Modernism in Riverdale: Reading the Self-Evident Text Ambiguously

The third and final story in issue 114 of Archie (November 1960) is titled “The Interpreter.” Although the work, like all Archie Comics material produced in the 1960s, is not signed, it is generally credited to writer Frank Doyle and artist Harry Lucey, who were responsible for the vast majority of stories in the flagship title of the Archie franchise at this point in time. Self-contained and five pages long, it is entirely consistent with the standard length and formula of the Archie stories of the 1960s. Only three members of the regular “Archie gang” appear in the story (Archie, Betty, and Jughead, the last in only a single panel), and of these, only the first two have any dialogue. The story is exceptionally simple: leaving Spanish class, Archie informs Betty that he has no need to learn this frivolous subject (“Anybody who talks to me can do it in English!” he tells her). On his way home from school, Archie spies a racing ambulance, which he then follows to the site of a car accident. A young boy lies in the street while his panicked father is unable to communicate with the emergency medical technicians and the police. “Does anybody in this crowd speak Spanish?” asks an officer. Stepping forward, Archie declares, “Yo puedo hablar Español.” He determines the boy’s blood type, then accompanies the father to the hospital. With the boy’s life saved, Archie runs into Betty and offers to help her with her Spanish homework: “You have no idea how important it is to be able to speak more than one language!”

In every way, this is a typical Archie story of the 1960s. It is completely stand-alone (there are no other Archie stories to be found in the entire decade in which Archie is shown speaking Spanish), formulaic, optimistic, and civic-minded, and it contains a strong moral message (in this case, the necessity of language study). In almost every important respect, it is unremarkable.

Figure 1.

Panels from “The Interpreter,” Archie #114 (November 1960), by Frank Doyle and Harry Lucey.

Figure 2.

Panels from “The Interpreter,” Everything’s Archie #2 (July 1969), by Frank Doyle and Harry Lucey.

Nine years later, in issue 2 of Everything’s Archie (July 1969), a new Archie Comics title created to take advantage of the new Archies television program, another story appears with the title “The Interpreter.” This piece is also written by Doyle and it is also drawn by Lucey. It, too, is five pages long, and it, too, finds Archie initially disclaiming the study of Spanish to Betty, only to have his attitude changed when his education permits him to intervene and to save the life of a young boy who has been struck by a car. The two pieces are not merely similar but, for all intents and purposes, identical: they share the same number of pages and panels and even the exact same dialogue, down to the placement of ellipses. They are not the same story, however. The piece has been entirely redrawn by Lucey. In the 1960 version, Archie wears the black sweater vest, orange pants, and green bow tie that epitomized his trademark look until the middle of the decade. In the later version, he wears blue jeans, a white shirt, and a red sweater. The story is identical except for the fact that it has been recreated entirely afresh. Comparing them side by side is akin to watching different actors play the same scene in two different versions of a play (see fig. 5 and fig. 6).

What can we make of this unusual development? Archie Comics was not reluctant to reuse older material in the 1960s. On the contrary, they had entire titles (Archie’s Giant Series, for example) that specialized in reprinting older material. Given the fact that the Archie stories of the 1960s developed in the complete absence of continuity—no Archie story has any impact on any other Archie story of...