SERIOCOMIC (18)
By:
May 1, 2019
One in a weekly series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels.
SPIRE CHRISTIAN COMICS
In 1973, the publisher of Archie Comics licensed Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and other iconic characters to Spire Christian Comics, an imprint co-founded by Al Hartley. A comics industry vet who’d written and drawn anodyne teen, romance, and humor titles — Dotty, Vicky, Patsy Walker, Archie — for decades before becoming a born-again Christian, Hartley cranked out dozens of evangelical comics from 1972–1982. Throughout the ’80s, the parish halls of many an evangelical church like the one I attended, in Boston, boasted a rack of Spire titles — e.g., Archie’s One Way, Jughead’s Soul Food, as well as Hartley’s adaptations of born-again memoirs by the likes of Johnny Cash (!), and hippified Bible stories (!!) — which we impressionable adolescents pored over. Hartley’s groovy, cartoony, brightly colored visuals were irresistible — but the stories were inevitably dark, foreboding, reminiscent of The New-England Primer, the textbook that propagated Puritan norms in early America. (Hartley’s father was the ultra-reactionary New Jersey Republican who brought us the Taft-Hartley Act, which was criticized, at the time, as a “slave-labor bill.”) I read and re-read dramatic parables like Archie’s Clean Slate (1973), in which drug-using Riverdale High teens get into a car accident, and the trippy depiction of the Rapture in There’s A New World Coming (1974), based on the predictions of the Christian Zionist preacher Hal Lindsey; they’re burned into my brain, forever. And yet, simultaneously, even at age 12 or 13, I could recognize how bathetic and ham-handed these “fun” comics were; I could almost sense a double consciousness developing, in my mind, while I thumbed through their gaudy pages. For better or worse, Spire Christian Comics helped make me the ironist I am today.
ALSO SEE: BETTY COOPER | VERONICA LODGE
SERIOCOMIC: Mimi Lipson on LITTLE LULU | Sara Ryan on AMPHIGOREY | Gary Panter on THE NUT BROS./THE SQUIRREL CAGE | Gordon Dahlquist on POGO | Robert Wringham on VIZ | Matthew De Abaitua on CAPTAIN BRITAIN | Jessamyn West on FUN HOME | Bradley Peterson on HELLBOY | Stephanie Burt on KITTY PRYDE RETURNS | Jenny Davidson on OOR WULLIE | Luc Sante on MARSUPILAMI | Susan Roe on BLOOM COUNTY | Marilyn Berlin Snell on CHARLES ADDAMS | Deb Chachra on ARKHAM ASYLUM | Judith Zissman on ERNIE POOK’S COMEEK | Alexandra Lange on BETTY (ARCHIE) | Catherine Newman on VERONICA (ARCHIE) | Josh Glenn on SPIRE CHRISTIAN COMICS | Adam McGovern on THE CREW | William Nericcio on ERRATA STIGMATA | Chelsey Johnson on DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR | Sherri Wasserman on TANK GIRL | Tom Nealon on MEGATON MAN | Erin M. Routson on THE WEDDING OF SCOTT SUMMERS & JEAN GREY | Douglas Wolk on FRANK IN THE RIVER | Annie Nocenti on DICK TRACY | James Parker on 2000 AD | Adrienne Crew on NUTS | Vanessa Berry on MEAT CAKE | John Holbo on WITZEND | Michael Campochiaro on SPIDER-WOMAN | Miranda Mellis on RED SONJA & BÊLIT | Michael Grasso on THE NEW MUTANTS | Ty Burr on BINKY BROWN | Bishakh Som on AMAR CHITRA KATHA | Mark Kingwell on CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED | Brian Berger on JIMBO | Kenya (Robinson) on AGENT 355 | Seth on THE ETERNALS ANNUAL | Susannah Breslin on SLASHER | Lisa Kahlden on JACK CHICK TRACTS | Mandy Keifetz on KRAZY KAT | Tom Devlin on DUM-DUM POSSE READER | Eric Reynolds on ACTION COMICS #460 | Rick Pinchera on EIGHTBALL #16 | Juan Recondo on DAYTRIPPER | Elizabeth Foy Larsen on ROZ CHAST | J.E. Anckorn on HALO JONES | Deborah Wassertzug on GREAT POP THINGS | Peggy Nelson on MAD MOVIE SATIRES | Holly Interlandi on ANGEL SANCTUARY | Karen Green on THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS.
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