There were only three issues of Jetta, and there are opinions why in the Craig Yoe compilation of all the available Jetta comic book stories, published in 2010. If you click on the link below the story you will go to a DeCarlo story, and my review of Yoe’s book.
For Steve Ditko fans, come back on Sunday for Ditko’s classic Gorgo #1 from 1960.
Click on the thumbnail. I notice that the book is still available from Yoe Books!, but is out of print, and the other links to possible sources I listed in 2010 may not be valid at this time.
6 comments:
Jetta is drawn nicely enough, but it's of course essentially a very conventional teenage-girl comedy with exaggeratedly futuristic gadgets, costuming, architecture, and lingo thrown-in. (The name “Arky” is phonetically almost identical to “Archie”.) I continue to wonder who was interested in the sorts of comics — setting aside those looking for pin-up are of teenage girls. (Arky is a jerk!)
There seems to have been a clear consensus in the comic books and comic strips that, in the future, women would wear miniskirts, short-shorts, or form-fitting pants.
One can hope, though it might be that in 2052 they'll be back to animal hides. (Things seem rather dicey.) And I'm not sure that $5 will be worth much in 2052, but sometimes currency reform has involved basically moving a decimal point. Or maybe we'll have reverted to the original meaning of “dollar”, which was a particular weight of silver.
Daniel, there was...ahem...a period when I bought some Archie comics, but it was before puberty. Even in my pre-pubescent state I couldn't help but notice that Archie had himself a pretty good thing going. Two girls, a blonde and a brunette. Not bad, thought I. I always wondered what girls (who were, I assumed, the target audience for the Archie line) thought of that situation.
Look at fashion in 1952 and the longer, fuller skirts on women. Thank god mini-skirts didn't take a hundred years to come into actual fashion.
I still remember when $5.00 was a lot of money. I never thought of $5.00 as a price for a pack of cigarettes, but then I don't smoke. The only reason I bring it up is I quit smoking when inflation caused the price of cigarettes to go to an outrageous 65¢ a pack!
TY 4 this Pappy we luv early DeCarlo.
Our flavor8 comix R Bob Montana Archie Comix, our look on our new album covers is very Bob Montana 1950s inspired <3
xoxoxoxo we luv u Pappy xoxoxoxo
Daniel, Archie comics R 4 girls. That's Y u cant understand who would like em, LOLEREST
Yes I was riding in the VIP shuttle from Gary's comic con in Boston discussing Archie Comics with Alex Simmons, the Batman writer. He told me he used to write for Archie Comics as well and told some fascinating anecdotes. I asked him why they kept trying to make Archie appeal to boys since it's a girls comic. He told me they want the Hollywood money-- they want TV shows and movies, and they think doing stuff like Marvel or DC do will get them the major green.
I pointed out that a number of the young women I've worked with over the years were huge fans of manga, which tell and re-tell the same basic plots that Archie comics told when they mattered culturally. I pointed out that Archie is what's now known as a "harem manga"-- one guy with multiple women chasing him. He said he had in fact read some of those manga but never made the connection until I pointed that out to him. Archie is for girls, not boys.
I said maybe after their new TV show imitating "Smallville" runs it's course, I should pitch my ideas to them about how they could reclaim their former glory by merely doing the formula that the manga are copying-- NOT do manga, but do ARCHIE. He said I should pitch it anyway.
I love the comment from Daniel in this section. Archie is trying to get people like Daniel to like them!!! Daniel doesn't want to look at cute girls wearing the latest fashion. He wants to look at Robin in his short shorts. This illustrates my point that Archie is confused as to who their target audience needs to be.
But people told Hillary Clinton's team that they would lose if they continued to try to appeal to Republican voters while insulting their base and Bernie Sanders supporters, and what happened is that those advisers got insulted along with the Bernie supporters. I don't expect that if I pitched these ideas to Archie that they would respond any differently than that to what I was saying. Sometimes people don't want to know when they're off-track, and so sometimes you have to let things run their course.
They did hire a woman to draw a manga version of one of their titles once, so I'm sure they'd point to that and say they already tried my idea. Obviously, that is NOT my idea.
And yes, Alicia is right, we based the new ook of the band on Bob Montana's 1950's comics, which were the most important and influential Archie comics as far as I'm concerned.
Peter, thanks for that fascinating note and your insight.
A scene from the sitcom Big Bang Theory popped into my memory. The guys are in the comic book shop with Penny's dumb ex-boyfriend, who asks where the Archie comics are. Sheldon snaps, "With the comics for 12-year-old girls."
Even if they are for girls, the Archie daily/Sunday comic strip by Bob Montana was aimed at a general newspaper audience. I remember it fondly.
I don't remember Daniel making any comment about preferring Robin in his short-shorts to girls wearing the latest fashion. He said in the era Jetta was published they assumed girls in the future would wear mini-skirts, short-shorts and form-fitting pants...all of which came true. Maybe everyone having their own helicopter has not, and will not, come true, but damned if Dan De Carlo wasn't right on in that prediction!
Right now keyboards are burning up from people trying to write the history of the 2016 election. I have opinions as to why we got the results we did. (Not within the scope of this blog.) Since the election is now history I am interested in what will happen now, and what the world and the electorate will be like in 2020 when we go through it all again. At this moment I am visualizing the next four years as being in a car hurtling down a steep mountain road with no brakes.
Wish the girls my best, and thanks again for the note.
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