She's Josie #7
She's Josie #7 (August 1964) marks the debut of Alexandra Cabot, the scheming, boy-crazy antagonist whose rivalry with Josie became one of the series' defining dramatic engines — and who would eventually carry that dynamic all the way into the Josie and the Pussycats era and its 1970 Hanna-Barbera animated adaptation. By pairing Alexandra with her already-established brother Alexander Cabot III in the same issue, writer Frank Doyle and artist Dan DeCarlo locked in the sibling duo that would torment Josie's circle for the next two decades. The issue also reflects the series' early Silver Age identity as a music-themed teen-humor book distinct from the broader Archie line, centering its stories on Albert's guitar obsession in a way that foreshadowed the full rock-band transformation the title would undergo five years later.
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The She's Josie series grew out of a failed newspaper strip concept Dan DeCarlo originally developed under the title Here's Josie in the late 1950s; when syndication fell through, he brought the characters to Archie's Richard Goldwater and relaunched them as a comic book debuting in early 1963. DeCarlo designed all the supporting characters — including the Cabot siblings — from model sheets submitted to the publisher, while Frank Doyle handled all the scripting, a collaboration DeCarlo himself confirmed in a 2001 interview. Richard Goldwater served as editor-in-chief, and by issue #7 the team had settled into a confident multi-story format that distinguished the book from standard single-story Archie fare.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Alexandra Cabot, Alexander Cabot III's twin sister and Josie's primary female antagonist, confirmed across multiple sources including the Archie Comics Wiki and the Alexandra Cabot character page.
- Cover-dated July/August 1964, published by Archie Comics (Radio Comics imprint); written by Frank Doyle, penciled and cover-drawn by Dan DeCarlo, edited by Richard Goldwater.
- The issue's main storyline centers on Albert receiving a guitar from Josie for his birthday and becoming so consumed by music that he neglects her — a music-obsession thread that prefigures the series' eventual full transformation into a rock-band title.
- Alexandra's debut story shows her immediately established as a schemer pursuing whoever Josie is dating: she flatters Albert, gives him a rock-and-roll makeover, and pushes him off a bridge when he sings about marrying Josie.
- Alexander Cabot III — who first appeared back in She's Josie #1 — appears here alongside his newly introduced twin sister, cementing the Cabot sibling dynamic that would persist through the Josie and the Pussycats era and the 1970 cartoon.
- A Li'l Jinx backup story by Joe Edwards also appears in the issue, featuring the characters Li'l Jinx (Jinx Holliday) and Greg — part of the regular backup feature that ran through the She's Josie series.
- The series was adapted into the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Josie and the Pussycats in 1970 and a live-action Universal/MGM film in 2001, making characters introduced in these early issues culturally long-lived.
- Melody Valentine and Pepper Smith, both present from She's Josie #1, appear in this issue; Melody's surname 'Valentine' was not established in the original comics but was introduced by the 2001 film and later accepted as canonical by Archie Comics.
Cast · 8 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Alex tries to show Josie that he can play the guitar and sing better than Albert. Meanwhile, his sister Alexandra, who has a crush on Albert, decides to make a play for that "penniless waif."
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).