Travel-weary but alive,
segment. As several comic critics point out, Archie’s synonymy with an austere Whitedominated middle-class “American Dream” was in fact carefully cultivated and marketed by the Goldwater influenced CCA itself. However, when it hit India’s news stand in the mid-1980s, the foreverteen Peter Pan of suburbia would face an entirely new and unmitigated terrain of comic book frenzy.
In many ways, the last decade of the 20th century also marked a pubescent coming-of-age for the Indian nation itself, as we shook off the cobwebs of a Sovietleaning socio-economic mindset, encountered the demons of communal violence and terrorism, stumbled upon the exploding world of gender categories and sexual preferences, and shook hands with the economic, cultural and political phenomenon that was the rise of “America”. For the Indian comic book fan, after three decades of divine superheroes fighting pitched battles for an ancient goldenage India, the focus had suddenly shifted towards a brattish longing for the “good life”, “fun” and “adventure”. For an entire generation of urban educated Indian young men, this would become the visualisation of the American Dream — good-looking girls, swanky cars, picturesque neighbourhoods and burgers. Therefore, if New York and Chicago were its urban core, Riverdale was the sub-urban periphery rounding off the image of a global metropolis.
The sprawling lawns, tree-lined lanes and neat cottages in the world of Archie Andrews fit right into our first “image”inations of the Silicon Valley, which by early 2000s would become the destination for Indian science and management graduates. This is how Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn really grew up. They left Mississippi, and landed in Riverdale, where they did not have to worry about Jims or “Injun” Joes any more. And the fact that they brought their bright sweaters, guitars and beach-ball to our third-world news stands, we believed, was an invitation enough for us to journey to their “America”.
However, Archie was hardly ever the “good comics” in India. At best, it was always on the fence between two utopias. Archie’s choice between Betty and Veronica, in fact, is perhaps the best allegory of the very middle-class anxiety the comic book evoked: a choice between a middle-class domestic stability, and an equally middleclass ambition for an upper-class adventurism and glamour. And this ready correlatability of its template-like plot was also one of the reasons why several Bollywood directors would go on to register ringing hits adopting the Archie formula of the rich girl, girl-next-door and boy-nextdoor triangle, complete with Jughead-like comic sidekicks, and Moose-inspired bullies. Remember JoJeetaWohiSikandar? Or, KuchKuchHotaHai?
Archie’s readership has changed however. And so has Archie, of course. In the early days of the comic book, the lead characters could be heard on an NBC radio show called ArchieAndrews. By the 1970s they had appeared in a string of popular animated TV serials, led by TheArchieShow (1968), Archie’sTVFunnies (1971) and TheUS ofArchie (1974), culminating into the immensely popular Archie’sWeirdMysteries (1999 to present). By the early 2000s, Archie 16 DECEMBER 2017 was clawing desperately for its old popularity, a task almost impossible in a post-9/11 world. It wasn’t difficult to identify the cheeky scepticism of its new reader base inWeirdMysteries where the near-perfect picture of Riverdale was underlined by repeatedly invoking and ultimately allaying the fear of lurking shadows, albeit with a casual playfulness.
By 2017, however, the reader’s near complete disbelief in the pastel-coloured Dream is urgent and palpable enough to receive a darker, ink-stained live-action adaptation of the Archie mythos in Riverdale. This increasingly popular TV series on the CW channel in the US is no longer interested in playfully nodding at hidden monsters. Instead, similar to Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ very popular graphic novel, Criminal: The Last of the Innocent, it delves straight in and reveals the darkness behind the suburban utopia— teenage angst, secrets, deceits, drug abuse, jealousy and murder.
The disillusionment with the Dream does not necessarily translate into a disinterest in Archie. The journey goes on, as it weaves in the pastels with the ink. The nostalgia remains, as does the ever-present hope to break out of the now self-contained fan bases into a wider, more diverse readership. The Delhi Comic Con, on from December 15 to 17 at the NSIC Grounds, Okhla, bears testimony to the same.