Well, That’s not even Subtext…
April 22nd, 2010
Rich Johnston has a snappy write-up on the big announcement that Archie Comics is introducing its first gay character.
In 2010.
Let that one sink in for a moment. (Fun fact: Archie first appeared in 1941).
Best of all though are the clips at the bottom of the article, with some very easily “misread” panels and covers from Archie Comics’ history, including my favorite above.
March 3, 2021
The most telling point was the bit about the first gay character in Archie comics not being as big a deal as the second one. I think the really only good part about this is that the reaction of the other characters in the comics is apparently going to be no reaction. A shrug should be as strong as it gets. I really have to wonder what kind of stories, if any this Kevin Keller is going to get. My bet is; none at all. Or worse, he’ll be shown camping it up, or conferring with Betty and or Veronica on dresses and make up. 😛
Gay characters or not, they’re doing well enough with their licensed property (Sonic) to change their paper stock on the interior pages to a gloss finish! I’m sure things on the Archie end will continue as usual.
Good for them!
I remember a discussion of the black character in Charlie Brown. He was the most normal, the most boring, the kid with the least issues of any of the kids. Like Mike L said, I expect that the Kevin character will fade into the background or the “straight” man for the other characters to play off of. I’m OK with that. I’d like it if the gay character was the stable one.
I actually disagree slightly about a second gay character. While some wholesome, all-American gay romance would be adorable, and more likely to spark some ire, I already find it nice when the queer community can be represented by who they are rather than who they date.
I’d say yay good for them first, if I didn’t think it was done primarily for sales and media attention, now that they’re riding high on the Archie Getting Married And People Are Remembering Us Again Train.
Back when sales were much higher than now we were getting awful storylines to explicitly say Jughead wasn’t gay because he now likes girls. Luckily the backlash was bad enough that they had to backtrack by saying he was still kind of his old girl-hating self but it was because of some traumatic incident with a girl in his past, blah, blah, blah.
Well, enough pessimism: whatever their motive, it’s still a great move on their part. Now let’s see if they ever show the guy again, much less on a date with another guy, or GASP kissing one.
Okay, if they actually showed a gay KISS, I would post it here with a big Mea Culpa for ever doubting them (plus a link to the stories on Google News about Hell freezing over).
I think this seems kinda minor compared to the fact that for about twenty years or something Midge has been cheating on Moose with Reggie. The whole “introducing a gay character” seems too old, so many other things have done, albeit none were as conservative as Archie.
Kudos to Archie. Granted, they’re trying to cram the last 50 years of social developments into six months of comic stories but now we’ve had
A. Archie gets married (even if it was a dream)
B. Archie’s first inter-racial kiss
C. First openly gay character
I think Archie Comics deserves some praise for trying to make themselves more modern and realistic, even if it is a bit late.
Who’s the writer on this? Barbara Slate? She’s usually not one to shy from controversy.
Turns out it’s Dan Parent.
The issue isn’t coming out until september.