How Archie Comics Celebrated the Bicentennial (part 2)

Some comic books started their Bicentennial stories a bit early. Here's one of the earliest I've found, issue 36 of the awkwardly titled Archie's TV Laugh-Out. Officially dated December 1975 (which means it probably shipped to newsstands a few months before that), you'd never know this is a Bicentennial comic from the cover, which makes fun of 1974's "The Towering Inferno":

But opening the cover reveals nothing towering, burning or remotely inferno-like. Instead we get a great five-page story called "Bicentennial Banter," in which we find Archie and the gang preparing for their roles in a Bicentennial costume pageant.

Of course, Archie and Reggie have to spend the beginning of the story making fun of Jughead and arguing over who will play George Washington (Reggie wins because his dad bought the costumes). After that rather standard Archie-style interplay, though, things gets really interesting. Betty, Veronica and the other female "gang" members show up and ask about the pageant's roles for women. Archie, incredulous, asks, "Female parts? What female parts?"

Reggie quickly offers up Betsey Ross as an answer, but that's not enough (and way too easy). In response, the women spend the next page quickly listing several important women from the Revolutionary War, as well as the essential roles all women took on during the era. Check it out below:

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Kids reading this back in 1975 probably had to run to the encyclopedia to find out more about these women. For me, reading this story in 2016 sent me instantly to the Google machine to look up names like Sally St. Clair and Lydia Darragh (whose name is actually misspelled in the comic). Wow. What a great little history lesson this five-page comic turns out to be. As far as I'm concerned, it's a minor classic. Archie Comics itself must agree -- they reprinted the tale in the book Archie Americana: Best of the Seventies.

I'd love to find out who wrote and drew this story. As with everything Archie published back then, it lacks creator credits. Even the Grand Comics Database (an essential reference) hasn't catalogued the writer or artist yet. That's a shame. If anyone out there knows, please chime in.

The rest of this issue doesn't have any Bicentennial content, but it's all pretty good. There's a nice mix of stories and one-page gags about Sabrina, Archie, Mr. Lodge, and a few other Archie characters. The highlight is probably a Josie story about littering -- a nice tie-in to the "keep American beautiful" campaign that was still in full swing in the mid-seventies.

I'll return to Archie's TV Laugh-Out in the near future, as the title actually contained a huge number of Bicentennial stories throughout 1976, more (as far as I can tell) than any comic except Captain America. Who knew TV laughing was so patriotic?