Jughead and Sexuality: Rhythm & Blues

Last time we took a look at Jughead's sexuality it was with a story called, "Brain Campaign". If you haven't seen that one yet, maybe you need to check it out.

That time we looked at a story that didn't have much subtext, and looked at how it pretty much threw out the possibility of Jughead having any sexuality at all. He just loves food! Well let's look at a story that's the polar opposite of Brain Campaign, one that's laden with subtext. So laden with subtext that it's nearly impossible to tell which of it is intentional and which of it isn't. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Rhythm & Blues. 

This is a story written by the amazing Frank Doyle and drawn by the titanic Samm Schwartz, so you know you're in good hands from the start. (For those not familiar with Frank Doyle or Samm Schwartz, believe me I'll have more to say about these two masters of the comic arts in the future, but for now know that they're among my top three Archie creators, with Dan DeCarlo filling out the rest of the list.)

Jughead and Sexuality #2: The Song Writers.

This story was scanned from
IDW's "Best of Samm Schwartz"
hardcover book.

Way back in one of our earliest posts we started to talk about Jughead's sexuality. Back in that post I said that it's impossible to actually judge Archie characters in a general sense. To understand them you have to take it on a case-by-case basis.

I stand by this idea, the Archie characters are players who have general roles, but the specifics change from the story to story. With that in mind, let's take a look at this story and see what it can tell us about Jughead's sexuality. The story is from 1964, written by Frank Doyle and drawn by Sam Schwartz. Doyle is hands down my favourite Archie writer, and Schwartz is my second favourite Archie artist (after Dan DeCarlo), so this is gunna be a treat, believe me!

The Archie Experiment: Jughead's Diner.

Dan Parent and Bill Golliher are my heroes!

It's hard to think of Archie comics as being particularly experimental. After all, they're such incredibly formulaic comics. Believe it or not, though, Archie comics do go through some really experimental phases.

The one I'm most familiar with is the late 80s, early 90s Archie experiment. During this period there was an explosion of new, experimental, often insane titles. New aesthetics were experimented with. Character dynamics were experimented with. Some things were successful, some things weren't, but it was an exciting time to be reading Archie comics.

Don't believe me? Don't think they would have been brave enough to mess with the formula for familiar, iconic characters?

Well, my friend, during this time Jughead Jones acquired not one, not two, but three new love interests. (All of them were redheads, and one of them was actually Archie's descendant from the future in the comic Jughead's Time Police. Yeah... that's an entire other post in and of itself.)

One of my all time favourite Archie experiments, though, was Jughead's Diner. Jughead's Diner was a fantasy sci-fi comic set in a surreal 1950s diner setting, starring Jughead as basically the chosen one, meant to save the world. No... seriously.

Archie One-Page gags.

Oh Ethel. You're so ugly and repulsive!

So when I'm going through and scanning things from my Archie digests I often end up scanning extra pages, because of course when you lay out a digest on a scanner you end up doing two pages at a time. Sometimes you scan two pages you want, sometimes the second page is something else. Maybe it's ads, or the first page of a story I don't want -- and of course sometimes it's one-page strips that are self-contained jokes.

Rather than just delete these, I've been saving the one pagers. So how about I share a few of them today? Yay!

I'm honestly not positive of the genesis of these one-page gags. Some of them are clearly formatted for the single page -- others are clearly taken from Archie newspaper strips. I'll leave it to you (and to my own comments, let's be honest) to try and decide which is which.

As always there's no credits on these strips, so I can't really help you if you're trying to work out who the artist is on them. I can give you a best guess, but that's about it. So how about we get on with the show?

Jughead and Sexuality: The Brain Campaign.

I hate those damned menaces to romance!

If you've ever watched Chasing Amy -- and if you're a geek you probably have -- then you've seen that scene where a gay guy tries to convince a guy of ambiguous sexuality that Archie comics are gay. He chooses Jughead as the main thrust of his argument -- clearly Jughead is the dom and Archie is his bitch.

Okay, that's utter bull crap, and the movie even admits it's utter bullcrap. Archie is, at its heart, a story about straight sexual relationships. Highly disturbing straight sexual relationships a lot of the time. Except... there's Jughead.

Jughead is a self-avowed "woman-hater". He has no interest in girls whatsoever. So, what is his sexuality then? Is he gay? Is he straight, but he just hasn't discovered women yet? Well, honestly... answering that question fairly is nearly impossible to do with Archie comics. You see, Archie comics aren't really into continuity like super hero comics. Rather, Archie characters are like actors cast in different roles according to the needs of the story.