Chuck Clayton was the first Black character introduced into the Archie universe of comic books in 1971.

Making his appearance in an era when comic books were increasingly striving to tell “relevant” stories, introducing some diversity into Riverdale High was a priority for the editors at Archie. Perhaps as a result, the character of Chuck Clayton has often been derided a token Black, serving the sole purpose of making Archie comics appear integrated, but not otherwise serving a meaningful role in its stories. This is an oversimplification that may bear an element of truth, but the story of Chuck Clayton is far more complicated than that.

Chuck Clayton, New Student at Riverdale High

Archie’s first African-American student, made his initial appearance in Life with Archie #110, cover dated June 1971. The specific Archie title he debuted in was not coincidental, as Life with Archie had long featured more serious and/or action packed stories. This particular story featured a returning wounded Vietnam veteran (though Vietnam was never mentioned by name), in which Chuck quietly made his debut.

“I’m Chuck!” he modestly introduced himself to soldier at Pop Tate’s after the rest of the gang did, unlike the others not giving his last name. But he proceeded to engage the soldier in conversation in a way that the others didn’t.

And then he promptly disappeared from the rest of the story.

Chuck didn’t play a particularly noteworthy role in the story. Still, the presence of a Black student at Riverdale High was surely noticed by readers.

Chuck played a more central role just two issues later in Life with Archie #112 (8/71). In a story entitled “Poor Little Rich Man,” Archie complains when his father can’t loan him money to cover a date with Veronica. Running into Chuck at Pop Tate’s Choklit Shoppe, Archie continues his lament. Chuck suggests Archie take a walk with him and introduces him to his cousin, Jenny, who was blinded in a car crash that killed her parents the year before.

Jenny’s upbeat demeanor in the face of such tragedy helps Archie gain perspective. By story’s end, he is back at home apologizing to his parents.

In many ways this sets the tone for many subsequent stories. Chuck is often featured in message stories in which differences in race are minimized. As Jenny waxes philosophically to Archie, she comments: “When you are blind there is no such thing as prejudice for how a person looks or the color of skin! Everybody becomes the same!”

Readers may be excused for thinking Chuck Clayton first appeared in a Big Moose story, “My Reputation,” in Pep 257 (9/71). It may well have been the first story written about the character. In it, Archie is talking with a fashionably dressed Black teen when Reggie appears with Moose in hot pursuit. When it appears that Archie is trying hide Reggie, Moose starts wailing on them both.

“Will you cool it man,” the Black teen calmly addresses their attacker, “and kindly put those fellows down?”

“The name is Chuck Clayton and I’m a new student in this school! Violence never solves anything, Moose! In the Now Generation we find peace through understanding!”

When Moose shoves Chuck, the smaller teen promptly flips the bully with a judo toss.

After Chuck successfully administers a second, Moose wants to know how he learned to handle himself like that.

“My father taught me!” Chuck replies, helping Big Moose up. “He’s the new assistant athletic coach!”

Chuck reappears in the very next issue of Pep, along with his father. In his first appearance in the narrative, Coach Clayton teaches Archie and Reggie some judo moves which gives Reggie false confidence. He tries his new skills on Moose to no avail. Even when Chuck and Archie join in, they are unable to get the blond bruiser off his feet.

“That’s odd!” Chuck grunts. “He went over the last time I did this.”

“D-uh! That’s because you caught me off guard!”

Moose wasn’t the only one to be caught off guard. In that very same panel, the colorist forgets himself and colors Chuck’s skin incorrectly in a panel. As if he was White, of course.

A Few Other Early Black Teens

There were a few other Black teens that appeared in Archie comic books in the year or two before Chuck Clayton’s debut. Valerie joined Josie and Melody to form the girl band Josie and the Pussycats in 1969. Many years later, she and Archie dated for a time, representing Riverdale’s first interracial romance. As such, she deserves an article all her own.

In Betty and Me #30 (9/70), several months before Chuck’s first appearance, Betty and Jughead seek the “Choklit Shoppe’s resident psychiatrist,” the wonderfully savvy Billy Boston.

