Betty & Veronica

The Archie comic book characters became serious fashion icons, but it all happened through a series of accidents. For images, links, and the recording of the full live show, head to articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Avery Trufelman?

  This is a story about Archie Comics.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  So how many Archie comic fans are in the house tonight? Okay, all right.

• 0:07Avery Trufelman?

  And this show was recorded, in part, live in Boston.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  We're at WBUR City Space. Okay.

• 0:13Avery Trufelman?

  And before I got on stage, WBUR producer Stephen Davy came up to ask the crowd a very important question.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Well, who's Team Veronica?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Okay, who is Team Betty? Okay, so this is a Team Betty situation here. Okay.

• 0:28Avery Trufelman?

  Sorry to start up the Boston-New York rivalry immediately, but come on, that's so funny. I have to say, it was the most Boston thing in the world that, like, everyone's a Betty.

• 0:39Avery Trufelman?

  I'm sorry, in New York, you'd all be Veronica's. Because, for those unfamiliar with the franchise, in the comics, Betty is the sweet, blonde girl next door, and Veronica is the raven-haired, globe-trotting, glamorous, rich girl.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  I'll be Veronica enough for everybody else.

• 0:55Avery Trufelman?

  That is the most Veronica woman in Boston, senior audio producer and host for the Boston Globe, Jasmine Aguilera. She knows everything there is to know about Betty and Veronica and Archie and everybody in the fictitious town of Riverdale, which is actually a lot more like Boston than New York.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Even though there is an actual Riverdale that exists in New York.

• 1:17Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, in New York.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  That is not Riverdale. Riverdale is based, in a large part, to Haverhill, nearby. They have New England roots.

• 1:26Avery Trufelman?

  Even Veronica's name, Veronica Lodge, is bursting with Massachusetts pride.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Her name originated from Veronica Lake, who was an actress in the '40s, and a Massachusetts senator, Henry Cabot Lodge.

• 1:38Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, point for New England. So Jasmine Aguilera is like an unaccredited Archie Comics expert. She is a mega-fan.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Archie is so important to me. It shaped who I was. I saw Archie Comics in a grocery store aisle, as I'm sure a lot of people have that same experience. And, you know, I was learning to read when I first saw those Archie Comics. They helped me learn to read. So it really holds a very special place in my heart.

• 2:02Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:03Avery Trufelman?

  You might be wondering, okay, so I like Archie. This is all kind of interesting. Why are we talking about Archie on a fashion podcast?

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Buckle up. Okay, so I have loved Betty and Veronica fashion since I was a little kid and I aspired to be just like Veronica, both as a source of my fashion inspiration and also a source of so much of my personality. If you loved Betty and Veronica fashion as a child, you know what I'm talking about.

• 2:26Avery Trufelman?

  I know exactly what Jasmine is talking about. I also loved Archie Comics as a kid. Even though it started out kind of by default when I was growing up, Archie Comics were the only reading material in the grocery store checkout aisle that were for kids, that had any girls in it. Like, the rest of the comic books mostly had monsters and superheroes. And then I really kept reading Archie Comics because the characters were wearing the most extraordinary, interesting clothes. I was just mesmerized by them. I adored them. And Jasmine and I weren't alone. This is the argument we want to make, that it was actually Archie Comics as much as

• 3:10Avery Trufelman?

  Barbie dolls or fashion magazines that shaped generations of style. And it was through a series of little accidents and coincidences that turned Betty and Veronica into pretty serious fashion models who meant so much to so many people, which we will tell you about after the break.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishikesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 4:20Speaker 03

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• 4:50Avery Trufelman?

  I'm always looking for small, independent makers making unusual, strange, compelling clothes that I can't find anywhere else. And those are the kinds of independent makers that use Shopify. Shopify is empowering entrepreneurs. And for the rest of us, the fans and the buyers, there's shop. At shop.com, shoppers can discover brands they love, save items for later, search across stores at once, and track every order in one spot. I like to use it as my massive wishlist across many stores all over the internet. And as if you needed another reason to use shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash, which is their rewards currency. In this giveaway, 1,000 shoppers will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash.

• 5:35Avery Trufelman?

  Think of all the cool stuff you could buy with that. From cult favorites to the world's biggest brands, score sweet deals and checkout fast, all at shop.com. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 6:04Avery Trufelman?

  Something that drew me to Archie over the comic books that featured superheroes or whatever was that they featured normal teenagers, all just hanging out together, doing their normal teenage thing. But when Archie Comics first came out, These teenagers were not considered normal. Because teenagers were not considered normal. Period. Like teenagers as a concept did not yet exist.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  It's really hard to believe, but even before in the 1910s and before that, you were a child and then you were an adult and there was no in-between.

• 6:37Avery Trufelman?

