She's Josie #3
She's Josie #3 is the third installment of Dan DeCarlo and Frank Doyle's early-Silver Age teen-humor series that introduced a distinct female-led corner of the Archie universe — one that would eventually evolve into Josie and the Pussycats and anchor a Hanna-Barbera animated franchise. The issue deepens the ensemble cast by bringing Alexander Cabot II into the story, placing the wealthy Cabot family at the narrative center in a jewel-smuggling caper that weaves all three girls and their social circle together. Running alongside the Josie stories, the Li'l Jinx backup feature by Joe Edwards underscores Archie's strategy of bundling multiple branded characters into a single title, a format that helped build the readership loyalty the series would need to sustain nearly two decades in print.
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Dan DeCarlo conceived the Josie characters — originally just Josie, Melody, and Pepper — as the stars of a rejected newspaper strip he called Here's Josie, only pivoting to Archie Comics after syndicate passes left the property unsold. He showed the samples to editor-in-chief Richard Goldwater, received approval within days, then expanded the cast by designing supporting characters on model sheets, while veteran Archie writer Frank Doyle handled all scripting duties throughout the early run. She's Josie #3 sits squarely in this formative phase: the creative team of DeCarlo (pencils), Rudy Lapick (inks), Vincent DeCarlo (letters), and Doyle (scripts) was already operating as a well-oiled unit just eight months into the title's life, producing the multi-story anthology format that would define the book for years.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated October 1963, published by Archie Publications — the third issue of the She's Josie series, which launched in February 1963.
- Creative team: writer Frank Doyle, penciler Dan DeCarlo, inker Rudy Lapick, letterer Vincent DeCarlo, editor-in-chief Richard Goldwater.
- The issue contains four Josie stories — 'Sweater Girls,' 'Bad Sort,' 'Native Nuisance,' and 'Force Feed' — built around a diamond-smuggling plot in which Melody accidentally purchases a jewel-laden sweater.
- Alexander Cabot II (father of Alexander Cabot III) appears in this issue, with the Cabot beach house serving as a key story location — making this one of the earliest issues to establish the Cabot family's wealth as a recurring plot engine.
- Alexander Cabot III, already introduced in She's Josie #1 as the rich rival who pursues both Josie and Melody, plays a supporting role here; he would later become the manager of Josie and the Pussycats when the title was revamped in 1969.
- The issue includes a Li'l Jinx backup humor page ('Sweet Talk!') by Joe Edwards, one of several Archie properties that shared page space throughout the She's Josie run.
- Hap Holliday also appears in the issue, rounding out the recurring supporting cast alongside the three lead girls and the Cabot family.
- The series was intentionally positioned as slightly more sophisticated than the core Archie titles, with DeCarlo designing the characters to read as a few years older than the Riverdale gang — a distinction that gave the pre-Pussycats era its own tonal identity.
Cast · 7 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Melody buys a sweater that, unknown to her, has real diamonds sewn into it as part of a smuggling operation. The smugglers follow the girls up to Alex's beach house to steal the sweater back.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).