Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Pureheart The Powerful And His Super Friends!


You gotta' love the mid 60's when thanks to the craze created by the Batman TV show, every comic book character between two covers suddenly found some skintight duds and launched onto the street to fight crime, admittedly some pretty bizarre crime. The last place you might've looked was Riverdale, where Archie, Veronica, Betty, Jughead, Reggie, and the rest of the gang had spent decades in high school fighting the good fight. But the Archie gang probably hasn't lasted as long as it has by ignoring opportunity, so Pureheart the Powerful was born. In fact, Archie had been dreaming of being a superhero from almost the very beginning of his career as this vintage Pep Comics cover shows.

Then he became Pureheart the Powerful. Pureheart or Captain Pureheart as he'd later be known, was soon followed by Jughead as Captain Hero, Betty as SuperTeen, and Reggie as Evilheart. Veronica didn't get a dual identity until the 90's when the characters were revived briefly, where she became Vanity. The super Riverdale gang were featured in a reprint volume by IDW from a decade ago.  The collection selects from the earliest of these wacky yarns from 1965 to 1967 which at the time were switching off with another Archie 60's inspired creation The Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. 

Here's a gallery, with perhaps a few surprises for even those who are very familiar with the classic campy run by veteran Archie talents like artists Bob White and Bill Vigoda, and writer Frank Doyle. 





















Archie is very good at making comics available and their ubiquitous digests featured the superheroes a few times. 



And during the 1990's there was a brief revival as seen below by this quartet of issues under the title of Archie's Super Teens. We not only get new stuff from the classic characters but Veronica herself gets a superheroine identity as Miss Vanity. 





The Archie superheroes have been used off and on with special issues such this one about a presidential election some years ago. 


More recently (as far as I know) the heroes were revived in a two-part tale which teamed them up with the Crusaders, the other MLJ super team made up of Golden Age and Silver Age revivals. 



Look for more about the 1960's Mighty Crusaders next week about this same time. 


And I'm closing out this glance at the Riverdale super-gang with this 2021 issue which once again blends the world of our reality with that of the Archie universe. It's nice to know that that these charming characters are not forgotten among all the changes which seem ever to be going on at Archie in their attempt to remain valid to the modern readers. 

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2 comments:

  1. Colin JonesDecember 21, 2021 at 9:06 AM

    Here in the UK Archie is totally unknown except for the song 'Sugar Sugar' by The Archies which was #1 for 8 weeks in 1969. The cartoon series Josie & The Pussycats was also broadcast here by the BBC.

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    1. Rip JaggerDecember 21, 2021 at 10:07 AM

      In the US Archie comics are juggernauts, the last comics that had a foothold in regular retail outlets and not just in specialty stores. When the traditional comic book pamphlet became unprofitable for most stores to stock, Archie created an armada of digest sized books which had better price points and a size which allowed them to be sold in the impulse aisles of the big discount stores. I cannot remember never seeing an Archie comic on sale in a large store of that kind. Marvel and DC have made inroads in recent years (especially DC) but they were long gone for many years save for specialty magazines now and again.

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