  When Archie Comics first started in the 1940s, teenager was not a word. Teenagehood was not a stage of life.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  But then because of the depression, people started to realize like it's better for my kids to stay in school longer. Public schooling was starting to expand. So this whole new class of almost adults started to spark up.

• 6:57Avery Trufelman?

  And then especially after World War II, young adults didn't have to enlist anymore. It was like this new period of extended youth where you were sort of an adult, but you didn't have responsibilities. Like what was this?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  And those almost adults were a big portion of the population. And so marketing started to pay attention. Hey, wait a minute. And so what followed after that was this new awareness of this demographic that hadn't existed before, which was teenagers.

• 7:25Avery Trufelman?

  The word teenager came into mainstream culture in 1944. Archie Comics were before that. They came out in 1941. Archie Comics arguably helped shape the culture of what it means to be a teenager.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  So we're going to invite a very special guest to help explain where Archie came from. Joel Christian Gill.

• 7:50Avery Trufelman?

  Joel Christian Gill is the Chair of the Masters in Fine Arts in Visual Narrative at Boston University.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Professor, cartoonist, historian. Hi Joel.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  Hi, everybody.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  So Archie Comics. Where did they come from? Why were these the only comics that featured women?

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Misogyny, I'm sorry. I had something in my throat.

• 8:10Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, but what would one day become Archie was started by this publisher, John Goldwater.

• 8:15Speaker 05

  When Goldwater started, they started as a magazine publishing company first. And they decided that they were going to buy old magazines and then they were going to resell them overseas. And it was going to be a huge deal. And for three months, it was amazing. Then World War II happened. So they had to switch. And so they switched and they created a superhero comic because superhero comics were happening, were getting popular.

• 8:37Avery Trufelman?

  Super popular. Everything was superhero comics.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Fun fact, most people don't know this, but when Superman became popular, the only person that knew Superman was popular was the accountant. Because he could go through and see that the book, this is the book that was actually the most popular. And once he found that out, he immediately left and created Wonder Man.

• 8:56Speaker 05

  But actually, there's a whole series of comic covers where you see Archie, the superhero. I forget his name, but I think it was The Guardian, he was a superhero.

• 9:04Avery Trufelman?

  The character that would become Archie started as a superhero.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  He's actually the one, the reason that Captain America has a round shield because he had a triangle shield and they were too close together. And so they had to give Captain America the round shield.

• 9:17Avery Trufelman?

  But somehow, there's a shift to making a comic about a quote unquote, "normal, relatable" character, similar in age to what they imagined the reader would be.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  And then they decided to create Archie, which I think his original name, his nickname was Chip originally, but that's what they were calling him. And that comic took off. Like, the superhero comic was not nearly as popular. It's like, it fits a lane. So soldiers come back from World War II, and some of you might be familiar with this, but that was what they were sending in care packages, they were sending comics. And then when they came back after reading comics and learning and loving comics, it's like crime comics and all these different types of comics. And Archie just fits a vibe for a specific type of person.

• 9:53Avery Trufelman?

  The specific type of person, this new creature called a teenager.

• 9:58Speaker 06

  Wasn't supposed to be the biggest thing in the company, took it over within about five years.

• 10:01Avery Trufelman?

  Tim Hanley is a historian of comics and author of Betty and Veronica: The Leading Ladies of Riverdale.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  I think when people think of Archie, they think of these teenagers having like, typical adventures. I'm using air quotes because they're not typical, they're white, upper middle-class teenagers.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  And Archie was kind of buffoonish, teenage antics.

• 10:20Speaker 06

  Archie and Jug had heavy antics, Betty kind of mooning over him.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  What's really interesting about very early Archie's is Betty is just...

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Kind of there to be the person who's in love with Archie and doesn't have any kind of extra character design.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  Betty shows up first. She's in the first panel of the first story of Archie ever. Betty has just moved into town and Archie is standing on a bicycle, riding it down the road to oppressor. Then he walks on a fence and falls off and like goes through a painting her father has. It's a whole slapstick situation that grows from there. So Betty's the gaga for Archie from panel one. And for about six months, Archie would just screw things up left and right and Betty would be, oh, it's okay, Archie. You're so wonderful. And it was fun, but it was fairly one note. There wasn't a lot of conflict. So a few months in, they introduce Veronica.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Veronica comes on the scene a couple of months later and she's supposed to be the antagonist. She's a source of conflict. She's the symbol of a dying debutante culture from the Gilded Age that came to small town America.

• 11:14Speaker 06

  She moves from out of town. She's wealthy. All the boys go crazy for her. Archie is like middle class. Veronica's quite rich, so he can't afford to take her to the fancy restaurants or all the expensive places you want to go. And it creates a new dynamic in the comics where Archie has to work now. So there's a lot more struggle. And so while Betty was there originally, within a few years, she kind of fades into the background. Then Veronica is really the dominant one for the next little while until they reach a sort of equilibrium.

