Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 240
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-5381-2973-9 • Hardback • July 2020 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-5381-2974-6 • eBook • July 2020 • $30.00 • (£22.95)
Tim Hanley is a comic book historian and the author of Wonder Woman Unbound (2014), Investigating Lois Lane (2016), and The Many Lives of Catwoman (2017). His work has also appeared in the Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Comics Journal. As a boy, he had a stack of Archie Comics digests taller than he was, and this remains the case today even though he is considerably taller now. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Hanley takes a deep, well-researched dive into the history of Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge, analyzing their original appearances and exploring their many iterations since. He contextualizes their characters’ evolution within the cultural shifts of each decade (1950s domesticity, 1970s feminism) and shows how, in the publisher’s effort to tweak their formulaic high jinks, the girls both followed and subverted gender roles.
— Booklist
Hanley surveys the history of the two BFFs, beginning with Betty’s first appearance in Pep #22 (December 1941) and following through to the third season of Riverdale on the CW. Not only does the book give the reader a good sense of Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge’s evolving place in pop culture over the decades, including their appearances beyond the comic book page, but it also offers illuminating insight into the crystallization of the pairs’ personalities.
— ComicsBeat
Tim Hanley has this gift to dive deep into the history and legacy of pop culture creations you think you know. Betty and Veronica is his best example of that yet: informative, funny, and fascinating, Tim Hanley is one of the best pop culture writers working today.— Maria Lewis, journalist, author
If you want to know about the female comics characters who have captivated readers from the Golden Age forward, Tim Hanley is your guy. His book Betty and Veronica moves these characters out of Archie’s shadow to shine a spotlight on their development in comics, radio, and television over the past nearly 80 years. Hanley’s thoughtful analysis provides insights for fans of the Archie mediaverse as well as pop culture scholars, as he shares how creative forces (sometimes) worked in conjunction with broader social phenomena to shape their representation. Betty and Veronica have been part of my life for nearly 50 years (I’m a Betty by the way), and Hanley’s book let me know I still have much to learn.— Carol Tilley, comics historian and 2016 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards judge
"Chapter by chapter, Hanley relates the history of the company from the perspective of Betty and Veronica being its major characters rather than Archie. It’s a fascinating way to look at things. While they remain essentially the same in the comics until recent years, the text follows their variations on radio, in TV pilots, on records, in Al Hartley’s parallel world Christian Archieverse, and in animated cartoons, all with details and trivia likely to be new to even the most hardcore Riverdale buff. Yes, the current TV teen super-soap is covered as well."
— Forces of Geek