Billy was a delightful character and deserved more than his single appearance. I know there were one or two other Black male teens as well, but have yet to pin them down. Hopefully more to add later.

Chuck Clayton and Being Black in Riverdale

Chuck Clayton is initially portrayed as a cool and snappy dresser, whose Blackness is often acknowledged but not focused on. In his second appearance, for instance, in Life with Archie 113 (9/71), Chuck is referenced as the Archies’ new band manager. In it, he cleverly foils a criminal plot to steal concert receipts by letting the crooks abscond with fake money.

Nonetheless, in his earliest appearances, Chuck is portrayed as on the shy side. In a Jughead story (#195, 8/71), his third appearance, Chuck reveals he has never asked a girl on a date and is anxious about it.

Chuck asks for advice from Archie and Reggie, whose macho overtures end in disaster. Chuck ends up following Jughead’s advice, of all people. Just ask the girl out. The story ends with Chuck happily dancing with his date, who–not surprisingly given the era–is Black.

While a bit shy, Chuck Clayton actively expresses pride in being Black. In a subsequent air pollution story, Chuck exclaims: “Black is beautiful, but not coming out of smoke stacks.”(“A Cause for Concern,” Life With Archie 115, 11/71). No one shows the slightest concern that Chuck is an African-American. And if someone even appears to be prejudiced, his friends are at the ready to defend him.

In a Dilton story in Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals #67 (12/71), Dilton is understandably shaken when he learns that the man he always believed was his birth father is actually his stepfather. He heads to the bus station to run away from home where he inexplicably runs into Chuck Clayton.

Dilton still isn’t convinced. Chuck advises him it’s all part of growing up. He needs to learn to roll with the punches. “You know, take the good with the bad!”

Dilton counters, “That’s easy for you to say!”

“I just feel that I’ve been done a great injustice,” Chuck shoots back, referring to the racial prejudice he’s encountered. “I don’t think you really know how I feel!”

Dilton is finally persuaded and returns home where a worried Moose awaits, who asks about his luggage. Laundry, Dilton lies.

“The man tells it like it is, cats!” Chuck covers for his friend. “He just wants to start out with a fresh outlook on life!”

Moose had been established as Dilton’s best friend, defending him from bullies and Dilton helping Moose with homework in return. But writers now play with the idea of a Chuck and Dilton friendship.

A far less satisfying treatment of race occurs in “10 Feet Tall” in Everything’s Archie #25 (4/73). Dilton and Chuck are once again featured together in a story that simply reverses their roles. When Dilton throws a part at his house, everything is “just starting to groove,” when Chuck decides to leave early, claiming not to feel well. When Chuck’s Mom calls Dilton’s house after the party’s over, wondering where Chuck might be, Dilton becomes concerned and goes looking for him. He finds Chuck at the bus station, ready to leave town.

“Where are you going?” Dilton wants to know.

“What difference does it make? Anywhere! Any place where I’m not a minority.”

When Dilton tries to tell him he belongs in Riverdale, Chuck is frustrated. “Do you know what it’s like to be Black in an all-White community?”

“Who cares what color you are? You’re part of our crowd!” When Chuck complains that all he didn’t have any fun, Dilton counters that there were plenty of “chicks” to dance with.

“Are you for real, man? How could I ask a White girl to dance with me… a Black fellow? I’d just make her feel uncomfortable!”

Dilton asks if Chuck is ashamed of his race.

“Of course not! Black is beautiful! I’m talking about how I relate to White people!”

Dilton counters, “We all have problems relating to other people … Can I run away from being short? I’ll always be short! I’m not going to grow. But if I don’t waste time on small thinking, I’ll look big!”

“Dilton,” Chuck declares, his earlier angst now gone, “you’re starting to look ten feet tall to me!”

