Archie's Joke Book – Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Dan DeCarlo — Cover Girls

February 18, 2021 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Archie’s Joke Book #132, July 1969

Many consider Dan DeCarlo THE quintessential Archie artist. A generation of Boomers would probably find little argument with that.

As part of the Archie 80th anniversary celebration in 2021, we will have a special tribute to Dan later in the year. In the meantime, here’s a great DeCarlo cover featuring Betty, Veronica, Mr. Lodge, and… Archie… sort of.

It’s a typical fashion gag from the era, and this original is a nicely rebuilt and restored “large-art” cover. (The penny-wise folks at Archie reused the nameplate boards as templates over and over again, simply removing the art, and pasting the new art and issue dates in place. I’ve owned another one where the original art was actually pasted over the previous issue’s original art. Ouch.)

Bob Montana — Just Joking

February 13, 2021 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Archie’s Joke Book #2, January 1954

Although the newspaper strip kept Archie co-creator Bob Montana busy, he did manage to continue to find time to provide comic book pages as well, setting (and ultimately evolving) the house style for the Archie family.

Archie’s Joke Book used a similar formula to the newspaper strips: Short gags, either a half page or full page in length, possibly even recycling or amplifying some of the same gags from those strips.

IDW collected one small volume of these “jokes” from that era to minimal success. The format didn’t appeal to collectors, and the joke themselves in all fairness, don’t appeal all that much to a contemporary audience.