History repeats itself in such a lovely way: Thank-you, Mr. Dan DeCarlo!

Something really amazing just happened, and I am so excited I have to blog about it. Forgive me as this writer turns totally geeky. (OK, geeky is my default mode, really, but ...) I was doing a workout on the treadmill downstairs, and lightning struck for a second time, and I was flabbergasted. I was looking down at my name on the page of an Archie Comic from 2000. And I had no idea it was there. Wow.

 

Let me back up a bit. Back in 1999, I had the occasion to meet someone I really looked up to. I was helping my friend Rob cover the Mid-Ohio-Con in Columbus, Ohio, for his Comics Continuum website.  (The con was called that back then, at least -- it's since been rebranded.) Mr. Dan DeCarlo, longtime Archie Comics artist and a great talent in the comics world, was there along with his sweet and beautiful wife Josette. They did quite a few shows like this, bringing along the original black-and-white art from his comic book covers and inside pages over the years. He would typically offer an original cover for $75, inside pages maybe for a little less.

From that meeting, and a phone conversation, came a story I wrote for the Comic Buyer's Guide publication (a hard-copy pub, back then, chockful of great comics-related news). I really admired Mr. DeCarlo's work for Archie -- had seen it all my life, since I was a wee girl reading Archies, and I had come to know his signature look for Betty and Veronica. I jokingly referred to him as the Versace of Archie Comics because he always made them look so sexy, but never trashy. Always classy in a sense, for teenage girls, you know? But so feminine and beautiful. Mr. DeCarlo was truly a legend. And he was so cordial and kind to me, when we spoke. I purchased one of his original Archie covers for my brother, who is a big Archies fan, as well, who even named his daughter after Veronica Lodge. And Mr. DeCarlo gave me an additional piece of art that he signed just for me:

I had told Mr. DeCarlo how his character of Cheryl Blossom was my very favorite Archie Comics character, since she was the redhead and all. Cheryl had only come along at Archie a few years before, in the 1980s-1990s. So we'd talked a little about that, as well as the Josie character, another one he developed for Archie over the years, and whom he, of course, had based upon his wife.

So my story on Mr. DeCarlo story hit CBG in February 2000:

At the time, I was living in downtown Detroit and working at The Detroit News. I was a subscriber to the Cheryl Blossom title of Archie, since I intended to collect every appearance of the character. (For you millennials, that meant the paper copy of the comic actually arrived in the postal mail!) When I got the comic issues, I would put them on a stack in my apartment for reading in the workout room downstairs. One morning that summer or fall of 2000, I unsuspectingly grabbed the top couple issues off the stack to go downstairs and do my workout. While I was huffing and puffing on the stairstepper, I just about had a heart attack. There, staring me in the face from the cover of Cheryl Blossom No. 34, was my own name written right on the boogie board Cheryl was carrying:

Oh, my word, Mr. DeCarlo!!!!! I just about blew a gasket. Wow. I was so excited and honored, that this talented cover artist snuck my name onto that issue as a little "hello."

Unfortunately, Mr. DeCarlo passed away about a year later, leaving behind such a wonderful legacy -- more than 40 years with Archie Comics alone, as well as other work over the years. But to so many, he has always been the defining look for Betty and Veronica. After a while had passed, I decided to call Josette to see if perhaps she might have the original of that amazing Cheryl Blossom No. 34. She was still attending cons to promote his work. She looked for the original cover, and alas, it was not to be found. I am still on the hunt for it, but I have bought up several copies of the regular comic from comic shops and the Internet over the years.

So now we'll flash-forward to the present year, 2019. My love for Archie Comics has never waned, and as a part of a YouTube series I do on collectibles, Terrific non-TV Toys (a spinoff of Terrific TV Toys, LOL), I did a couple episodes on a set of Betty and Veronica fashion dolls released back in 2000 by Playing Mantis. I had kept them in their boxes over the years, not quite sure how to display them, and probably not really having the room to display them among all of my other collectibles anyway. But I decided now was the time to open them, on camera, for the series. Each one of the three Betty dolls in the set had a regular full-sized Betty comic book included in the box.

So I literally opened each one on camera, loved and admired it a bit for the episode, then threw the comics themselves onto a stack for -- you guessed it -- when I did my workouts. Now I am living in a house, so my workout room is in the basement downstairs. For the three comics that came with the Betty dolls, along with the ones on the Veronica dolls, I was pretty sure I didn't already own them. I have always had a lot of Archie Comics, but these issues, from the same year the dolls were released, 2000, didn't look familiar to me. Great, I thought, some new reading for future workouts.

So then ... there I am ... a few days ago, doing my huffy-puffy workout on the treadmill, and I am paging through Betty issue No. 89. There's a page of fashions for Betty ...

I absentmindedly scan the page. Oh, that's fun, I think. Great 2000-era fashions ... I glance at the bottom, where it credits the reader who sent in the fashion ideas ...

And there's my name again!!!! This time, it's my full name, though! All three names!!!! And not far above it on the page, the name of that wonderful Archie Comics artist, Dan DeCarlo! I could not believe it. I just about cried. I stared and stared at it, as if it would go away or something. As if I couldn't afford to believe I was actually seeing my full name printed in a comic book that had been sealed away in a doll box for 19 years ...

Now, you understand, of course, I have the kind of name you don't see very often. Because that's the first thing I thought, right? That maybe there was another Billie Rae Bates out there, in this case in Columbus, Ohio??? And she (or he!!!) was the one who'd actually sent in the ideas for this page of fashions. No, it couldn't be. The only other person I have known of with my full name was the pro-basketball star of the '70s, and he spelled his name with "y"s. No, I knew this was Mr. DeCarlo's doing. Sort of his sly little joke. After all these years, wow.

As I thought about it, flabbergasted as I was, and I sent photos of the Betty comic to my brother, I realized that Columbus, Ohio, was where I had first met Mr. DeCarlo in person, at that Mid-Ohio-Con all those years ago, and perhaps he assumed I was actually from that local area!

Or maybe he just put that city down, rather than my real city of Detroit, as our little joke! Whatever the reason, I am beyond words ... Seeing that, again on a workout machine (as weird as that is), after all these years (!!!) ... It was like a sweet message from a sweet friend, crossing the boundaries of time and existence.

Sadly, Josette has also since passed away. That was in 2012. The couple had two sons, and they also worked for Archie Comics, but they died even before Mr. DeCarlo did. Even the Comic Buyer's Guide publication is no more. So much has changed since that first year of the new millennium. Bummer.

But thanks so much, Mr. DeCarlo.