The story is troubling on several levels. First, a White teen is educating a Black teen on how to best deal with his racial identity. Second, at no times are Chuck’s legitimate emotions validated, regardless of whether his thinking is sound. It is as if all of Chuck’s pain at feeling in the minority in all-White Riverdale are a result of him thinking “small.” All differences are equalized in this discourse, the challenges of shortness made no different in kind to those of being Black. Well intentioned though the story was, the message was clearly that Chuck’s feelings were his problem and that a better attitude was the best answer.

Dilton’s only acknowledgement of a societal problem was still framed in positive terms. “In years to come, people won’t care if you’re black, green, yellow or blue!”

“You really think so?” Chuck asks. “It would be a better world!”

It isn’t as strange as it might seem that a secondary character like Dilton was the one the Archie writers choose to give Chuck Clayton his pep talk. An Archie or Betty would’ve lacked any credibility as an outsider.

By far the worst story in terms of minimizing the experience of being a minority occurs some years later. In a story entitled “Minority Gripe” in Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals #113 (5/77), Chuck looks sullen as his friends happily skate board. Archie asks what’s making him so depressed.

Archie fumes. “Suddenly he seems to have become aware that he’s a member of a minority group!”

“Now it bothers him? Jughead asks.

“How come?” Reggie wants to know. “We never had any bigotry in Riverdale!”

“Just the opposite!” Jughead is uncharacteristically dismissive. “He’s never been made to feel anything but equal!”

Archie lets Coach Clayton know his son is unhappy that he’s a minority. The senior Clayton is immediately incensed.

Any weight at experiencing prejudice as a minority is dismissed as a punchline. Nor do any of the characters, including Chuck’s father, consider the possibility that Chuck might have experienced prejudice they didn’t see themselves.

Not all Archie stories addressing race were quite that tone deaf. In “A Matter of Prejudice” (Everything’s Archie #26, 6/73), Archie is walking with Chuck and a particularly disheveled Jughead when they come across Veronica. Chuck mentions how much they all are looking forward to her party later that day.

Veronica immediately asks to talk to Archie privately. She haltingly tells him that when she told him to invite his friends to her party, “I guess I didn’t mean all your friends! Well—what I really mean is—it’s rather difficult to put into words but… Some of your friends simply don’t fit in!”

Archie is incensed. “I’ve put up with a lot of nonsense from you, Veronica Lodge,” Archie lectures, “but you’ve pushed me too far this time! The one thing I won’t stand for is prejudice!”

Veronica looks startled, but Archie is on a roll. “Chuck Clayton is my friend, be he green, blue or orange! And where I go, he goes! And if you don’t like it, lump it!”

The message is one common in the semi-enlightened. I don’t see race, seems to be Archie’s message (and by extension, the writer’s). Of course, that attitude denies the reality that people do see race and such a stance serves to minimize the lived experience of Black folk whose color is seen and reacted to on a daily basis. But this is an insight not widely recognized by even well-meaning progressive writers of the era.

“That does it!” Veronica yells. “How dare you accuse me of prejudice! Chuck Clayton is one of the grandest guys in this town! He’s welcome at my house anytime he pleases to come!”

“Then who?” Archie wants to know.

“Jughead, you ding-a-ling!” Veronica explains. “He thinks he’s so independent! A non-conformist! What he is, is a slob!”

When Archie comes back to tell them that Veronica doesn’t approve of one of them, Chuck immediately assumes it’s Jughead!

“A matter of dress?”

Archie nods. Together they drag Jughead back to his house, kicking and screaming, to change into nicer clothes.

The story is nicely done, and very progressive for its time, in that it plays with your expectations, and manages to convey a message without turning out to be a “message” story. Even given its mild shortcomings, the treatment of Chuck’s Blackness is not always so effectively addressed.

There are a few stories during this period where Chuck displays some of his own dreams and not as a Black youth or simply a member of the crowd. In Archie at Riverdale High #25 (6/75), Chuck aspires to living in New York City in a story entitled “The Sour Apple.” The end result, of course, is realizing there is no place like home. Riverdale is self-consciously from the 1970s on as an idealized American small town where racism doesn’t exist.

