Little Archie is a comic book published by Archie Comics from 1956 to 1983, lasting 180 issues. Little Archie #1 is considered to be "scarce" by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (only 20-100 copies exist). Among the artists and writers who drew the series were Bob Bolling [1] and Dexter Taylor [2]
According to the introduction in The Best of Archie,[3] the idea for Little Archie came about during a poker game. John Goldwater was playing cards with some of the other comic book publishers one night and they began to kid him about his Archie comics. They told him: "Here we publish all types of comic books and you make an empire just out of Archie. All your books are Archie this or Archie that or Big Archie or Little Archie..." Inspired, Goldwater added Little Archie in 1956. Bob Bolling wrote and drew the comic strip, which introduced new plots and characters to the Archie legend by concentrating on the adventures of the gang during their early elementary-school days.[4] Dexter Taylor succeeded him on the series.
Little Archie featured Archie and his friends as elementary school-aged children.[5] It is arguably the most successful of the alternate versions of Archie. The world of Little Archie is remarkably similar to that of his teenage counterpart. Most of the same characters are featured, albeit usually in younger versions. Miss Grundy and Mr. Weatherbee appear as a teacher and the principal at Riverdale Elementary School. Little Archie is always referred to and addressed as "Little Archie". Although stories featuring one of the other characters would be titled "Little Jughead", "Little Betty" and so on, the characters themselves were always addressed by their regular names. Designed for a younger target audience, Little Archie stories tended to have more educational and moral content than regular Archie stories marketed towards tween readers.[6]
In addition to the main comic, The Adventures of Little Archie, there were also spin-offs Little Archie in Animal Land (1957-1958) and Little Archie Mystery (1963), which put the characters in a more realistically drawn setting.[7]
In 1991, there was a radical redesign of the Little Archie universe. Renamed as "The New Little Archie", it featured the Little Archie characters with contemporary fashions, hairstyles, and sensibilities, and with a more modern-looking art style, yet giving the cartoonish look solely to kid characters (similar to Tiny Toon Adventures and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo) while leaving the adults in their standard designs. One notable change was that Archie was now addressed merely as "Archie" and no longer "Little Archie". This relaunch was condemned by fans of the original incarnation and the Little Archie universe ultimately went back to its old style in 1993, resulting that ACP disowned the relaunch as no stories were ever reprinted, becoming unknown to the new generation readers.[8] Another redesigned Little Archie, art by Art Baltazar, occurred when it crossed-over the Tiny Titans universe in the 5th issue of World of Archie Double Digest in 2011. Unlike the experience from the early 1990s, this received better attention as a picture book is currently in the markets.[9]
Many recurring characters appeared only in Little Archie, though several were later introduced in the mainstream comics.
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