The debut of Cheryl and Jason Blossom!

[alicemacher]

Long before Cheryl and Jason Blossom were the victim and victimizer within a taboo relationship in Afterlife with Archie, or respectively mentally disturbed and dead in the Riverdale TV series, they were more lighthearted elitist troublemakers in the old Archie Comics continuity. That doesn't mean what they got up to wasn't envelope-pushing in its own way for the relatively family-friendly venue. Especially in this, their first appearance.


From "Dare to Be Bare," Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica #320 (Oct. 1982). Story by Frank Doyle, art by Dan and Jim DeCarlo. 1.67 of 5 pages.







Exit Cheryl. Enter Jason, who shows Betty and Veronica how to get around the "no beer on the beach" rule.









Pretty daring stuff for the company's output at the time. Of course, it helped that the story treats the implied public nudity and drinking as The Wrong Thing to Do, thus satisfying both the Comics Code Authority and Archie Comics' internal standards.

Even so... that very same month, in Josie and the Pussycats #106, Doyle and artist Stan Goldberg did a story in which Alex Cabot makes out rather heavily with a girl in his car (her legs are shown hanging out) and buys beer--and that's when he's trying to avoid getting in trouble with his dad. Maybe Doyle, who'd been writing Archie stories for three decades, was getting a bit bored with the content restrictions and trying to see how far he could go before he was reined in?

Comments

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Which is quite the achievement, given that one of them is dead before the start of episode 1.