Comic books used to be for guys. There were superhero comics, military comics, and spy comics, based on TV shows. With the exception of R. Crumb and an omnibus edition of Cathy, the last comic book I read was The Six-Million-Dollar Man, based on a TV show about an invincible man rebuilt from robotic parts. I read it for a paper I was writing on the Prometheus myth in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and pop culture.
But my studies of pop culture lay in the future. The pick of the comic books for girls was Betty and Veronica. I would read almost anything: (a) Nancy Drew, (b) Little Women, and (c), The World Book Encyclopedia. But what doesn’t fit with the others? Betty and Veronica, a spin-off from the Archie comics, which made its debut in 1950.
Betty and Veronica were among the few female protagonists of comic books. As role models, however, I am sure they were failures. I can imagine mothers banning Betty and Veronica, because they reinforce sexual stereotypes of boy-crazy girls, yadda, yadda, yadda. And in the old comics, the girls’ friendship was twisted, but that made it exciting, because we were always on Betty’s side. Veronica, a spoiled, rich, malevolent brunette competes with her “friend,” blond, ponytailed, nice Betty. for dates with Archie. Here is Leslie Fiedler’s literary trope, “dark lady, light lady.” (The dark lady is bad, the light lady is good.) For some reason Betty’s hair is green on the internet, but that was not the case on the printed page!
I never got the thing about Archie. He’s a nice, freckled, red-haired boy with the sex appeal of a flying squirrel. But dating is what girls do in Archie’s world. And there’s not much to choose from in Riverdale.
Jughead, Archie’s nerdy best friend, is funny, so he might be my pick; but Reggie is a devious male version of Veronica, with less personality; and Moose is big and dumb. As for the girls, Veronica has advantages in terms of clothing and travel, but Betty is nice and normal, and very smart, at least in her latest incarnation. It’s pretty much a tie between them as far as Archie is concerned.
Betty and Veronica used to be funnier. I suspect that the humor has been watered down for reasons of political correctness. Veronica is no longer the treacherous vamp, though she is still malicious, and Betty is brainier than I remembered, at the top of the honor roll. The episode I enjoyed the most in a 1989 comic book (see frame at top of post ) shows Betty struggling to open the locker for a weak boy named Dilton, and his unabridged dictionary falls on her head. This gives Betty ESP!
In another less inspired episode, Veronica is allowed to run her dad’s business empire for the day. Much to everyone’s surprise, Veronica wears a man’s business suit in order to be ironic, saucy, and fashionable. But everybody mistakes her for a man. Some young boys call out, “Betty has a boyfriend!” In this strange episode, super-feminine Veronica for the first time is not deemed feminine. The next day she traipses down the stairs of her mansion in a negligee.
I cannot pretend these make good reading now, but once upon a time… and I suppose someone still reads them.