• 11:38Avery Trufelman?

  And even though the two leading women were now equally attractive to Archie and both vying for his attention for a while, Betty and Veronica did not interact with each other.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  Betty and Veronica barely spoke to each other at all. Archie was the focus and they sort of revolved around him. They were satellites to Archie. Yoohoo, Archie!

• 11:54Speaker 07

  Geez, Veronica. Hello, Veronica.

• 11:56Avery Trufelman?

  They used to just not pass the Bechdel test. And you can hear this. Archie used to have a radio show in 1943.

• 12:03Speaker 07

  Well, Betty, school's almost out. Yes. How many more days? Well, I haven't figured it out exactly, Betty, but roughly speaking, there's about 41 hours, 15 minutes and 30 seconds of school time left this term.

• 12:15Speaker 06

  Then by putting them together, by letting them sort of develop a friendship, they began to grow as characters in ways they hadn't intended from the start.

• 12:22Avery Trufelman?

  But it wasn't intentional to put Betty and Veronica together and to make them friends and to actually turn them into in-depth characters. Archie Comics sort of accidentally became kind of feminist.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Not only was it one of the first comics that had women, but women actually doing things.

• 12:38Avery Trufelman?

  Women having friendships, women having hobbies and interests.

• 12:44Avery Trufelman?

  And why?

• 12:45Speaker 06

  It wasn't trying to make a statement. It was trying to fill a comic book.

• 12:48Avery Trufelman?

  These comic artists had to fill so many pages each week.

• 12:52Speaker 06

  By the mid 1940s, they were putting out, I think, at least four or five of them, and it was only grown from there. And comics back in the day were about 72 pages long. It was a lot of material.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Let's reuse old storylines. Very easy to just repurpose old storylines from Archie and Jughead and repurpose them for Betty and Veronica.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  So it was these two female characters taking on what was a typically male story. Just having the girls there, having them lead their own stories was completely accidental, but massive for the characters and for the world of Archie as a whole.

• 13:21Avery Trufelman?

  After all, the gender rules were still kind of being written in a way. Like, there wasn't yet etiquette around what teens were or what they did yet. So yeah, why not give the gals the boy storylines?

• 13:32Speaker 06

  Bay and Veronica could do what Archie and Jughead did. They could have all these crazy antics. They're terrible cooks. They could play sports and just get into all these activities.

• 13:40Avery Trufelman?

  This was, accidentally, the first step in bringing fashion to the forefront, was bringing women to the forefront. Betty and Veronica become these main characters, and clothing became integral to the plot of many of these stories, in part because in a lot of early Archie comics, there was a lot of gender bending.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  In the 1940s, there were a lot of stories that involved crossdressing. There'd be a dance competition, and Veronica would put on some pants, a sweater, and would dance with Betty, and they'd win the contest. And like Archie, would have to dance with Reggie. It would go terribly. This was a fairly common storyline. It happened several times over several years.

• 14:17Avery Trufelman?

  Archie was kind of helping define what the teenager was, and at the moment, it was defining this kind of new freedom for teens, until dun dun dun, the comics code. How should we talk about the comics code, Joel?

• 14:34Speaker 05

  How should we talk about the comics code? It's a, it's a moral panic in line with... Do y'all remember when D and D was causing demons to kill people in the 80s, right? It's like, it's just like that. It's hip-hop is a, is a moral panic. There's all these moral panics. And after World War II, like I was saying, that soldiers come back and they want to, they want to read comics now. They're, everybody's into comics, right? They make crime comics. They make psychological thrillers. They make detective novels. Batman actually started as a detective story. Like, all of these things are coming out for the soldiers who were used to reading comics, right? Comic books are an important contributing factor. In many cases of juvenile delinquency. Fred Wertham was basically a pseudoscientist. He was actually a civil rights activist as well. And he thought that this was going to help black children in Harlem.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  Most of his studies were done with black children in Harlem.

• 15:21Avery Trufelman?

  Getting rid of comics would help black children in Harlem.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, getting rid of comics, right? That's what's going to help the children, right? So he started, he writes this book called Seduction of the Innocent, where he basically uses his faulty research to say that comics were creating juvenile delinquency. There's an amazing video of one of the senators who was involved in this. He's like smoking a cigarette and he's like talking and he's like, "Comics are destroying America." And then it goes away and it shows these little boys and they're all reading these crime, these comics and it's like this kid, he's reading a crime comic. And he puts the crime comic, he pulls out a knife and he starts stabbing a tree. It is wild.

• 15:55Avery Trufelman?

  And you said a senator.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, this was a senator.

• 15:57Avery Trufelman?

  This went to the Senate.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  This was a senate hearing.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  I mean, that's not that crazy anymore.