It would appear the editors made a conscious choice to fully integrate Chuck Clayton into Riverdale’s teen milieu circa 1975. He began regularly appearing in stories with his own logo, just like Reggie, Moose, and Dilton did. And he became in essence Archie’s co-star in a series of more serious, action-oriented stories being featured in the Archie at Riverdale High comic book, which had been launched a few years earlier. More on that, shortly.

As for Chuck’s own stories, they followed two primary plotlines. The first was the complications of being an athlete when your father is a coach at your high school. The second was complications in his love life. Yes, Chuck finally got a girlfriend!

Chuck Clayton and Romance

But Dilton isn’t buying it. “What about me? I’m short! I have trouble asking girls to dance with me, too!” And later, he is able ask, “You’re not ashamed of being Black, are you?”

Nancy Woods was introduced in Pep # 309 (1/76). A Black high schooler, fully as appealing as Betty or Veronica, is seen smiling at Chuck as he passes her in the hallway.

“That Chuck Clayton is some wonderful guy! Handsome! Witty! Charming! Romantic! Wish I could get him to notice me!”

A series of missteps and pratfalls follow, with clever dialogue. The story appears to be written by Frank Doyle and drawn by Dan DeCarlo in classic Archie fashion. While the story end with Chuck finally noticing Nancy and her rebuffing him, the two are soon an inseparable couple.

In the world of teen humor, a romance is hardly a novelty, but one for Black characters is a rarity in popular culture of the era. The racist stereotype of Black men is often one of sexual insatiability and so well meaning attempts at integrating casts tended to avoid romantic complications. In television cop shows, the Black characters were often made older authority figures or comic sidekicks. Starsky and Hutch, a television show popular in the seventies, featured both in Captain Dobey and Huggy Bear. While the White leads were desirable hunks, the presumed White viewer need not worry about racial romance.

Portraying Black characters as fully human was still a big deal in the seventies, and Chuck Clayton was clearly moving from tokenism to a more fleshed out character with very human romantic aspirations.

Chuck’s father was clearly concerned over how much Chuck and Nancy were seeing each other (every night, as it emerged in Pep #334, 2/78). And when Archie, Reggie and Chuck’s athletic performance began to suffer from too much dating, Coach Clayton issued a dating only on weekends edict. Chuck began sneaking out and cue the comedy.

The writers at Archie publications soon realized they needed to make Chuck’s romantic dilemmas unique. Archie, Betty and Veronica had a solid lock on the romantic triangle angle. And Reggie’s self-destructive flirtations with Midge, Moose’s coquettish girl, were an endless variations of a plot that always ended up with Reggie’s in a crumpled heap—the victim of Moose’s wrath. But Chuck and Nancy were entirely and faithfully devoted to each other. Where was the comic potential in that?

The solution was for Nancy to become something of a comic nag, always campaigning for Chuck to improve himself, become more attentive, or to give up some annoying habit. In one story, it was Chuck’s declining to go on a walk on a hot summer day that roused Nancy’s irritation, in another it was his tendency to arrive late for dates, in still others his lack of culture and his bad habit of constantly dribbling (a ball!).

Chuck Clayton’s solo stories were appearing in back-up stories in Laugh, Pep, and Archie’s Pals’n’Gals, all Archie comic books that featured secondary characters like Dilton and Big Ethel. Beginning to appear with some regularity in July 1975, these stories typically involved Chuck’s interactions with Nancy or his father. Effort is made to give him some distinctive personality quirk, but nothing seems to stick. In issue Archie’s Pals’n’Gals #104 (5/76), for example, Coach Clayton laments that his son is a hypochondriac. But this notion, as most others, is just a plot device soon forgotten.

Chuck shows an interest in being the photographer for the school newspaper in #122 (5/78), taking many creative shots for his first assignment. The only problem is that he has forgotten to put film in the camera. It is the first hint that Chuck has a creative bent, though it will take years for this to be developed further. The good news is that Chuck is now being treated by the Archie writers as a character capable of being funny. A necessity, really!

