Betty or Veronica? News that Archie Andrews’ choice is still not made comes along with reports that Archie Comic Publications is considering setting up its first office outside of the US — in India, with its publishers seeing this as one of their most promising markets. That market is being kept abuzz, and presumably growing, by sustained suspense about which of his two long-time women friends Archie will marry. Inspiration for the plot is said to have come from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” and the Hollywood blockbuster Sliding Doors. The ploy has evidently worked, sales are up — but it is not quite clear whether they will remain once the Riverdale redhead’s marital future is determined.

While the writers have tried to keep Archie’s anecdotes current, with environmental issues, for instance, now an abiding concern, there is nonetheless a period feel to the comics. To read these comics is very much an act of nostalgia — just as it is with that other old hero who’s made a comeback, Tintin. (Of course, the superheroes are always current.) To re-read old comics is also to understand how far the medium has come, with graphic novels now crowding into the “literary fiction” shelves at the bookstore. In the past decade, writers like Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi have taken the graphic novel out of its cult-like following to a wider, global readership. So, what space and readership could old bubble-gum comics now get in this increasingly serious space?

... contd.