• 16:04Avery Trufelman?

  It's true.

• 16:04Speaker 05

  So, yeah. So, and so with that, the new moral panic was comics, right? And so the Comic Code Authority was created by John Goldwater.

• 16:14Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, John Goldwater, the president of Archie Comics.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  And a number of other people in the comics industry because they were trying to get ahead of censorship.

• 16:22Avery Trufelman?

  The Comics Code passed in 1954.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  And so they did things like, you can't have vampires in comics. You can't have horror. You can't even use the word horror. There's no sex, no drugs, no rock and roll, which, fun fact, leads directly to the underground comics, which are all sex, drugs and rock and roll.

• 16:36Avery Trufelman?

  It's like directly creates Mad Magazine.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it directly creates Mad Magazine. Another fun fact, Mad Magazine is called Mad Magazine because they did not want to be connected to comics. And so they changed the name from Mad. So it should be Mad Comics, but it's not. It's called Mad Magazine.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  And the Comics Code Authority would label specific comics with a specific label that would appear in the corner. Not that Archie Comics were particularly risque or violent in any way, but they, the artists were asked to raise necklines.

• 17:08Speaker 06

  In terms of what characters can wear, the ways genders were depicted.

• 17:12Avery Trufelman?

  Tim Hanley says after the Comics Code, all that cross-dressing stuff was out.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Betty and Veronica. Suddenly lost a whole bunch of agency that they had in the 40s and in the 50s. Suddenly they only wanted to cook.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  Teenage girls had to be good marriage material.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And suddenly they became really boy crazy. And then suddenly they stopped playing sports or being interested in running for class president. All during this era of this moral panic around. Comics Code authority.

• 17:37Speaker 06

  There were antics, but within these confines, it narrowed down. It took probably 20 years to start to get out of it. And then probably another 20 to really leave it all behind.

• 17:48Avery Trufelman?

  So Betty and Veronica have this period where they're good marriage material during which they're wearing a lot of very pretty, kind of boring dresses. But they start to leave this era and get kind of interesting with the arrival of a new artist into Archie Comics named Dan DeCarlo.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  And he's interesting because Dan DeCarlo, before he came to Archie Comics, drew a lot of pinups, especially during the World War II. He would draw pinups for soldiers and obviously they want to see some skin. So he would draw these very seductive pinups.

• 18:21Avery Trufelman?

  Dan DeCarlo drew gorgeous, very curvy women. Betty and Veronica are quite pinup like, truly.

• 18:28Speaker 06

  I grew up reading Archie Comics. And of course, I didn't know who Dan DeCarlo was. I mean, as a kid, I remember one of the reasons I liked Archie Comics is I liked the way the girls looked. I'm not going to deny that.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I'm not going to deny it either. I get it. I'm gay. I maybe it had an influence on me. I don't know.

• 18:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:49Avery Trufelman?

  Jasmine was gaying out with Bill Morrison, who wrote a book that's clearly a nod to Seduction of the Innocent, that book that started up the whole Comics Code moral panic.

• 18:59Speaker 06

  I wrote a book titled Innocence and Seduction: The Art of Dan DeCarlo.

• 19:04Avery Trufelman?

  At the same time that Dan DeCarlo was drawing pinups for his fellow soldiers during World War II, he was also one of the soldiers getting comics in care packages.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  When he went into the service, Archie was kind of just starting. So he probably read Archie Comics overseas over in France. Might have been one of the. The reasons he thought to approach them when he got back.

• 19:26Avery Trufelman?

  Back in civilian life, Dan DeCarlo drew for a lot of different places.

• 19:30Speaker 06

  It was in the early 50s. He was doing a lot of different projects for different publishers, one of them being Archie.

• 19:37Avery Trufelman?

  He drew these cute sexy girls, and it was definitely kind of horny, but it was almost in a Bugs Bunny way, like "awuga." It wasn't X-rated.

• 19:46Speaker 06

  Not doing anything adult or no nudity, but he was working for these publishers that were putting out very child-friendly books, but he was drawing very seductive women within those books.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  And at a certain point, he had to tone down a little bit because of the Comics Code authority.

• 20:03Avery Trufelman?

  But even after the Comics Code, the pinups were able to continue because they didn't just have sex appeal. Dan DeCarlo gave them fashion appeal.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  So this, again, this new market of teenage girls were looking at these pinups. They appealed both to men and women. Women loved to read it because they would look at it for fashion advice.

• 20:26Avery Trufelman?

  There were pinups of Betty and Veronica just posing in different outfits. And again, this was a way to be like, "Let's fill some pages with one big picture of a great outfit. Great way to fill space."

