Welcome to Archieness & Riverdalers Presents: Josie and the Pussycats (Vol. 1), Issue #60!

Josie and the Pussycats (Vol. 1) , Issue #60 [February, 1972]

”The Mummy’s Kiss”

Now, I don’t know shit about Josie or any of her Pussycats. I don’t know which one is Josie, I don’t know what her Pussycats’ names are, I don’t know why they’re running away from a goddamned mummy. All I know is that I’m hungry and there’s a bag of Pizza Rolls with my name on it.

“Heavy with the scent of embalmer’s spices, musty with the choking dust of his ancient tomb, stalking purposefully, propelled by the faint stirring of a long-buried memory, the thing from the crypt stumbled toward us! Who? Who was to be the lucky recipient of – THE MUMMY’S KISS?”

Stupid already! But hey, I like to think that some comic book writer out there wanted to be a poet but it didn’t work out very well, so he ended up writing for Josie and the Pussycats much to the delight of 11-year-olds from the 1970s.

Josie’s team, including two dudes with stupid pants, fly over the Nile River in an aeroplane and marvel at the pyramids and/or Sphinx-About-Town. Pretty soon, after a hearty breakfast of Coca-Cola and Wonderbread, our heroes set off to the tomb of the Boy Pharoah [sic] Ramelah IV. A one Mr. Cabot, who financed the dig, invited Josie her Shiftless Bums to site to hang out and do whatever.

A little Googling has told me this: Josie has red hair. Melody has blonde hair. Valerie is the token black chick. The two dudes are nobodies from Hell. We now return to our regularly scheduled inanity.

“Oooh! It’s fabulous!” says Melody as she gawks at some ancient statues. Mr. Cabot tells the kids that they can explore, but don’t get lost (lol). After a few hundred miles into the twisting catacombs, Josie notices something odd and strange! A statue of Queen Nubila, the child bride of Pharaoh Ramelah IV, looks just like Melody!

Well, Melody, looks like you’re going to have to stay behind and die of starvation here in the tomb to appease Ramelah IV’s mummified remains!

Flashback to Ramelah and Nubila hangin’ out in the desert. Ramelah’s like “we’ll make monuments celebrating our love!” and Nubila is like “I can dig it.”

“When I go, I go in style, baby! C’mon, let’s go scratch some naughty hieroglyphs on the pyramids!” says Ramelah. OK, I’m on board with Josie and the Pussycats. This is actually kind of amusing! It leaves Archie in the dust, I’ll tell you that much for free.

So two of these nerds, a guy who is still wearing sunglasses in the dark tomb, and a girl who is neither Josie nor her couple-a Pussycats, are children of Mr. Cabot. They seem like entitled assholes. Girl Child finds her dad’s notebook, with which he has been translating the hieroglyphs. Melody reads out of the book, not knowing that it’s an incantation! She’s all like “boogity boogity boo.”

“–and it shall be that there shall be a rebirth! And one who is reborn will speak this incantation!”

“Sounds dull!”

lol

“As the words echoes through the dank halls, there came a stirring from an undiscovered vault, and dust filtered down on our heads!”

Deep within the tomb, a crypt opens by itself. CREAK! A rotting hand clutches the side of the sarcophagus. It smells like turds and looks like poops. The mummified figure of Ramelah IV emerges, drawn to the lure of his old love. Oh snap, Melody’s gonna get the gross kiss! Bleh! Feh! Hork! Let’s watch!

“W-what is it? An earthquake?”

“Whatever it is – let’s split!”

Whoa, like, far out, man! Outta sight!

Split they try, but split they fail. The disgusting mummy crashes through the wall and runs toward the kids. Melody trips over a giant stone foot, and gets so scared when the mummy picks her up and runs off she faints on account of hella fright! Josie’s like “gulp!”

TO BE CONTINUED

NOW WE’RE BACK!

“We didn’t know what we’d do if we caught him, but we couldn’t let him run off with our Melody!”

I disagree, I think she’s collateral damage and they should cut their losses immediately.

The mummy runs into a room, flips a secret switch, and a gate drops between them and the rest of the group! Uninterrupted molestation time is nigh!

Instead of doing it her own damn self, Valerie asks someone to fetch the notebook. Melody read the incantation and brought the mummy back to life, so maybe someone has to unread the incantation to kill the mummy all over again! Bing bong so simple.

Meanwhile, Melody has regained consciousness and looks at the mummy, who is trying to grope her, with extreme disgust.

“Melody! Play it cool! Who knows from reborn mummies?” says sunglasses kid, who is the worst character in anything that I’ve ever seen in my life. The mummy leans into Melody for a lovely, moldy kiss.

“Close your eyes and pretend, Melody! You’ve had worse blind dates!”

Smeerp.

The mummy kisses the blonde one and disintegrates into a poof of dust as if Buffy the Vampire Slayer stabbed his little heart out.

“Like many a far, far younger man, he had crumbled before the power of melody’s kiss.”

