Review by C.J. Bunce

Comic book characters as style icons?  We must be talking about Betty and Veronica, the teen stars of 85 years of Archie Comics.  Titan Books is looking back on those years in its new book The Art of Betty & Veronica, available for pre-order here at Amazon, celebrating the art and artists who have showed these teens changing with the times.  Blonde girl-next-door Betty and her frenemy Veronica, the brunette upper class gal–how have they changed over the years?  How have the artists responsible for Archie Comics portrayed them in the comics pages?  Find out via 136 pages of original comic artwork and full color images of some of their best cover features.  The focus is on the artists behind the characters, but none of the writers–the only flaw of this anniversary assemblage, although the writers’ work is there on every reproduced comic page.  The artists include each of the major artists who adapted the characters for their age: Bill Vigoda, Al Fagaly, Bob Montana, Irv Novick, Harry Lucey, Dan DeCarlo, and Dan Parent. 

But most of the book is a showcase of the work of Dan DeCarlo, who would be the key artist for Archie Comics from the 1960s to the end of the century.  It’s likely if you know Betty and Veronica today it’s through DeCarlo’s renderings or this century’s go-to writer-artist Dan Parent, who would add his own spin on the teens’ that continues in the monthly pages today.

The best appeal of this book are the surprising early illustrations by Bill Vigoda, Al Fagaly, Bob Montana, and Irv Novick–their designs depict Betty and Veronica as characters very similar to Miss Fury and the stylish women of many comic strips in the 1940s and 1950s.

The book is primarily comics pages, but it also includes brief essays about the characters written by Archie Comics publisher and co-CEO Jonathan Goldwater, co-president and editor-in-chief Victor Gorelick, and cartoonist Craig Yoe.  For the size of the book it could have used a discussion of the writers of their stories over the years, and contributions or commentary by women who worked on the books or who were inspired by their stories.

For anyone looking for a samples of comic book page reprints across the decades featuring this dynamic duo, The Art of Betty & Veronica is available for pre-order in hardcover now here at Amazon, arriving in comic shops and other bookstores this week.