• 20:36Speaker 02

  They decided to do these fashion pages. I think it started in 1947. Pages of one outfit, just full pinup pages. There are no storylines. It's just, here's how they look. And they were wildly popular. Simplicity Patterns would run their patterns inside of Archie Comics for women who saw these pinups and thought, "Oh, I actually really like that dress." And then they would make that dress with the Simplicity Patterns that were inside.

• 20:59Avery Trufelman?

  And it wasn't just Archie Comics that featured pretty girls wearing great clothes.

• 21:03Speaker 06

  He was getting a lot of work from Marvel, doing all these books that had fashion models as their stars.

• 21:10Avery Trufelman?

  This was like a genre of comic books, these model comics.

• 21:13Speaker 06

  My Friend Irma, Millie the Model, Cher the Showgirl.

• 21:17Avery Trufelman?

  They were a specialty of Dan DeCarlo.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  All the fashion model. Centric Comics that Dan was doing in the 50s, you'll see a lot of the current fashion trends. And that just made sense. You've got a character who's a model. She's going to have to stay current.

• 21:33Avery Trufelman?

  But Dan DeCarlo had a secret weapon behind his fashion knowledge.

• 21:38Speaker 06

  It was through his wife, Josie, that he started really paying attention to what people were wearing. By the way, if you recognize that name, Josie was also one of Dan's creations, Josie and the Pussycats. And he named the character after his wife.

• 21:52Avery Trufelman?

  Josie DeCarlo was born Josette Dumont. She was a French citizen and she and Dan met in Belgium shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. He barely spoke French, but he would draw cartoons to talk to her.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  Back in the 50s, his wife Josie was quite the fashion plate. And she worked at Lord & Taylor in Manhattan. She worked at a makeup counter. So she was very into fashion.

• 22:17Avery Trufelman?

  And so, thanks to Josie, Dan DeCarlo developed a genuine interest in fashion. He really was fascinated by it.

• 22:24Speaker 06

  Dan told me that at one point, he had subscriptions to all the teen fashion magazines. So he was really paying attention. He was very conscientious about keeping them up to date.

• 22:34Avery Trufelman?

  Archie Comics eventually lured Dan DeCarlo in-house. They took him away from Millie the Model and Sherri the Showgirl and Nellie the Nurse and all his other work drawing sexy girls in beautiful clothes. And the way Archie Comics convinced Dan DeCarlo to drop all this other work for other comic book companies, mostly Marvel, was that they basically let Dan DeCarlo do his own thing. They were like, you can just draw Archie Comics however you want.

• 22:58Speaker 06

  The books that Dan drew were selling better than some of the other books. So they said, from now on, you can do it your way.

• 23:06Avery Trufelman?

  DeCarlo soon set the new house style at Archie Comics. And part of that house style became style. All the artists and cartoonists, by necessity, had to consult magazines and stay on top of fashions.

• 23:21Speaker 05

  I don't know if you guys know this, there was a time before Pinterest.

• 23:23Avery Trufelman?

  Again, Professor Joel Kristingill.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  So it wasn't like you can go online and like look up a picture of a dress that's ankle height, right? You actually had to go through women's magazines and you had to go through fashion magazines of the time period and find those images. They would trace things, they would copy them. And they had files filled with lots and lots of images of clothes for whatever character you're looking for.

• 23:44Avery Trufelman?

  So ultimately, Dan DeCarlo and all the cartoonists at Archie were reading Seventeen Magazine and all the latest glossies and bringing current trends to little kids. And not only that, they were reinterpreting the most recent styles with much louder, bolder colors.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  This is like a bold blue dress. It's gonna look good on them.

• 24:05Avery Trufelman?

  Comic historian Tim Henley again.

• 24:07Speaker 06

  In the 40s, 50s, 60s, well into the 70s, you couldn't get the color gradation you see in comic books now.

• 24:12Avery Trufelman?

  So the colors had to be really bright and overt, no subtle hues or demure tones here.

• 24:19Speaker 06

  So it was Betty and Veronica was big, bright patches of color, and that's all you could do.

• 24:22Avery Trufelman?

  And I can't help but imagine that seeing all these bold, modern styles influenced what people wore and what they wanted, especially because these comics were so widely red. Because this is something that was very important about Archie Comics. They went beyond the comic book shop.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Comic book stores is where you would find a lot of superhero comics, but Archie Comics were recognizing, hey, only dudes are going over there. Maybe we should find a way to connect to the women that have been enjoying the fashion pages.

• 24:57Avery Trufelman?

  So Archie Comics found a new venue.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Archie Comics started to show up in grocery stores. That's where women were shopping and where children would see them. And they weren't the only comics that would show up in grocery stores, but they were the longest-running ones.

• 25:11Avery Trufelman?

