too. In the 1930s it was far from unusual to see comic strips invite reader suggestions as to how the events of comicdom should unfold. The tragic death of Mary Gold in Andy Gump alone elicited bags and bags of shocked, tear-stained mail from the -- well let's call them "innocent."
And the more "innocent" newspapers are doing it again with Archie.
Yes, times are tough, aren't they?
— Lloyd Dykk