Evidence that Team Comix still has some work to do on polishing the ol’ image: The Toronto Globe and Mail has an article on the impending Archie makeover that includes these paragraphs:
But don’t expect Betty and Veronica to go all manga with skimpy clothes, teen sex or violence. Good golly, no. The new-look story will stay firmly within what Silberkleit calls “the Archie Comics code of decency.”
“There will be no denigrating anybody, no putting down authority or family, no sex, no drugs. The characters will still wear seatbelts. There’ll be no smoking. Nobody is going to break the law. It’s going to be the same thing from dear old Riverdale [the characters’ hometown] that we know and love,” he says.
Note that in the next paragraph the reporter reveals that in olden times Betty and Veronica were “the ultimate sweater girls with A-bomb warheads.” And cars didn’t have seatbelts back then, either.
Seriously, while it’s true that scanty costumes are a manga standard, most shoujo manga in the 13+ range (the Archie demographic) have an almost prudish moral code. The kids take on a lot of family responsibility, take school seriously, and act like they have to marry the first guy they kiss. It’s true that I don’t see a lot of seatbelts, though.
I dunno what they’re talking about anyway— a lot of Archie is pretty sexualized. Reggie and Archie make references to tits and ass all the time (usually as “curves”). I also remember a particular scene where Archie and Betty were making out— you didn’t see them in the panel, but he was saying stuff like, “ooh, do that again!” and whatnot.
I wasn’t so aware of it at the time (which is telling, I suppose), but looking back? Very sexual.
Lol, somebody says something other than “lol what a wondreful art style!!” in the media about manga and mangablog goes ballistic.