  And there was a different format of Archie Comics that would sell in supermarkets. They were thicker books, and they were called digests. They were padded out with old stories from Archie's archives.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Digests were revolutionary and also really played into the, let's be as efficient as possible with our backlog. We can mix it up, so you'd see a story from the 1940s, a story from the 1960s, a story from the 1990s, and then there's some like Jughead Goes Punk and he has some really 80s haircut.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  And so when the digest started coming out, that's when you get like a bunch of different stories together from across time. So when you get the thin, like, comic books, correct me if I'm wrong here. Floppies. The floppies, that's what they call them?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Or a single issue, yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  Single issue floppies. These were like the current, cutting-edge fashions. And then you get the big, chunky digest, and then you were looking back at all kinds of fashions from across time.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. Immediately when the digest started showing up in grocery stores, that was the 70s, and they immediately had storylines from the 40s.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  In these digest magazines, when they printed old comics right next to the new ones, it was an amazing compendium of vintage fashion that I was exposed to. I think they've actually had a much bigger, more subtle impact. I mean, it was kind of the first place I ever saw what fashion looked like in the 40s or the 50s.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  I would, I would stack digests in my bathroom, still do. And my mom and my stepdad and people would go in there. My mom would come out. I'm from a Mexican family. And so she doesn't have a lot of these cultural references. And she'd ask me specifically, like, what does swell mean? And without any kind of context. And it was like this beautiful connection point. And that really kind of goes to this other part of how Archie affected fashion. There was this character arc for Veronica. She went from being a rich spoiled girl to this fashion diplomat.

• 27:09Speaker 06

  She would go to Europe all the time, like go to Rome, go to Paris.

• 27:12Avery Trufelman?

  Tim Henley again.

• 27:13Speaker 06

  And through that would teach the reader about the fashion and oftentimes what it means and why it's important.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  She goes to Russia. And in exchange for learning about the democratization of Russia, she would give the ambassador a makeover.

• 27:26Speaker 06

  And if you were just reading it quickly, it would maybe seem like a little shallow. But this is early days of democracy in Russia, I think, at this point. You've got a democracy now. You're open to the West.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  But I also think that these were a function of, you know, as Archie grew and grew and hired more women writers, there was, you know, I think fashion was often a punchline in early Archie comics. Like, oh, you girls, you like buy so much stuff. And then you get like Veronica, the fashion diplomat, which is kind of awesome, actually.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  And it was a way to teach people. I mean, I learned what the traditional religious wear of the Tonganese, I think it's Tonganese, of people from Tonga.

• 28:03Avery Trufelman?

  They're Tongans.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  What they would wear. And I'm reading that like as a 10 year old little girl, and suddenly I'm very well versed in, in this culture that I would have never been exposed to before.

• 28:12Avery Trufelman?

  This world of fashion, this portal, opened for so many kids who might have never found it otherwise, who might have never thought they would be into fashion or even into comics.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  The way that I discovered them was through the checkout line at my grocery store in Shittville, Texas in 1996. If, like, little Kayla can find them, then anyone could find them.

• 28:34Avery Trufelman?

  Cartoonist Kayla E.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  I identify as a cartoonist, also essentially as a fashion designer. I think all cartoonists are. There's so much that is involved in being a cartoonist. We're essentially like one person filmmaking.

• 28:49Avery Trufelman?

  The cartoonist does everything: the sets, the props, the camera angles, the acting, and, yes, the costumes.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Just nothing compares, at least in my mind, to the outfits in the world of Archie Comics. And I have, like, thousands of images on my computer, a ton of Archie content.

• 29:07Avery Trufelman?

  It's this repository of fashion that Kayla can go and use for her own work and research. And they're this fascinating record of the latter half of the 20th century because they are candy-colored reinterpretations of the latest styles from magazines. And Archie Comics are also chronicles of readers' fantasies because readers would submit descriptions of outfits. And if they were lucky, the cartoonists at Archie Comics would draw them on Betty and Veronica.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  And have Veronica, like, wearing this, like, ridiculous cowgirl costume or something that, like, Jenny from Michigan invented. Just a fabulous idea. And I'm sure it was so exciting as, like, a little girl to see your fashion idea come to life, like, on the body of Veronica. When I was a kid, I just desperately wanted to be Veronica more than anything. I wanted her body. I wanted her wardrobe. I wanted her house. I wanted her life. And it's very fun. It's very fun, but also, you know, my relationship with Veronica and her wardrobe isn't...

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Entirely delightful. I mean, it definitely gave me some issues as a child.

• 30:20Avery Trufelman?

  I definitely remember looking at Betty and Veronica's perfect curves in the depths of puberty and being like, is that what a 16-year-old is supposed to look like?

• 30:29Speaker 04

  I think that was just an early experience in feeling ugly in my body and fat in my body and tacky in my clothes.

• 30:37Avery Trufelman?

