Tom Moore worked on more than just a comic
Artist Tom Moore passed away on Monday but his legacy will live through the delightful Archie comics that he worked on, which continues to charm readers around the world, especially in India. Moore joined the Archie team in 1953 and worked on it till the late 1980s — covering the golden years of the comic which reached its peak popularity in the US in the 1960s and 1970s. The timeline looks slightly different for India though. Archie came here in the mid-1970s and since then has had the attention of generations of young Indians. In fact, even as Archie sales dipped elsewhere, mostly because the world has been moving away from the printed medium and somewhat because Archie's world remained still in time (until very recently), the comic strip has managed to maintain a loyal following in this country. When Variety Book Depot, the exclusive distributor of all Archie publications in India, started printing the comic in 1974, they brought out only 3000 copies. Now, they reportedly print over 1,00,000 every year. This has not gone unnoticed by the creators of Archie, who have been updating the comic in recent years. And so, in 2008, Raj Patel became the first Indian American character at Riverdale High; in 2011, the Archie gang came to Mumbai where the boys ate samosas and the girls sashayed in lehengas. But while Archie is still being read in India, it no longer has the cult status it held in the 1980s and 1990s.
Archie came into a fairly crowded comics market with strong domestic players (think Tinkle and Chacha Chaudhari) as well as international (think The Phantom and Mandrake) players. But it was able to create its own niche because it was one of a kind. It set the markers for what it meant to be young, hip and cool, much before the TV show Hip! Hip! Hurray or the Bollywood blockbuster Kuch Kuch Hota Hai did the same. Archie served a delectable slice of Americana, where high school students hung out cafes and went on dates, had garage bands and prom dances and played baseball and ate pizzas. It didn't matter that the slice was rather stale for Archie creator Bob Montana had based the template on his adolescent years of the 1930s, but Indian youngsters, raised at least 50 years afterwards, lapped it up with joy. The central theme of Archie — a love triangle between Archie, Veronica and Betty — was an exciting escape route for youngsters growing up in a conservative society. It was a different world and yet, in some many ways, it was much the same. The characters at Riverdale High were all utterly relatable and their stories of puppy love and teenage angst struck a chord across the world. And this is possibly why Archie continues to be a favourite even today. In the India of the new millennium, where Café Coffee Days are as good as Pop Tate's Chocklit Shoppe and pizzas and burgers come in desi flavours, there is little ‘exotic' value that Archie has to offer. What keeps us hooked are the universally relevant tales of friendship and adventure.