Before Barack Obama was famous, Archie comics used the expression “Brrack!” as a sign of disgust
I was just getting around to reading some of the Archie comics digests that I’d purchased over the past few years, and I came across this panel from issue #64 of World of Archie Comics Double Digest:
Since the digests are reprints of older stories, the original story was almost certainly published many years (or even decades) before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama.
I’m not sure when or in which issue this story was originally published. My guess is that it’s from the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Also, since this is a modern day reprint of an older story, they edited the text to remove Svenson’s Swedish accent. This alteration is an unfortunate symptom of today’s political correctness. Decades ago, the whole point of the Svenson character was his accent. Without it, all of his personality is gone.
You can read the entire story (which is called “Clean Sweep”) at this link. Scroll down about 30% of the way: https://books.google.com/books?id=MhpsDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=world+of+archie+digest+64&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx-6O1vt7eAhUM11kKHXg4BDoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
When Lynda Carter’s Diana Prince transformed into Wonder Woman, the flash of light changed colors from red to white to blue
When I watched Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman on TV every week as a young child in the 1970s, our family’s TV was black and white, so I had no idea that when Diana Prince transformed into Wonder Woman, the flash of light changed colors from red to white to blue.
The show ran for three seasons. The first season took place during World War II, just like in the comic book. In the early episodes, there was no flash of light during the transformation. The flash of light was eventually added during the middle of season one in order to try to prevent viewers from noticing any inconsistencies in the background during the “before” and “after.”
In order to save money on expensive World War II set pieces, the show was moved to the then present 1970s at the beginning of season two. In order to keep Lyle Waggoner on the show, the Steve Trevor character of the 1940s was replaced with Steve Trevor Jr. in the 1970s, who knew everything about Wonder Woman from having listened to stories that had been told to him by his father.
Plot summaries can be read here. The show is available on DVD. My personal favorite season is three, where a huge number of the plots were campy science fiction stories.
Anyway, here’s every instance of Diana Prince transforming into Wonder Woman from the show:
Season one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O2etMo_Yw
Season two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RzfLXzebs4
Season three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ecux9dlr-I
Here’s the Archie Comics cover art with Betty Cooper holding a gun that was announced but later canceled
Earlier this year, the official Archie Comics website posted this cover artwork for the upcoming Betty and Veronica Comics Double Digest 253:
(Image posted under fair use. Source: http://archiecomics.com/april2017solicits/ )
However, when the title eventually got released, the cover had this other artwork instead:
(Image posted under fair use. Source: http://archiecomics.com/firstlooks5-17-17/ )
The fact that the first cover says “comics double digest” while the second one says “summer annual” does not mean that these are different titles. The official title is “Betty and Veronica Comics Double Digest.” The words “summer annual” simply indicate that this issue has a few dozen extra pages in it – it’s still the same title. So I’m not getting one title confused with another.
Anyway, it’s sad that the powers that be canceled the release of the cover artwork with Betty Cooper holding a gun.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 