  Obviously, no 16-year-old looks like Betty or Veronica. They're stylized pin-ups. This is not a realistic depiction of bodies. But kids don't know that. This is an unintended consequence of Dan DeCarlo's style.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  I mean, no woman has the actual waist of Veronica's. I think it's the same with the Bratz dolls.

• 30:55Avery Trufelman?

  And yet, for kids like Kayla, all of the good in Archie Comics ultimately outweighed any of the bad.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Ultimately, it was a gift, I think, Archie Comics, because it was one of the first things that showed me this foil against my own world, where I was like, oh, my room is dirty and my clothes are dirty and hand-me-downs and not cute and my world is not safe, like Riverdale. So maybe there's something wrong with my world. Because at a very young age, I started to realize that something really bad, like that something really bad was happening to me. And I think that Archie really, I don't know, gave me the first ways of thinking about that.

• 31:41Avery Trufelman?

  Kayla depicted what happened in her childhood, surviving poverty and incest and childhood sexual abuse and violence, in a graphic memoir called Precious Rubbish.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  It's the story of my traumatic childhood told through the reappropriation of mid-century children's comics.

• 32:01Avery Trufelman?

  And part of the children's comics that she incorporates into her memoir are the Archie Comics fashion pin-up pages.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  My fashion pages. They are very, very direct replicas of the Betty and Veronica fashion pages.

• 32:16Avery Trufelman?

  Kayla has drawn almost the exact same outfits as Betty and Veronica, but with her own characters' face on them.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  And so often, I'm just clipping and saving these fashion pages, both for my work, but also for my own personal attempts at making outfits. So, oh my god, I think to this day, I'm still trying to be Veronica.

• 32:39Avery Trufelman?

  But that's the question. What would it mean to try to dress like Veronica today? If you look at their most fashionable years, the Dan DeCarlo period, Betty and Veronica would wear whatever is most currently in style in all the magazines. So what does it mean to actually dress in a modern version of Betty and Veronica?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Bringing a comic to life, right?

• 33:04Avery Trufelman?

  This was the challenge for the costume designer of Riverdale. After the break. You know those pieces in your closet that you grab when you don't know what to wear? The kind of clothes that are comfortable, fashionable, and seem to work for every occasion? Mine is definitely my silk skirt from Quince. Somehow, it works all the time. A gallery opening, a party, a trip to the coffee shop. Everything works with a silk skirt, and I can pop it right in the washing machine. It's washable silk. These are the sort of well-made, practical, stylish pieces that will earn a permanent place in your wardrobe, and this is what Quince does so well. Quince makes everyday essentials that are really elevated.

• 33:47Avery Trufelman?

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• 34:29Avery Trufelman?

  The prescription might not be totally up to date, and maybe the hinges don't even work anymore. But you're not even thinking about it. You're like, whatever, fine. Because replacing sunglasses or glasses is a big pain in the butt. And new glasses cost a few hundred dollars. But this is where Zenni comes in. Zenni is an online eyewear shop with extreme Famously stylish prescription glasses, sunglasses, and customizable lens options at prices that make it easy to own more than one pair. They start at under $30. And at that price, you can take a new style risk. My husband just wanted to try out some Zenni glasses, and he was like, whatever, I'll get the green ones. Lo and behold, he wears them every single day. They have become his daily pair. And I don't think he ever would have found it without Zenni. That scratched-up pair has done its job.

• 35:14Avery Trufelman?

  Upgrade today with Zenni. Go to zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order, plus free shipping on all US orders over $65. The styles sell out, so don't sit on it. That's Z E N N I dot com slash podcast. Promo code PODCAST15.

• 35:39Avery Trufelman?

  Do you think Betty and Veronica had an influence in the world of fashion design?

• 35:44Speaker 02

  I do, for sure. I think it depends on where you grew up. For me, that was in Norway. I was from a small town, so I didn't dress often like that.

• 35:55Avery Trufelman?

  Rebecca Sorensen would grow up to become a costume designer and would costume, of all things, the CW show Riverdale, which is based on Archie Comics.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  When I got the opportunity to do costume designs very serious like that, I just knew that I had to do it.

• 36:12Avery Trufelman?

  Did you grow up reading Archie Comics?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  I actually did, yes. Being in a region, that was something I always got in my stocking every Christmas. Archie Comics.

• 36:23Avery Trufelman?

  And so what did you think of Archie Comics growing up?

• 36:26Speaker 02

  I thought it was, they were great. They were, especially Veronica and Betty. They were my favorite, of course.

• 36:33Avery Trufelman?

  So would you say they were sort of your first exposure?

• 36:35Speaker 02

  That they were my first exposure for fashion? Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

• 36:40Avery Trufelman?

