MYTHCOMICS: "ANIMAL CRACKERS" (ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #196, 1972)

 

I didn't have too much luck this month looking for my annual "Xmythcomic" until I just randomly decided to look through some online Archie Giants. I don't usually expect much if any mythicity in Archie stories, having said here that "I might not allow that the characters of ARCHIE function on any conceptual level, that they remain staunchly lateral and thus non-vertical in most of their adventures." Still, since I have found myth-stuff in other teen humor comics, so I thought an Archie mythcomic a mild possibility. I just wouldn't have thought it would be a Christmas comic.

It's also from Al Hartley, an ARCHIE artist who became a born-again Christian in the late 1960s. Supposedly he got into his religious crusade so much that his editors had to tell him to tamp it down. I'd seen a few stories into which Hartley worked Christian polemics, but I wasn't sure if he had the artistic ability to emphasize vision over dogma. Yet I was slightly impressed by a 1972 "near myth" in which Hartley tried to communicate a sacral attitude toward nature and American history.

"Animal Crackers" was printed the same year as the "Bus Fuss" story, and it draws upon a few aspects of Christian faith that I suppose a Christian might not consider "mythic" (except maybe for Jordan Peterson). There's a slight irony that the story is introduced by the character of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The character debuted in 1962 but only became part of the Archieverse seven years later, first by dint of getting an animated cartoon in 1969 and then graduating to her own title in 1971. This led to Sabrina getting a "giant" collection of stories like this one, though "Crackers" only gives her two panels of a "half-frame" story. Clad in a Santa-outfit, she gives the reader a quickie intro to the idea that animals also celebrate Christmas, and then promptly does a fast fade.  

So here begins the main conceit: it's the regular Archie characters, as animals. Archie, though not exactly a commanding presence in the comics, gets to be the Lion because he's the King of the Archie Universe. Jughead is a kangaroo who envies a pelican for his food storage capacity but doesn't appreciate being able to use his pouch for Xmas presents-- though this really doesn't have anything to do with the main point of the story.

So in quick succession most of the Archie characters get their beasts on: Moose the Gorilla, Reggie the Tiger (because the tiger is the lion's "rival"), Big Ethel the Giraffe, Dilton the Owl, and Veronica the Peacock. Strangely, Hartley leaves out any iteration of Veronica's rival Betty. Maybe it was a bit of conceptual strain to animal-ize any other females, since he doesn't draw Veronica as a female critter, but as a humanoid with a peacock-tail and bird-feet. But aside from some minor sex-jokes-- Big Ethel turns off all the boys while Veronica only has to "flutter her tail" to mesmerize the males-- nobody's doing much of anything, good or bad. So is Dilton going to excoriate the gamboling beast-people for not going to church?

  Yes-- and no. Lion Archie defends whatever games they've all supposedly been playing at the "Christmas party," because "Christmas is a sort of make-believe time." This ought to sound logical to most readers, juvenile and otherwise: isn't Xmas a festive time, to gambol about with friends and family?

However, Dilton does have a point beyond being a spoilsport. In the remaining two pages of the story, he sketches out a time before Christmas, when animals-- and, by extension, the humans they represent-- were ruled by "the law of the jungle." People ruled by that law fought all the time, governed only by the "survival of the fittest." (Not much love for Darwin here...) However, though without explicitly mentioning the birth of Christ, Dilton states that Christmas was responsible for introducing the current state of all creatures, able to appreciate one another despite any differences that might divide them. I hypothesize, though, that since Hartley's editors didn't want him proselytizing in the Archieverse, the artist chose not to invoke "the Prince of Peace" as such. Instead, he employed a cognate principle: that of Isaiah 11:6, in which "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb" (as opposed to the popular "lion and lamb" misquote). And though I'm agnostic (albeit with a Christian background), I have to appreciate the skillful way Hartley managed to communicate his feelings on the millennial nature of his faith with Aesopian version of the Archie cast and a fusion of the Christmas holiday with the vision of Isaiah.

I have to admit, though, that I still haven't found a myth-tale for those immortal kids of Riverdale in their own personas. But if I never find one, this is an adequate substitute.                 

NEAR MYTHS: "BUS FUSS" (ARCHIE AND ME #50, 1972)

In this essay I spoke of the ARCHIE franchise as "damn close to being anti-epistemological." I don't believe it's impossible that somewhere, someone did a story that meets my criteria for epistemological myth. But if there's even one, it's buried under thousands upon thousands of average stuff.

And then I came across this near-myth, probably both written and drawn by Al Hartley, whimsically titled "Bus Fuss." I gasped at the first page, in which Principal Weatherbee is seen having the seats of a bus taken out, and Jughead quips that the old fellow has "flipped his lid over the school busing thing." Gasp, thought I. Is an ARCHIE comic going to say something about desegregation?

Instead, Weatherbee has a different sort of bee in his bonnet, not political in the least. He's taking everyone on a trip into the Great Outdoors, not only the most prominent teen regulars but also three teachers, the janitor and the lunch-lady. In other words, the lesson to be imparted is not for kids only, and it begins with a prayer. "Can we do that in school?" asks Jughead in his atypical Confederate cap. "We're not in school now," responds Betty. Weatherbee's prayer contains no specific religious allusions, only invoking the protection of the creator as they journey to see "the beauty of your creation."

For the next six pages, Weatherbee gives his captive audience a Cook's tour of natural wonders, with no other religious context, beginning with the importance of trees and their wood by-products to the early American settlers. I like the fact that Hartley isn't so evangelical that he misses a chance for a covert reference to the canine love of trees. He also throws in a tiny bit of conflict at the end of page six.

The bear's advent forces everyone back into the bus while the ursine intruder eats all their food. Jughead rages about the loss of the victuals, which prompts Weatherbee to take a shot at the lunch-lady: "[the bear] will pay for it. Miss Beazley prepared that food." Nothing daunted, the next day the improvised camper travels to a local range of mountains. Though Weatherbee reductively assumes that ancient peoples revered mountains because of volcanic activity, he nevertheless draws upon the archaic sense of the numinous by mentioning their connection to deities (which of course they also have in Judeo-Christian belief).

And to top off the rambling quasi-lecture, "the Bee" then shows his charges their insignificant place in the universe by pushing them to look up at the stars, untrammeled by the interference of civilization. And with that simple but non-denominational revelation, the story ends and they descend to "find our place in the scheme of things."

I had read two or three of Al Hartley's "Archie gets religion" stories and found them heavy on Christian proselytizing. But here, even though all of the other stories in this issue are just routine teen hijinks, with Weatherbee playing the fool, this lead tale was refreshingly subtle. I'm not sure I even know why Hartley even gave this gently spiritual story a goofy title like "Bus Fuss," unless he just anticipated that his editors would expect such a title. "Fuss" is not elaborate enough to be a fully epistemological myth, but at least it has some of the right ingredients.