The Best of On My Mind Part 3: Little Archie

Here is a story that I posted about Little Archie and life back in January 2006.
Over at his site Fred Hembeck has a wonderful story about Little Archie and Elvis. That got me to thinking about Little Archie in general. The above photo is from this auction on E-Bay. I looked through my collection but couldn't find any stories on Little Archie. That is sad but not too surprising to me. You see I liked Little Archie but I loved teenage Archie. But it really should have been the other way around. Both were written and drawn well. But Little Archie seems, in hindsight, to have had more meat to it. You could say both series were funny. Both were at times adventuresome. However, Little Archie has something extra about it. It was about a little boy learning the basics of life. Think about your own life. When you look back you are most fond of your teenage years as it had your first date, first kiss, first job etc. Still you had already mastered the building blocks of your life. You had already learned about life and death. Hopefully saw what a good marriage was like by watching your parents. Learned how to make and keep a friend and to be a good friend. All that and more is usually learned, at least in my own experience, before you hit 13. That is what was the real meat behind Little Archie. As the old saying goes what you are at 4 you are at 40.
There is an interesting story that I heard about the creation of Little Archie. Perhaps you have heard it too. If not then I will tell you. Mr. Goldwater, the creator of Archie, was playing cards with other comic book publishers and creators. They were talking about the ups and downs of their business. Then one of them said to him...we always have to keep coming up with different characters to keep our comics going. You only have to do different versions of Archie. You can do young Archie, old Archie, big Archie, Little Archie... A light bulb went off in Mr. Goldwater's head and Little Archie was born. I didn't put any quotation marks on what was said as I don't know if those were the exact words used. However, that is how I heard it.
Also, in the photo above you see the Archie comics version of Dr. Doom. This is not the only time he has appeared. I may show you another time he was in an Archie story some other time.