Double Digest

Meet Dan Parent, the man behind comic books that gave us funny punch lines to survive our high school.

- Nidhi Raj Singh

Flipping through the pages of Archie Comics, didn’t we often wonder about the person penning those hilarious dialogues and imagining sticky situations the characters often found themselves in?

It was Dan Parent, the man who knows the freckle-faced Archie Andrews and his friends — brown-eyed brunette Veronica Lodge, girlnext-door Betty Cooper, forgetful Jughead Jones and out of the closet Kevin Keller — better than all of us. Not only because he has been scripting their lives on his sketch board for more than three decades, but also knows how the character would evolve with time.

As he shepherded the comics into a new direction by introducing new characters — be it the zombie apocalypse in Afterlife With Archie, the challenges of the adult life in Life With Archie, the modern avatar in Your Pal Archie or the introduction of the first homosexual character Kevin Keller —the American comic book artist and writer has successfully kept his readers engrossed.

Parent has been chronicling the adventures of Archie, Veronica and Betty since he graduated from The Kubert School (formerly known as the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art) in Dover, New Jersey. He has also illustrated other titles such as Felix The Cat, Barbie and Disney Adventures.

We met Dan Parent at Comic Con India, as he told us about his happy journey at Riverdale High.

Tell us about your journey with Archie?