Pep #172
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freePep Comics #172 is a 1964 snapshot of the Archie anthology engine at full throttle — it showcases the deliberate strategy of pairing the newly launched Josie (barely a year into her own solo series, She's Josie) with the core Riverdale cast inside Pep's pages, exactly the kind of early crossover exposure that helped establish her as a viable Archie-universe spinoff character. The issue also illustrates how Pep served as Archie Publications' flagship showcase title, cycling through virtually every recurring character the company owned — from the eternal Betty–Veronica–Archie triangle, to Moose and Miss Grundy's classroom comedy, to Li'l Jinx's longstanding backup slot — in a single anthology package. That breadth of character deployment in one mid-run issue reflects the editorial philosophy that made Pep one of the longest-running humor anthology titles in American comics history, ultimately reaching 411 issues.
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By 1964, Pep had completed its transformation from a Golden Age superhero anthology into a pure humor title centered on Archie Andrews and rotating Riverdale cast members. Dan DeCarlo — who had modernized the visual house style of Archie Comics beginning in the early 1950s and had just launched the Josie character in her own title with writer Frank Doyle — was the primary artistic force in Pep's humor stories during this period, with Rudy Lapick serving as his inker on at least one story in this issue (a credit originally misattributed to DeCarlo himself in earlier database records, later corrected). Josie's appearances in Pep during this window were part of the irregular crossover strategy that brought her before the broader Archie readership before her own title had accumulated a significant back-catalog.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Pep Comics #172 was published in 1964 by Archie Publications as part of the long-running anthology series that began in January 1940 and ran for 411 issues through March 1987.
- The issue contains the story 'Betty and Veronica in The Choice,' in which Betty and Veronica's rivalry over Archie escalates to a physical confrontation broken up by Hiram Lodge.
- A Moose Mason / Miss Grundy classroom story is included, built around Moose misunderstanding a grammar quiz question — a representative example of the recurring Riverdale school-humor format.
- Josie appears in a crossover story with the main Archie cast; these irregular Pep appearances during 1963–65 were an early vehicle for cross-promoting the new She's Josie series to the core Archie readership.
- Li'l Jinx, the Joe Edwards-created child-humor character who had been a Pep backup feature since issue #62 (July 1947), appears in a beach gag strip — one of her hundreds of appearances across the title's run.
- An 'Archie in The Kloppy Jalopy!' story featuring Fred Andrews is included, part of the recurring motif of Archie's unreliable Model T jalopy that ran throughout the Silver Age Pep issues.
- A Jughead story in which Jughead feigns intellectual pretensions prompts Archie and Reggie to follow suit, leaving all the girls dateless — illustrating the ensemble ensemble-comedy structure typical of Pep's anthology format.
- Dan DeCarlo penciled at least one story in the issue; inking on that story was performed by Rudy Lapick, per corrected Grand Comics Database records (an earlier tentative credit to DeCarlo as inker was revised in 2015).
Cast · 20 characters
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
When Jughead develops intellectual pretensions, the girls think it's dreamy. So Archie and Reggie become intellectuals, leaving the girls without dates. They take revenge on Jughead.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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