  Any Archie purist will immediately butt in here and be like, "Riverdale is so different from Archie Comics. You can't possibly compare them." And it's true, the TV show's taken a lot of liberties. They've added in time travel, and gangs, and murder, and a bunch of elements that are not in the comics. However, the way Rebecca approaches fashion is truly in the spirit of Dan DeCarlo. For one, fashion is an important and vital part of the entire enterprise. Fashion today in shows, depending on what production you're working on.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Kind of like what they put on the screen to get the audience. Because a lot of kids, or not kids, but me, I watch shows. Sometimes I'm drawn to them just due to the fashion. I want to see a show because of what the cast are wearing. And then you get attached.

• 37:28Avery Trufelman?

  It really is like the modern continuation of Archie in that way. And two, just like in the original Archie, the palette and colors are really important here. This was a great question from Jasmine.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  The images of the clothes were restricted by specific parameters of the comic book. Did that factor into the color palette for those characters?

• 37:49Speaker 02

  We definitely did have a color world for them. Veronica was our purple girl. And then I would say that Betty was more than a girl next door. Pink, blue, softer colors. She was very pastelly the first season. And then we just realized that that didn't really fit with her character.

• 38:10Avery Trufelman?

  In the TV show, Betty becomes a serial killer, among many other things. Big changes.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Betty in the comics is very different than Betty on the show. You can change the colors of what she's doing. Darker colors for any of the characters. Whatever journey they are going, that color arc kind of goes with it.

• 38:31Avery Trufelman?

  And I think the biggest way that Archie Comics and Riverdale are similar is that they both innovated from a place of necessity. They both had to make a lot of stuff really quickly. Like the comic artists were drawing pinups and recycling plotlines to fill up pages. And Rebecca was coming up with exciting new outfits because she had to make big elaborate wardrobes on a limited budget.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Some of these shows have a lot of money, so much money. And of course, you can do fabulous stuff if you have money and you can shop everywhere. On Riverdale, in the beginning, we didn't have much. So I had to add the extra to it and do half builds to get that excitement there.

• 39:15Avery Trufelman?

  What do you mean by builds?

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Builds, I mean that you make it from scratch.

• 39:20Avery Trufelman?

  And in Rebecca's case, half builds are augmenting and changing pre-existing clothes.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  I would take a dress or a sweater or a shirt, and I would chop it up to the style that fit the character. And You know, taking the sleeves off, making it a V-neck, making it really tight, or using just the top of a dress and not the bottom of a dress.

• 39:41Avery Trufelman?

  Always working efficiently and cheaply and stylishly.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  I will tell you this, it was always on sale. That was one thing. Always, always on sale. And also secondhand stores. And it could be something that was Gucci, Ralph Lauren. I messed with everything and anything.

• 39:58Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, how quickly were you working?

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Oh, we have long days in Riverdale, for sure. Sometimes something was built within a day.

• 40:05Avery Trufelman?

  And sometimes, in Riverdale storylines where characters would time travel, they would appear in outfits that were ripped exactly from the panels of Archie.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  My favorite part, honestly, was the few times that I got to really recreate their looks from the pages. Because that wasn't really the kind of show that we were doing at all times, right? It was a mixture of the vintage with modern. We created our own little look.

• 40:33Avery Trufelman?

  The show was sort of the equivalent of reading an Archie Digest. It was a mixture of modern, up-to-date fashion with retro fashion. I mean, no wonder people went wild for Riverdale's style.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  I was actually, to be honest, a little bit shocked how into the fashion that people were for Riverdale. All of a sudden, everybody wanting to buy it if it was affordable. So clearly, whatever the audience liked, because there were seven seasons of it.

• 41:03Avery Trufelman?

  Have you read Archie since you've worked on the show?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yes. I was just going through some of my Riverdale stuff not so long ago, and I did open up some of my Archie comics. So I do, I have my own little collection still that I'll always hold on to, for sure.

• 41:19Avery Trufelman?

  Ugh, if only I'd saved my Archie comics.

• 41:25Avery Trufelman?

  This episode was made by me and Jasmine Aguilera. Thanks, buddy. That was fun. Music by Ray Royal, Sasami and Lulatone. Thanks so much to Stephen Davy at WBUR, Yori LaSordo at Radiotopia, and Gina James at PRX, and Tucker Stone at Fanographics. And many thanks to another unaccredited Archie expert, Jordan Iannucci. If you would like to see the full, unedited cut of our live event where Jasmine and I are wearing our matching Rachel Antonoff dresses from her Betty and Veronica collection, Jasmine will tell you what she thought of that collection.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  When I heard that there was going to be a Betty and Veronica fashion line, I was like, first drop, I'm going to be that first one. And then I saw the actual designs. And here's my rant, you guys.

• 42:06Speaker 05

  Tell us how you really feel.

• 42:08Avery Trufelman?

  I'll have a link for you at articlesofinterest.substack.com.

• 42:13Avery Trufelman?

  Radiotopia.

• 42:16Avery Trufelman?

  From PRX.