“That was pretty strong stuff to fool around with at his age!” exclaims sunglasses kid, who has mutton chops and is wearing orange plaid pants. Melody says his breath stunk.

“We thought it best not to mention this little incident to Mr. Cabot! Some secrets are better left buried!”

Ha, yeah, he’s going to be like “WHERE’S RAMELAH IV? HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN THIS SARCOPHAGUS! 45 YEARS OF WORK RUINED!”

Actually, he’s happy that both Ramelah IV and Nubila have disappeared without a trace for some reason.

“Golly, I wonder if anyone will ever solve that mystery!” says Josie nervously.

Then the pyramid collapses, trapping everyone inside until they die of dehydration. The end.

”Twin Trouble”

After a hilarious advertisement for stick-on mustaches and sideburns, we return to Josie’s adventures. Josie and her crew are driving down the road when they see Archie pulled over with his own car smokin’ as the dickens! “I’m stranded! Ol’ Bess conked out on me!” he cries.

I find out that the sunglasses kid is named Alexander and I hate him tremendously. The blond boy is Alan. I hate him too.

ARCHIE, THOUGH, I ENJOY THAT SCAMP!

“We don’t have time to take you home, Archie!” declares Josie. They’re on their way to a gig. Archie thinks it’s prudent to crash the party and come along with them. “Never hurts to listen to the competition!” he smiles. “Maybe you Pussycats have something the Archies can use!”

Josie and the Pussycats begrudgingly let this ginger dork into their van. Alexander tells them all to turn left when they should have turned right and now they’re lost in the woods!

You done fucked up, Roy Orbison!

Alan, the idiot, drives right behind a tree and also between two trees, and I guess in front of a tree too because he can’t turn around. A large oaf in the woods named Lennie, likely an homage to Of Mice and Men, watches the group deliberate. He’s like “DURRRR DAAHHHH THE BLONDE ONE IS PUUURDY!” He leaps out of the trees, scoops Melody up, and runs off with her. Sound familiar? This just fucking happened. “Lennie not hurt you! Lennie like pretty things!”

Melody takes this in stride. It must happen quite often. A boy named George (confirming my Of Mice and Men hypothesis immediately) tells Lennie to put the girl down. Melody calmly introduces herself to George as if something totally alarming hadn’t just happened.

“How many times I gotta tell ya, Lennie?” George yells jumping up and down like a petulant, twerpy Gary Sinise-type. “You can’t just have everything ya see!” He tells Lennie to put her back, but Lennie wants to keep her.

George runs over to Josie’s group and tells them that Lennie’s got Melody. He’s half as big as King Kong and twice as dumb, and he’s going to get a bullet in the side of the brain if he so much as lays a penis on her. They can’t all gang up on Lennie, he’s too big and strong and he’s got some of that “retard strength” (not my words, but they are your words you intolerant asshole).

So they’re going to have Valerie try and outsmart him. Good luck, skippy. Before she has a chance to say “boo”, Alex the Sunglasses gives it a shot: he proposes a trade! How about you give back Melody and he’ll give you Alan!

Well, next thing you know, Alex is up a tree. Let’s try Valerie again. She’s going to grab a black afro wig from the van and plop it on Melody’s head. Now Lennie doesn’t know where the silvery-blonde went! This surely is a ruse for the ages!

Well, it works. Melody says the blonde girl went thattaway *points* and Lennie runs off in some random direction! The gang celebrates a victory until some bigger, dumber, smellier dude grabs Melody.

Once upon a time, someone actually wrote this shit.

Looney is even dumber than Lennie and he loves black hair! He runs off with Melody, who seems quite charmed. She gets raped and murdered and now Josie needs to find a new drummer. The end.

”What Are Friends For?”

A man comes backstage to congratulate the Pussycats on a wonderful, groovy concert! He’s a talent agent named Warren Owens who looks like Tom Jones, and Valerie falls in love with him instantly (probably because he and she have identical hair). He’s not good-looking at all – very tacky and tasteless – but she finds him very handsome all the same.

Warren tries to schmooze Valerie into breaking off from the group to start a solo career in… uh… Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Valerie doesn’t want to break up the group, they’re friends to the end! Right, girls? Right! Right! Wrong! Hey, who said that?! Make yourself known, coward!

Warren laughs all this off! HAH HAH HEE HOO HOO HAH HEE! “It isn’t every day you find such a nice group of friends!” he says banally. Valerie agrees, ready to pounce his dick. Well, he’s on the same page, here! He asks Valerie out on a date, which she graciously… gets weird and ambivalent about. “I’m flattered Warren, but I don’t really know you that well.” Yeah, I think Warren has rapist eyes, too, but I didn’t want to say anything.

I’m laughing pretty hard that Warren’s skin gets darker and darker with each panel. Like the artist was like “oh shit, we can’t have things get interracial here” but didn’t want to put the effort into fixing older panels. Warren bugs Valerie to please go on a date with him so that she can show her around town. She finally accepts, hearts floating around her noggin.

