Alice Wance's Archie comics

This past Spring (or was it Winter...it's so hard to tell the difference nowadays, what with global warming), I walked into my neighborhood second-hand shop and found a pile of Archie titles on top of a bureau.  There must have been about 60 or 70 comics ranging from such titles as Archie (of course) to Betty and Veronica, Reggie and Me, Jugehead, and Archie and Me.  They were printed roughly between 1968 and 1972, so they were towards the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age.  I selected the best of the lot, the ones that could best be rated between Very Good and Fine Minus.  In short, the ones with some wear but still in decent shape.

The ones I really appreciated picking up were the "Archie" books, the ones drawn by Harry Lucey.  What an artist.  His lines are so sharp and his character's expressions and body language are straight out of vaudeville.  You should look him up.  I'm sure you'll agree that he should be remembered as the quintessential artist for Archie.  His stories took me back to my grade school days when I would read every single Archie Digest that belonged to my cousin.

When I returned home with my find, I discovered the name of one Alice Wance handwritten on the interior page of one of the issues.  At first, I was disappointed because it meant that the comic would be devalued.  But then I started to wonder who was this young reader?  Her handwriting suggested that she might have been between eight and ten.  I thought about how much she must have loved those stories.  And how lucky she was to have had parents who bought them for her.  Those stacks of comics...maybe those all did belong to her and she read, and re-read, each and every one of them until she outgrew them and then did other things that teenagers did back in the 70s.  I didn't smell smoke from the comics, so I guessed that she didn't smoke or did weed. I hope.

I wondered what might have happened to her.  And how those comics ended up in a second-hand store.  I shuddered to think that she may have passed away.  If she was about eight in 1968, she would be about 53 now.  It would be a human tragedy that someone her age would no longer be alive.  I did look her name up on-line but of the two Alice Wances that I found, the public records suggested that they were between 70 and 80. 

I'd like to think that she took care of them as best she could.  There were no torn pages.  She didn't color them with crayons or markers.  The spines were somewhat rolled, suggesting that they were piled upon one another.  Maybe she kept them in a nice spot on the bookshelf by the bed and she would read them before going to sleep. 

I'd like to think that she had a really nice childhood and that Archie helped along the way.  It would have been something I'd like to have asked her.  And if she still read any today.