This American life: How India got hooked to Archies

Back in 1971, Om Arora had an idea the ripples of which we still feel to this day. The proprietor of Delhi-based Variety Book Depot went to the US with a goal — to become the exclusive distributor of Archie Comics in India. “They had someone already doing the distribution, but they were not doing a good job,” he says. He managed to get it and started by importing 500 copies of the 17 titles published every month. By the nineties, this had gone up to 10,000 copies being imported monthly. And so, for generations of urban Indians, characters like Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead became companions of sorts, combining the relatability of themes like community and friendship, with the novelty of foreign ideas like kissing contests and teenagers driving each other around in cars (can you imagine?).

Now, with a new movie breathing new life into a franchise that has been as much a part of Indian coming-of-age as it has been in America, the hope is to introduce a new generation to the comics. Jon Goldwater, CEO of Archie Comics, says that India is their third largest market, after North America. “We’ve been in India for over 50 years now, and there are a lot of similarities between Archies and India — the focus on family, friendship, community being the major one,” he says. He estimates they’ve sold between 50 to 100 million comics in India to this day, the credit for which he says goes to Arora. This connection between Archies and India is why the idea to set the movie here was a dream for him, one that has now become reality.