“I’ll pick you up at your house a 8 o’clock, Valerie! Stay loose cats!” he says, walking away.

Uh oh! Cat fight’s a’brewin’!

Josie doesn’t trust Warren. Probably because he’s black and that’s racist, but this is 1972 so them’s the breaks, sister. Racism wins in the end every time. Don’t blame Josie, this is society’s fault through and through!

“Just because he finds me attractive you don’t trust him!” snaps Valerie. “I never said that to you about Alan M.”

“I’m sorry, Valerie! I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did, he just strike’s me as a ladies man!”

Now that you mention it, he does look like a ladies man. And by that I mean Leon Phelps the Ladies Man, played by Tim Meadows, who is funnier than this story.

Valerie doesn’t care, it’s date time! She puts on her best yellow rubber dress with huge orange flowers on it and hits the town.

“I’m so happy you decided to come with me Val, you’re one of the most beautiful girls I have ever had the honor of being with!” says Warren, and the words melt like butter in Valerie’s ears! Now it’s down to business: quit the Pussycats and come be a solo artist in Boback Cedar Hills (I was close with that one, lmao). He suggests that the rest of the group may be holding Valerie back. Valerie’s getting uncomfortable with the subject; calls it “tacky.” So Warren backs off a bit and compliments her butt or whatever and then suggests taking a ride to the country together to look at the moonlight so he can try groping her in a place no one can hear her scream. Sound good?

“Sounds great! Let’s split!”

And those were Valerie’s last words.

Give me a nuzzle, you ol’ so-and-so.

It turns out that Warren is a perfect gentleman because this comic is rated PG and only Lennie and Looney are allowed to take advantage of women here. At the end of the evening, Valerie gets dropped off without having to use her pepper spray and she’ll see Warren tomorrow at the show! Bye bye, smoochie smoochie.

The next day, Josie asks Valerie how things were. They were aight. But when Josie hears that Warren loves Valerie, Josie is like “Slow your roll, homie! Ain’t no one falling in love with my Pussycat two seconds after meeting her!” Something fishy is going on here. This dude still wants her to leave the band, right? Something’s fishy! Something stinks and it’s not fish this time. Hopefully. Check the fridge.

No? Whew! Anyway, Valerie assures her boss that she didn’t even want to talk about leaving the group anyway. Relax, guy!

Meanwhile, Melody strolls down the hallway and catches Warren talking loudly in a phone booth. “You just give me a few more hours and I’ll have that chick Valerie eating out of my hand!” he exclaims happily within earshot of the whole studio. “It takes a little fast talking, but you know the guy who can do it! Once I pour on the sweet romance bit, just like a dizzy chick, she’ll melt like butter, so you just bring over that contract, I’ll get her to sign it!”

Too many exclamation points, Warren my man. Melody’s going to rat you the fuck out!

…but Valerie doesn’t want to hear any of it. That old chestnut. She knows more than them! What do they know? Nothing! What does she know? Everything! Warren is a hunk of man and Valerie isn’t letting a couple of bitches keep her away!

This is pretty tropey, Josie and the Pussycats! I expected more nuance from an Archie Comics publication!

I suppose we all know where this is going. Valerie gets mad at her friends. She thinks Melody is lying, that Warren was right the whole time about them holding her back. Valerie calls them both FINKS and storms out of there! Time to talk to Warren about signing a contract to put out a solo album calling “SCREAMING HOOTERS” and ride mechanical bulls at dive bars as a publicity stunt.

“Just because a fellow loves me, they’re trying to put him down!” Valerie rants angrily to herself. “It makes me see red!”

But then she eavesdrops on Warren talking with his buddy Charlie about Valerie’s contract. “That Valerie chick is a piece of cake! I’ll have her John Hancock on this contract as soon as the show is over!”

Valerie is appalled! Aghast, even! “Hee! Hee!” Warren continues. “The poor dizzy doll will be willing to sign her life away for me!”

Now Valerie is tearing up. Betrayal!

Sigh! Groan! Blast! Puke! Moo! Mooooo!

Josie and Melody approach their friend during this vulnerable moment. They apologize for upsetting her, and Melody claims that she should’ve kept her big, fat, stupid, crazy, idiotic, banal, cocksucking mouth shut! Her words, not mine. Not yours this time, either. This was all in the comic, I swear it!

Valerie apologizes too for being so uptight. Everyone smiles wanly as Warren enters the room all like “Hey babes, what’s crackin’?” Valerie asks Warren for the contract, to which Warren is all like “Hey babes, that’s what I like to hear!” Valerie then rips it up, to which Warren is all like “Hey babes, you’re breakin’ muh heart!”

Warren stomps away angrily! Warren doesn’t lose! He never loses!

You know who else loses? Every reader.

Final Thoughts

This issue was over 50 pages long! And, holy shit, did you seriously read this whole stupid blog post? Go outside, nerd!