First and Last – Archie (comic strip)
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Archie Andrews first appeared 80 years ago in a couple comic books dated December 1941.
promo from Top Notch Comics #22 and first Archie page from Pep Comics #22
The feature was an instant hit and before the next year was over Archie had his own comic magazine. But it would take five years for his comic strip to appear in newspapers. That happened 75 years and one month ago – on February 4, 1946.
The first comic strips introduce Archie, Jughead, and Veronica to the newspaper audience. Archie and Jughead had both appeared in that Pep #22 comic above and, though this seems to be her debut, Veronica had appeared in the comic books four years earlier under similar circumstances:
Since Bob Montana’s death the identity of the creator of Archie has been disputed,
but as the below Editor and Publisher advertisement shows there was no argument in 1946.
The daily strip would run until April 23, 2011.
A Sunday strip ran from October 13, 1946 to May 8, 2011.
I couldn’t find the first or last Sunday strips, but I did dig up the last Sunday strip.
Huh? What?
Though the last Sunday was May 8 another 2011 Sunday page was created and made available to papers that were still running the reruns being syndicated to newspapers after the end of the strip.
As the Comic Art Community explained:
Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011, marks the 10th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history. In respect of the occasion, the major comic syndicates have rallied their cartoonists to dedicate their strips on that day to those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks.
Archie Comics got into the spirit and created one last Sunday page for September 11, 2011.
© Archie Comics
Since that time Creators Syndicate continues to offer Archie comic strip reruns to newspapers.
May 13, 2021 edit
Thanks to Bob Harvey and The Comics Journal here’s the fist Archie Sunday page:
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