The stories of Chuck and Nancy relationship snafus were often clever and funny, but it was hard not to feel a little bad for Chuck. Then again, Nancy often had legitimate complaints as Chuck showed an often obsessive focus on sports. It was his athletic endeavors that often provided the backdrop for Archie and his adventures in Archie at Riverdale High.

Chuck Clayton, Archie’s New Best Friend?

Jughead certainly earned the distinction of being Archie’s longest friend. Despite dramatically different interests, they consistently had each other’s back. In some ways they were more like brothers, bonded by history and unbreakable ties more than simple friendship.

Chuck Clayton proved to be Archie’s first friend who both had his back and shared his interests. Reggie definitely shared his interests, but was his competition in love and sports as much as the other way around. Given the stories in Archie at Riverdale High were taking an increasingly dramatic and dangerous turn, Chuck was the perfect partner to be added in to Archie’s joint adventures, which also served the editorial push for the character’s higher profile.

Chuck’s first consequential appearance was in issue #47 (8/77). Talking with Archie, Chuck is initially miffed over how much time Nancy is spending helping teach an underprivileged child, an African American boy named Marty. When Chuck learns Nancy is teaching him how to make a fire and cook, Chuck begins to teaching him “manly stuff” like Morse code.

When the impetuous boy runs into a condemned building, the building collapses and the only way Marty is able to reveal where he’s buried is through tapping S.O.S. (actually he was tapping W.O.W. but it still worked). Chuck, with Archie’s able assistance, is able to rescue Marty and Chuck earns Nancy’s admiration in the end.

In the next issue, tired of living in his father’s shadow, Chuck enrolls at Southside High and faces his old friends in an upcoming baseball game. Archie starts singing the Blue and Gold, Riverside’s school song and Chuck hits an easy out. He quits Southside then and there, telling his father he’s coming home. The issue after that, Chuck and Archie uncover the secret behind a mysterious prowler at Riverside High. The boys take turns playing the hero, Archie rescuing Chuck from quicksand in issue #58. Chuck, in turn, takes the lead in rescuing Reggie, who has fallen down a ravine.

While Chuck arguably appears to be the better athlete of the two friends, he also reveals some character flaws along the way. In issue #60, a sweet tooth threatens to get him out of shape for a boxing match. In #63, Nancy and Veronica are badmouthing how Archie and Chuck are interfering with the other fellow’s baseball plays. It takes Betty to talk sense into the other girls and insure the guys get back to demonstrating teamwork.

In Archie at Riverdale High #64, an overly confident Chuck Clayton thinks he can go out dancing with Nancy without hurting his performance at an upcoming track meet. At times, Chuck can get a little cocky–the closest writers come to giving him a distinctive personality quirk besides a preoccupation with sports to the detriment of his relationship with Nancy. In one story, he dominates his pals in casual displays of athletic prowess, all to show off for Nancy.

In another story, finding that his chances for a basketball scholarship are slim, Chuck wishes he was born tall rather than handsome! His father just rolls his eyes.

And in a story prior to meeting Nancy, in Laugh #280 (7-74) Chuck is an arrogant womanizer asking Liz, a women’s lib adherent, to a costume party as her knight in shining armor. Chuck suggests she can come as a damsel in distress.

Chuck gets his comeuppance when the woman he asks out uses a judo flip on him to shut him up. She agrees to go to the party with him only if she can pick out his costume. At story’s end we see that she is dressed as the farmer in the dell and Chuck was forced to come as a pig.

This was the only time that Chuck behaved so obnoxiously. It was also the first time he appeared in his own feature. Did the writers of Riverdale get a hold of this particular issue? The live action series definitely featured a far less appealing character than the comic books. More on that shortly.

Thieves, reckless drivers and unscrupulous members of rival high schools pose additional threats, until the Archie and Chuck duo are no longer featured in Archie at Riverdale. Readership was down—though it was across the entire line of Archie comics. Chuck disappears from covers with issue #72(6/80), and is no longer regularly featured as a central character in stories after issue #79.

