DECEMBER 22: Here’s Archie!

ON THIS DATE in 1941, Archie Andrews first appeared in Pep Comics #22.

Called “Comic Land’s oldest seventeen-year-old” by the Associated Press, Archie started out as a rather rugged kid, although creator John L. Goldwater said he modeled the character on Andy Hardy as played by Mickey Rooney. Writer Vic Bloom and artist Bob Montana introduced the cocky (at first) redhead with a blurb that stated in part, “He hates Archie so if you value life and limb, call him ‘Chick.’”

Over the next six decades, Archie got a softer edge while trying to chose between the blond, sweet Betty and the raven-haired rich girl, Veronica, while hanging out with Jughead Jones, Reggie Mantle, Midge, and Big Moose at the Chok’lit Shoppe in the fictional town of Riverdale.

The Archie brand, which includes issues spotlighting Betty and Veronica, Jughead, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and even the conniving Reggie Mantle, has sold an estimated 1.5 billion comic books. The Archie gang has appeared on Saturday morning cartoons and even generated a number-one single, “Sugar Sugar,” in 1969.

Teens no more

SOME FAMOUS fictional teens of all time have put on a few years. If they aged like the rest of us, here’s how old they would be …

1. HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Age then: 14 in Mark Twain’s classic, published in 1884.
Age now: 144
Status: Dead. He would’ve been gone by 1940, age 70. He was a smoker.

2. ÁNTONIA SHIMERDA
Then: 14 at the start of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, published 1918.
Now: 110 (actually, she aged a lot in the book and would be even older)
Status: Dead. A hard farm life and an unhappy marriage might have finished her off by 1960, when she would’ve been 56. Too bad. She would’ve made a great grandma.

3. NANCY DREW
Then: 16 in her first book (The Secret of the Old Clock), 1930.
Now: 100
Status: Dead. The young sleuth had wholesome habits and came from money, but c’mon. She might’ve made it to 90, though. Angela Lansbury (Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote”) is 89 now. Sleuthing can’t be that bad for you.

4.  BETTY BOOP
Then: 16 (according to her creator, Max Fleischer) when introduced in 1932.
Now: 98
Status: Dead. Betty had charm and pizzazz, but she was a non-stop partier who started awfully young. The late nights and hard drinking could have done in her in by the mid-’60s, when she was nearing 50.

5. ARCHIE ANDREWS
Then: 17 when introduced in Pep Comics in 1941.
Now: 90
Status: Alive and still undecided about which 90-year-old he wants to end up with, ancient Veronica or decrepit Betty.

6. HOLDEN CAULFIELD  
Then: 17 in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951), although he was describing events from his 16th year.
Now: 80
Status: Salinger lived to be 91, so maybe Holden is holding on somewhere. Then again, he was another smoker.

7. PONYBOY CURTIS
Then: 14 in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967).
Now: 61
Status: He’s fine if he left the gang fighting behind him, although Ponyboy is no name for a near-senior citizen.

8. BABY HOUSEMAN 
Then: 17 with release of Dirty Dancing in 1987.
Now: 44
Status: Married to Johnny Castle? Nah. She put him in a corner a long time ago. She’s on her second marriage with a couple of kids, including a 17-year-old daughter who can’t dance and rarely leaves her room.

9. HARRY POTTER
Then: 13 with the release of J.K. Rowling’s third book in the famous young wizard series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999).
Now: 28
Status: As readers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) know, Harry married the former Ginny Weasley and they would have had two kids, James and Albus Severus, by now. Strange fact: the whole family dresses up as Death Eaters for Halloween.

10.  NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
Then: 17 with the release of Napoleon Dynamite in 2004.
Now: 27
Status: Divorced from Deb, he’s campaign manager and chief of staff for Idaho congressman Pedro Sanchez.

HAIR THEY ARE

I just wanna be myself and I want you to know / I am my hair

— Lady Gaga, “Hair,” 2001

THE PRECEDING LINE could have been written by King Louis XIV, who started losing his mane at seventeen and responded by donning wigs so large and outlandish that Lady Gaga might be tempted to say, “Hey, tone it down, dude.”

Teens have been obsessed with their hair for centuries, none more than the fictional Marcia Brady, who brushed her luscious locks 100 times a day. A modeling agent in The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) ignited her fury by suggesting she could make it in the fashion industry with a little work, like

“… cutting that mousy hair, capping those teeth, and losing about 30 pounds, my little sausage. How do you feel about breast implants?”

Outraged, Marcia slapped him and declared, “Cut my hair?”

Here are more teens, real and fictional, who made a statement with their hair:

DECEMBER 22: PART 2

SEVENTY-TWO YEARS ago today (1941), Archie Andrews first appeared in Pep Comics No. 22. The perpetual seventeen year old, billed as “America’s Typical Teenager,” lived right next door to Betty Cooper in the fictional town of Riverdale. Created by John Goldwater and drawn by Bob Montana, the Archie brand would sell more than 1.5 billion comics over seven decades and generate a 1969 song — “Sugar Sugar” — that topped the Billboard singles chart.