Jon Goldwater was riding his New York commuter train, just two weeks into his new job as co-chief executive of Archie Comics, when a fellow passenger tossed off a remark that blindsided him. The fresh executive had an Archie folder on his lap, Goldwater recounts, “when a woman sitting near me turned and said: ‘They still make those?!’ “
“It. Freaked. Me. Out,” Goldwater continues. “I almost got sick to my stomach.”
Yet he also took home the underlying message from the encounter several years ago: “If we didn’t change Riverdale, we would risk becoming irrelevant.”
Led by Goldwater, the creative minds at Archie Comics decided to “update” their characters, which hark back to a mid-century era of malt shops and letterman sweaters - when the jalopy chassis and presumed chastity went hand-in-hand. In 2010, Archie Comics entered the current century by introducing Kevin Keller, Riverdale’s “first openly gay character.” The result: headlines and turned heads that culminated in its “Marriage of Kevin Keller!” issue selling out this year.
Keller’s transfer to Riverdale High provided a sales boost, Archie Comics says, and in March, the company announced that “Life With Archie 16: The Marriage of Kevin Keller!” had sold out. (Archie Comics would not provide exact sales figures.) Goldwater also notes that he has received no subscription cancellations over the same-sex nuptials, and “not one person has called” to complain.
Keller is “the most important new character in Archie history,” Goldwater has said. And last year, Archie Comics contributor Dan Parent received a GLAAD media award nomination for Keller’s creation.
To comics fans, none of this is new and surprising after decades of gay characters and relationships from mainstream publishers. But in the wake of President Obama’s newly stated support of gay marriage, current examples of gay romance in comics have stepped into a klieg light of broader cultural resonance.
This week, Marvel Comics announced the proposal and same-sex nuptials of Northstar, its first gay superhero, in “Astonishing X-Men” No. 50 (published this week) and No. 51 (it’s a June wedding).
Other popular comics that have intoduced gay characters include Tom Batiuk’s Funky Winkerbean, Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse and Paige Braddock’s online comic Jane’s World, all of which have faced their own adversity for their choices this year.
Is 2012, then, a flashpoint for depicting gay relationships in mainstream comics - or is this just an editorial blip made brighter by the glare of electoral politics? Time will tell.
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