Jughead and Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #15 is in the stores currently, and for those who follow my work, this issue contains around eight of my Jughead stories — most of them illustrated by my trusty collaborator, Rex Lindsey, who always manages to get the most out of whatever humor is in the scripts with his linework.
Please note, there are a couple of incorrect credits on the stories in this issue, as is often the case in these digests. One of my Archie stories, “Unbalanced,” is incorrectly credited to my friend George Gladir. Sorry to saddle you with that, George! This story was drawn by Stan Goldberg, whom I only got the chance to partner with on rare occasions, and that’s probably a factor in how the credit got mixed up. This story has to do with a large piece of artwork, a metal mobile of the type designed by Alexander Calder. In this story, the artist’s name is Wilder.
And then I am credited with writing a story called “Showdown At the Mall,” which I did not write. The art on this one is by Doug Crane. To my knowledge, Doug and I have never been paired up on a story. I’m Guessing that George Gladir wrote this one. The title sounds like one of his.
Also of note is a story of mine called “Pop Goes Jughead!” I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of stories I’ve written where the plot was dictated to me by my editor, Victor Gorelick. But this is one of those. Victor had somehow ended up with a gadget that was designed to eat popcorn with — It was like a modified set of chopsticks — and he decided that a Jughead story could be written around the invention. He actually sent me one of these things to try out, and here is the story that resulted. In the story, I called them ‘Popcorn Pincers.’ I forget what they were known as in real life. Anyway, the Archie characters are such that you can give them any object and they can get into trouble with it for at least five pages, so no problem there.
