Archie Gets MAD

In this day in history Archie Andrews was born in 1942.

Hmmm. I am almost seven months older than Archie. Unlike most of us, he was born a teenager, and so were his friends Jughead, Betty, and Veronica.

In about 13 years I caught up with Archie and his friend and was a teenager too. Then, seven years later I was no longer a teenager but they were.

Now, I am retired, gray and bald- headed and they are still hanging around the soda shop and getting into typical teenage messes.

I don’t have a picture of Archie but I have a picture of MAD’s takeoff drawn by Bill Elder. The above is the first page.

Speaking of Archie and Mad and Elder, Archie Comics did not do anything legal against MAD for the article even though it portrayed Archie as a hoodlum. However, several years later Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder (same writer and artist) did another takeoff on Archie in HELP magazine. It was when the Archie-like character, grew up, and all his friends lived a PLAYBOY lifestyle.

Archie Comics hit the roof and sued and the result was that they could no longer publish that particular story. However, it was more critical of the PLAYBOY materialistic pretentious pseudo-intelligent lifestyle and Hugh Hefner thought it was funny… go figure.