The Last Days of Jughead

I'm breaking my laziness-imposed silence to discuss--what else?--a pop culture icon from my childhood whose recent profit-motivated desecration I'm upset about, and which discontent I will use as a launchpad to meditate further on the subject and what it reveals about myself. Yes, strangers trawling the internet for this rarest of finds, look no further.

Appropriately, this navel-gazing began tonight while I was taking a bath. While most 28-year-old single women may coyly deny it, it is nonetheless a fact of our hidden inner lives that we spend those few nights off from what a never-young ghoul once branded the lifestyle of "sex and the single girl" in the tub, reading Archie comics digests we selected from much more ghoul-approved impulse buys in line at the grocery store. (I don't know who decided to put Archie comics in the checkout at the Dominick's at Chicago and Damen, but God bless him or, as we just learned, more likely her, because it's the only worthwhile thing in that otherwise godforsaken hellhole of too-narrow aisles, douchebags both shopping and [probably] for purchase, and automatic doors that don't open.)

Let me back up a bit and briefly summarize a life spent with Archies. Although it had a rather definite beginning--namely the discovery, one bored childhood afternoon in Canada, of my older cousins' in retrospect modest but perfectly fascinating collection of early to mid-'80s Archie comics--it's hard to remember a time that I didn't have an Archie in my possession. I instantly loved everything about them: the five color palette, the ads disguised as stories in which Josie and friends extol the deliciousness of Twinkies while solving facile mysteries, and, of course, the never-ending cycle of 5-6 plotlines. I loved that "the gang" always met up on the sidewalks of Riverdale--even arranging to do so over the phone--and that they unironically referred to themselves as "the gang." I enjoyed laughing (to myself, natch) at the dated outfits and slang from different eras of hijinx--everything from the '50s' description of a "fresh" "fellow" as a "wolf" to the '60s' background characters sporting afros and greeting each other with peace signs. I secretly and egotistically identified with the eternally losing but virtuous Betty, rather than the selfish but, I now realize, fairly human Veronica. And naturally, I was consumed with the optimistic belief that only a child could have: that someday good-hearted, dull and shockingly low self-esteem-riddled Betty would finally win out over evil Veronica in the battle for undeserving and totally average Archie's love--not seeming to realize that not only did the writers have some measure of control over this situation, but that the romantic stalemate was Archie comics' entire bread and butter.

But I loved, and continue to love, Jughead the best.

Was it that his eyes were always closed and yet he never seemed to run into anything? Was it that he could eat all the hamburgers he wanted and never get fat, except after having like a million of them at the end of some particularly hilarious episodes? Was it that he often wore a sweatshirt that mysteriously just said "S," as well as an equally baffling and impossible-to-imagine-in-real-life gray crown?

While these were all intriguing aspects of Jughead--but then, Archie's criss-cross hair combing pattern/scapular genetic defect also didn't translate into reality--I think the thing I loved about him, as unoriginal as it may be, was that he was a non-conformist. Okay, so really what that means is that, in the hormonal primordial stew of Riverdale High and the extracurricular mating rituals going down at the Chocklit Shoppe, Jughead was not only oblivious, like myself, to the finer points of dating, but he actively rejected them, preferring instead the life of a hamburger-loving loner who applied himself with equal industry but much less recognition to noble activities like collecting change for a TV at the nursing home or, sometimes, moonlighting as a superhero named Captain Hero...all while his friends were busy hustling girls and fixing their jalopies. Sometimes it troubles me that Jughead prided himself on being a self-avowed "woman hater," but I guess most of the so-called "gals" of Archieland, like their complementary "pals," were vapid enough to be deserving of his disdain. I mean, the guy wore a crown! You think that was a coincidence?

Unfortunately or fortunately, as aging goes, so I find myself less able to brazenly reject societal norms such as wearing sweatshirts with letters that stand for something, walking around with my eyes open and not reading (or at least subscribing to) comic books for children...but Jughead is still my favorite. So you can imagine my horror when I, vulnerable in the tub, read in my newest Archie that they had changed the look of the characters to make them more "contemporary," apparently assuming that by doing so, they will find a foothold with a younger and larger audience than woman-hater-loving women who bitterly patronize Dominick's. I already knew this misguided marketing scheme was in the works after my dad had sent me an article that showed the proposed modernized Betty and Veronica. But, with whatever shred of foolish optimism left over from that younger version of myself who always believed that, maybe this time, Betty would finally get Archie, it didn't occur to me that they would ravage my Jughead, too.

But here it is. Oh, Jughead. Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.