Betty & Veronica
How did cartoonists become great designers?
When I first started reading Archie comics, it was almost by default. Quite simply, there wasn’t anything else in the grocery store check out aisle that was for kids that had girls in it. Everything else was full of talking animals or superheroes.
Betty and Veronica were that rare thing: women who had personalities and interests. They weren’t Lois Lane. And a primary, vital interest that Betty and Veronica shared was clothing. They wore just the best clothes. There were pages of the comics dedicated entirely to their outfits. And I mean, look at them. They were amazing.
I took this all for granted until I realized.. wait. These were all drawn by a bunch of dudes… who were probably not so fashion-inclined themselves. How the hell did Betty and Veronica get so stylish?
This is this month’s episode of Articles of Interest, which was recorded, in part, live at WBUR.
Here is the full recording, if you’d like to see how the sausage is made.
But notably, in that video of our live show, you can see producer Jazmin Aguilera and I are wearing dresses from Rachel Antonoff’s Archie-themed collection.
However! Antonoff’s Archie collection (just like Torrid’s Archie collection, Keds’ Archie collection, MAC’s Archie collection… etc) is sorely lacking. And let us tell you why.
So much of Archie’s sense of fashion came from an artist named Dan DeCarlo. Who, before joining Archie Comics, made a lot of sexy little pin up comics.
DeCarlo was drawing his sexy, curvy women for lots of different publications— Archie was just one of them. But in 1954, there was a moral panic around this idea that comics were corrupting the youth of America.
All mentions of sex and drugs were scrubbed from mainstream comics (and this is why publications like Mad Magazine get started— as a place for all the smut to go).
And yet, DeCarlo was allowed to continue drawing his pretty, curvy versions of Betty and Veronica because… he didn’t just give them sex appeal. He gave them fashion appeal. Women also loved to read these comics and look at the pin-ups that DeCarlo would draw, just to see what Betty & Veronica were wearing.
DeCarlo admitted that, at one point, he subscribed to every teen magazine. he was devoted to keeping up with the style of the time: and he was directly copying it and distributing it to kids across the world.
I mean, how great are these? THIS is what a Betty & Veronica fashion line could look like. More than merch with the characters’ faces on them. Will some designer please rise to the challenge?!
DeCarlo’s comic’s were best-sellers at Archie Comics, and he was eventually lured in house. DeCarlo set the new house style, and pressed the importance of fashion on the rest of the cartoonists at Archie. Fashion became a major touchpoint of the comic, and readers would send in ideas for outfits, which cartoonists would draw on Betty & Veronica.
These fashion pages were a huge influence on generations of fashion-lovers and cartoonists alike, including graphic novelist Kayla E.
In her memoir about her abusive childhood, Precious Rubbish, Kayla almost exactly mimics the Archie fashion pin-up pages.
These fashion pin-up pages mean so much to Kayla, both in her profession and her personal style. They’re a repository of images that she can draw inspiration from in her art and in her life. As she put it “I think to this day, I’m still trying to dress like Veronica.”
I’m so excited to have written a long piece in Wired about the history and life of Multicam camouflage. It will already be a bit familiar to you, if you’ve listened to episode 6 in the Gear series!
Camo is one of the most important modern fashion legacies of 21st century America, and as our war machine shows no sign of slowing down, multicam is only continuing to dominate the world.
This is so wonderful to read. I was a preteen when B&V comics were at their height in the 70’s, and as much as I adored them, I refused to read them if anybody but Dan DeCarlo was the artist, because he was the only one that did a truly good job. His characters looked 100% consistent page-to-page and issue-to-issue, and when they were posed facing different directions, etc. I was such a little art snob that I could recognize immediately when they let some second-rate artist take over for an issue, and it was always tragically disappointing. Some 50 years later, I’ve always remembered his name, and wondered about his life. I wish I could let him know how influential he’d been to me as a little girl, and as a future artist. 💛 Thanks for featuring and recognizing the wonderful fashion icons that Betty & Veronica were!
I was completely obsessed with them and went to the comic book store all the time. I learned to draw from Archie comics and loved all the fashion so much.