Archie began as a sidekick to a patriotic superhero and took over the company
In 1939 a small New York publisher called M.L.J. Magazines was betting on superheroes, including the Shield, the first American patriotic comic-book hero. Then an ordinary redheaded teenager appeared in the back of Pep Comics in late 1941. By 1944 he had the cover, and by 1946 the whole company bore his name.
M.L.J. took its name from the first initials of its founders, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater. Goldwater, the editor-in-chief, wanted a comic about a relatable, normal kid, the kind of character Mickey Rooney played in the Andy Hardy films. Artist Bob Montana and writer Vic Bloom delivered Archie Andrews, and his first story, cover-dated December 1941 in Pep Comics #22, already brought along Jughead and Betty. A dedicated Archie Comics title followed with a Winter 1942 cover date.
The company guarded its characters fiercely. When Harvey Kurtzman parodied the gang in Help! magazine in 1962, the publisher settled for $1,000 and printed an apology. In 2005 it sued the pop duo The Veronicas over their name, ending in a co-promotion deal. Meanwhile the characters were licensed in unexpected directions, including a 1970s and 1980s line of Christian comics from Spire that used Riverdale to teach Bible lessons.
Archie also reached well beyond its own town. A partnership with Sega produced a Sonic the Hedgehog comic in 1992 that ran for more than 20 years and by 2008 was the longest-running comic based on a video game. Behind the scenes, the letterer Bill Yoshida averaged 75 pages a week for four decades, around 156,000 pages in all.
The 2010s brought a reinvention. Life with Archie imagined two futures, one married to Betty and one to Veronica, and tackled subjects such as cancer and same-sex marriage. Kevin Keller, the company's first gay character, debuted in 2010 and his issue sold out, prompting its first-ever reprint. Book sales jumped as collected editions multiplied, and in 2011 a copy of the 1942 first issue fetched $167,300, a record for a comic without superheroes.
Source: Archie Comics
