
It looks like Jughead wont be the only cartoon character wearing a crown in Riverdale any more, there’s a desi (probably ABD) character in Archie’s world (via UB). I’m happy that the character looks and sounds like the others, hopefully he wont be Hajji to Archie’s Johnny Quest.
That said, I actually associate Archie more with India than America. I rarely saw Archie in the USA, but when I went to India there was always a stack of Archie comics in my relatives’ houses in Delhi. Since I often got bored hanging around while the adults caught up on years of news, I spent many hours reading the escapades of Archie, Betty, Veronica, Reggie and Jughead. Just writing this brings back that India paper smell, and all of a sudden I’m 10 again and in my parents’ country, with all the ambivalence that entails.
Archie Comics certainly sees India as fertile ground:
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What? No redheads or blondes? |
The US-based comic giant Archie Comics Entertainment is firming up its India plans. It is gearing up to launch local language content in India, besides an animation series featuring its characters. The company is in talks with three Indian animation studios for the production of the series. [Link]
Although it will have some competition from local imitators who have planned a Bollywood Archie who looks like a younger SRK:
… in what looks to be India’s answer to Archie, a teenage lookalike of King Khan plays a regular college kid with two femme fatales (Betty and Veronica?) who bear a strong resemblance to Aishwarya Rai and Rani Mukherji. The story is appropriately titled The Naughty Lover. [Link]
The ersatz Archie story is a year old, but I don’t know if they ever came out with “The Naughty Lover” or not. To the right is a comic from the same people, so it’s possible they just changed the name to the highly imaginative Bollywood.
Do you think that Raj Patel was added because of the expansion into India or just in response to America’s changing demographics? It’s a bit unusual in any case, given that Archie is perpetually stuck in America of the 1950s …





