Miss Grundy Is Gonna Die
(Maybe)
Brace yourself. The owners and publishers of the Archie Andrews franchise might kill off the stern former pickle factory worker, and spinsterish teacher, Geraldine Grundy. I don't know where the comic strip stands now, because the last time I saw an Archie comic strip, Smokey Stover and Snuffy Smif were still alive. The first time I saw Archie was probably when the Teenie-Weenies were making their beds in walnut shells. Both were a long time ago. In the intervening years, I read the Sunday comics mainly to see what Walt Kelly was up to with Pogo.
When I was in college, Archie was still wearing a sleeveless Argyl sweater and saddle Oxfords. His car was still the topless Model-T-like wreck; Veronica still looked like Veronica Lake, Reggie had patent-leather hair, Jughead was a dunce - it wasn't politically incorrect to notice it - and Moose was an adorable, dimwit bully balanced on the knife-edge dividing rage from harmless stupor. Its plots and characterizations were obsolete even, if not especially, then.
I'd been told that Archie was an update to the Harold Teen comic character from the 1930's. I don't know. The best comic satire of Archie was in an early 1950's Mad Magazine spoof where Archie (Starchie) is sent to prison for some offense , until "the cross-hatches on the sides of his head turn gray". It was drawn by one or more of Mad's wonderful illustrators, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis or John Severin.
Prison was probably a better fate for Archie than to be made "relevant" by the probable changes in his cartoon universe. Those changes will almost certainly be toward the busybody lefty youth-agitprop kind. If they're willing to kill Geraldine with cancer, and are aiming at the suggestible and generally confused minds of adolescents and young teens, you can imagine what's around the corner.
9 comments:
I'm almost afraid to inquire about the state of Weatherbee's health. The man was a time bomb.
Judging by his 0.9% market share, they might try to kill Archie off next.
Mutt and Jeff. May they R.I.P.
Does Riverdale have a Death Panel?
Rhod - I had that gray cross hatched issue of Mad Magazine. Do you remember the satire piece - "I'm looking over a three man Troika to head up the UN floor" when the commies tried to push that in the 60's?
Suas postagens ajudaram a construir algumas conclusões positivas,que no proximo ano o sucesso permaneça em sua vida.
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Nick, they iced a harmless, lonely old lady. Weatherbee pays Jughead to start his car.
TUP, how is he on Intrade?
Wetzy,I know. First both Katzenjammers, then Mutt and Jeff, and Terry and the Pirates. I'm inconsolable.
Zio, they need one if they don't. Grundy has been at Riverdale High since 1942.
Sig, sorry to say I don't. I was only allowed one DC comic a year, so there are enormous gaps in my education. Cheers.
Siggie... I still remember part of a Mad Magazine parody of the Notre Dame Fight Song:
Hail, hail for old Pivnick Tech.
They're gonna get it right in the neck.
Send the sound of taps on high,
As the whole team lays down to die.
I say farshmelter to that, and it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!
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