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Teen Humor--Anything but Archie
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3,275 posts in this topic

I've started getting interested in more of the Marvel/Atlas teen titles. Based on all the teen humor titles they were cranking out in the 40's, it seems like they actually published more issues of teen comics than Archie up until about 1949. Archie/MLJ only published Archie, Pep, Laugh, Laugh Comix, Suzie, and Wilbur. Laugh Comix and Pep were not all teen anyway. Jughead, Reggie, Betty & Veronica, and Katy Keene weren't added until the 1949/1950 period.

 

Marvel had Millie the Model, Patsy Walker, Jeanie, Cindy, Rusty, Joker Comics, Comedy Comics, various Mitzi titles, Margie, Gay Comics and probably others I can't even remember. Also, I guess that Tessie the Typist and Nellie the Nurse could fit the teen humor category as well. Although none of them lasted a long time, except for Millie and Patsy, it seems that they cranked out quite a number of issues.

 

Was the Archie series really the most popular during that era? Were the Marvel titles other than Millie and Patsy popular? Or was Marvel tossing out everything they could hoping that something would catch on?

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My assumption is that the Archie titles were more popular than the Timely titles. This is based mostly on the fact that the Archie titles expanded and flourished and the TImely titles (with the Patsy/Millie exceptions) went in the dumper.

 

I think the great advantage that Archie had was that all of the titles were essentially the same book with the same characters. Yes, Betty & Veronica was a slightly different title than Jughead, but you could expect to see the same characters pass through each title. With the Timely books, each was more or less a separate entity. So, you had to hope that someone who liked Patsy would also like Rusty and Willie and Millie and Tessie, and... Whereas with Archie, you knew that someone who liked Pep would like Archie and Laugh and...

 

There is some excellent work in all of the early TImely teen titles and clearly at least a few were popular enough to last until the '60s and '70s. But I think most were just too generic to stand on their own in a sea of similar titles.

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This thread has been kind of slow lately so I thought a couple of Millies would be nice. Here are #2 and 8. I noticed that Heritage currently is offering the Mile High copy of #8. I think I'll have to stick with my cheaper copy.

z-millie04.JPG

z-millie08.JPG

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I've gotten kind of hooked on these Marvel 1940s humor titles. I've limited my focus to the Millie and Patsy Walker titles but I do like the anthology books with Millie as well. 1950s DeCarlo Millies are also appealing to me due to their Archie style humor.

 

It took me a while to realize that in the early books, Millie's photographer boyfriend's name was based on the forbidden comic book word flick. When it appears in all caps, flick appears too similar to another f word.

 

His name was later changed to the less offensive Clicker.

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