Archie Comics #4
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeArchie Comics #4 (cover-dated September–October 1943) earns its place as a genuine Golden Age key by delivering the first appearance of Souphead Jones — Jughead's look-alike younger cousin — who went on to become a recurring fixture of the Jones family mythology across decades of stories. The issue also deepens the Betty-and-Veronica rivalry in a notably direct way: the story 'Glamour In White' puts both girls in direct competition over Archie while working side-by-side as nurses, an early template for the comedic love-triangle storytelling that would define the franchise. By the fourth issue the core Riverdale cast and their family members — Fred Andrews, Mary Andrews, and Jughead's extended family — are already being built out, demonstrating how quickly the Archie line was constructing a full fictional universe around its title character.
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The issue was published by Archie Publications in 1943 during the height of the Golden Age, when the self-titled Archie series was still only a few issues old, having launched in winter 1942 off the back of Archie's breakout popularity in Pep Comics. The cover was drawn by Harry Sahle, who also contributed interior art and story work alongside Joe Edwards, Clem Weisbacker, Zoltan Szenics, and Janice Valleau; Bob Montana, Archie's primary co-creator, contributed pencils and inks to at least one interior story. Sahle was a working studio artist of the era who drew gag cartoons for Boy's Life in the late 1930s before contributing to multiple Archie Publications features including Archie, The Black Hood, and Steel Sterling during the 1940s.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Souphead Jones, described across multiple sources as Jughead's younger, look-alike cousin, introduced in the story 'Spring Fever'; he went on to appear in dozens of subsequent Archie Comics issues.
- The story 'Glamour In White' features Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge both taking jobs at the same hospital to compete for Archie's attention — an early, explicit use of the Betty-vs.-Veronica rivalry as the engine of a plot.
- Cover by Harry Sahle; interior art credited to Harry Sahle, Bob Montana, Joe Edwards, Clem Weisbacker, Zoltan Szenics, and Janice Valleau; stories by Ed Goggin, Harry Sahle, Bob Gorman (text story), and at least one uncredited writer.
- The issue includes a two-page text story, 'Archie the Fixer,' by Bob Gorman — reflecting the era's editorial requirement that comic magazines contain prose material to qualify for second-class postal rates.
- The cover carries a promotional plug for the Archie radio show, confirming that by issue #4 the character had already expanded beyond comics into broadcast media.
- The story 'Oscar the Watch-Dog' features Fred Andrews (Mr. Andrews) and Mrs. Andrews alongside Archie and the family dog Oscar, showing the Andrews parents as recurring supporting characters in their own comedic subplots from very early in the run.
- Key stories from this issue — including 'Spring Fever' — were collected and reprinted in Archie Archives Volume 2 (Dark Horse, hardcover October 2011) and again in Archie Archives: Spring Fever and Other Stories (Dark Horse trade paperback, May 2016), which collects Archie Comics #3–6 among other issues.
- The Grand Comics Database records that the on-sale date for this issue is confirmed by the Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 2, Periodicals, 1943, New Series, Vol. 38, No. 4, placing its publication firmly in 1943.
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Reprinted in Archie Archives #2 (2011), Archie (Jumbo Comics) Double Digest #238 (2013), The Best of Archie Comics #3 (2013), Best of Archie Comics Betty and Veronica #1 (2014), B&V Friends Double Digest Magazine #245 (2015), Archie Archives #2 (2016)
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