Creation
Montana attended high school in Haverhill from 1936 to 1939, and his sketchbook, an illustrated diary of life in Haverhill, was the true origin of Archie Comics. After four years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Montana returned in 1946 to launch the Archie newspaper comic strip, which he drew until his death in 1975. Montana's daughters once made pages from this sketchbook available online. Several real-life residents of Haverhill were drawn into Montana's creation, as was revealed when film critic Gerald Peary interviewed Haverhill's cartoon character prototypes for the Boston Globe in 1980.
His friends, Skinny Linehan and Arnold Daggett, were the basis for Jughead Jones and Moose Mason respectively. School librarian Elizabeth Tuck inspired Miss Grundy and principal Earl McLeod was the model for Mr. Weatherbee. Montana knew the Massachusetts' Brahmin political family, the Lodges, because he had once painted a mural for them; he combined their family name with actress Veronica Lake to create Veronica Lodge. Betty Cooper was based on Montana's girlfriend in New York. Pop Tate's Chocklit Shoppe, a soda shop where Archie's Gang hang out, was based on real-life locations frequented by Haverhill teenagers during the 1930s — Crown Confectionery and the Chocolate Shop on Merrimack Street and the Tuscarora on Winter Street.
Read more about this topic: Archie Andrews (comics)
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.”
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957)
“The human spirit is itself the most wonderful fairy tale that can possibly be. What a magnificent world lies enclosed within our bosoms! No solar orbit hems it in, the inexhaustible wealth of the total visible creation is outweighed by its riches!”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)