The Art Of Betty And Veronica edited by Victor Gorelick & Craig Yoe

This book makes so much more sense now that I’ve learned it’s a reissue of a volume first published in 2012.

I grew up on Betty and Veronica. Moving to Malaysia in the 80s was a big cultural shock for me as a kid. I missed the USA and I missed how much easier and cheaper it had been to get books and other quality English-language reading material, especially from the much more accessible Virginia libraries. When my new best friend brought out her stack of Archie comics at school one day, I was hooked. We would read them together on breaks, outside on the bleachers beneath the cherry* tree. The comics weren’t so much a taste of home — I was eight: the high school and dating shenanigans that are central to the comics were completely alien to me — as they were a window to a possible future. Plus, they were uniformly funny, with jokes I understood culturally.

For Elina and me, the real stars of the show were undoubtedly B&V; everyone else was just supporting cast. I think we both identified as Veronicas: sure she could be bitchy and bossy, and her relationship with Archie was definitely less than ideal, but she didn’t let him or anyone else walk over her the way Betty allowed them to. The books also inspired our fashion designer sides. We dreamed of having our names featured in the comic, as hundreds of others had been — the prohibitive cost of postage stopped me from actually sending anything in, but it was nice to draw outfits and dream.

So when the publicist at Titan recently offered me this gorgeous over-sized hardback exploring the art of B&V since their inception in the 1940s, there was no way I was saying no. B&V were a huge part of my childhood, and I absolutely wanted to know more about their history and the creative process that shaped them into the influential figures that they were on me and on thousands, if not millions, of others growing up. And yes, I absolutely binge watched the first two seasons of Riverdale, lol (I think I bailed around Season 4 tho.)

The evolution of art through the decades is accompanied by short essays. You can really see how the comics changed with the zeitgeist, moving from the marginally more realistic, romance comics-inspired figures of the 1940s to the more cartoony style of today. Archie Comics’ devotion to the current trends in fashion and teen social issues was also laudable, even if the longer piece that this volume uses as an example of the 2000s felt way more awkwardly cash-grabby than anything prior, even in the allegedly Greed Is Good 80s. I did really love the interview bits with Dan DeCarlo, especially as he explained the deliberate design decisions he used to differentiate between B&V. His take on the girls is absolutely my touchstone for the duo, and it’s good to read how thoughtfully he treated them.

As a reader in 2026, it is, however, a little weird to see only pencils credited on the art pages, especially when the penciller and inker names appear quite prominently together in the artwork (e.g. Dan DeCarlo & Alison Flood on covers in the 90s.) It’s also a little awkward to realize that Ms Flood is in the small minority of women who ever actually worked on the art of B&V. Don’t even get me started on how uncomfortable it was to read grown men get hot and bothered over cartoon teenagers. I get it but also ew. It feels like a missed opportunity to not have a female author/essayist talk about the impact of these iconic characters on her life: instead we get a little too much sexualization of teenagers in bathing suits. That’s probably a whole other book on its own tho, and one I would probably also read.

*Muntingia calabura a.k.a pokok ceri in Malay.

The Art Of Betty And Veronica edited by Victor Gorelick & Craig Yoe was published September 22 2026 by Titan Books and is available from all good booksellers, including