The Many (at times unfortunate) Faces of Chuck

Chuck Clayton’s early appearances found Archie’s stable of artists a little uncertain of how to draw an African American character. How big an Afro should he sport? And a more problematic issue than it should have been, how to portray an African American’s lips.

Most Archie artists soon grew comfortable drawing Chuck, and later Nancy, as an attractive teen in a way consistent with the Dan DeCarlo house style. But long time Archie artist Harry Lucey struggled with portraying the new character, drawing him for years with big lips and out-sized Afro in a racially stereotypical fashion. Oddly enough, Lucey did much better in rendering Coach Clayton, but inexplicably portrayed Chuck as with what was a nearly pre-adolescent build. It was jarringly inconsistent with Chuck’s look in other stories. Thankfully, Lucey was not assigned more than three or four stories featuring the character.

An unnamed artist I’ve failed to identify (can anyone help out?) drew more ethnic version of Chuck and Nancy, but in a way that was not demeaning. His exaggerated physicality proved inconsistent with the Archie style.

Stan Goldberg, who drew most of the solo Chuck Clayton stories, produced perhaps the most appealing character design and the one most associated with character. Goldberg’s character is handsome and fit, but capable of the full range of emotions necessary for an appealing character. And critically important, there is nothing in his rendition of Chuck that seems out of character with how all the other students of Riverdale High are rendered, which is as it should be.

Later versions by Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz (one of my favorite later Archie artists) are also worth noting. Parent’s version was attentive to current trends in clothing and hairstyle. His Chuck Clayton was perhaps the only one that created a metrosexual vibe.

Ruiz is the artist who rendered the fluidly energetic graphic novel, The Cartoon Life of Chuck Clayton. A sample of his artwork follows shortly.

Chuck Clayton and Cartooning

By the mid-1980s, Chuck Clayton no longer was featured in solo stories and began to appear far less often in stories. Latino characters Maria Rodriguez and Frankie Valdez, who had followed after Chuck’s appearance in Riverdale, had ceased to appear entirely. Some editorial reckoning must have resulted in the sense that featuring diverse characters did little to bolster sales. Indeed, sales in general in the Archie comics line were sinking alarmingly. A return to basics must have seemed a reasonable course.

Still, there were writers who continued to believe in the Archie series having a more diverse cast of characters and wanted to find a way to make Chuck Clayton more resonant to all readers. Inspiration came from an unlikely place. While overall comic book sales were going down, organized comic book fandom was on the rise. Buying comic books was increasingly a niche market. Why not appeal to it directly?

In Laugh 3395 (6/86), in a story by Rich Margopoulos and Stan Goldberg, Chuck excitedly enters Pop’s soda shop.

“You know how I always wanted to a cartoonist? Well, Nutsy Comics approved a plot… And I just mailed of a finished script.”

Chuck titled his series “Oceanvale” and patterned it after life in Riverdale.

Unfortunately, his editors decide to exaggerate the characters Chuck had written about. Betty Booper becomes a dumb blonde, Victoria Lodge becomes an exceptionally spoiled and unscrupulous brat, Big Goose is really, really slow. Only Archie wonders how Chuck figured out how much he really screws up!

The first issue comes out and all of his friends are infuriated. The story ends with all of them chasing him down the street of the comic book store.

The idea of Chuck as cartoonist lays fallow for two years but is resurrected by George Gladir and Stan Goldberg and is a regular story device through 1991. Chuck even attends the San Diego’s Comicon, an issue that has become a collector’s item.

But after a flurry of cartooning related stories, Chuck begins to appear less often, though almost always as an aspiring cartoonist. Only one story I found during this later period focused on his involvement in sports.

Up and coming Archie writer/artist Dan Parent found a novel way to briefly bring Chuck back into the mainstream of Archie stories in 2001. Veronica hires Chuck to write and draw her as a superhero named Powerteen. Appearances at comic conventions follow and Veronica is soon frustrated to be paired with a pre-adolescent partner named Powertween. Veronica and Chuck’s collaborative creation appears in three issues of Veronica, #111, 127, and 140.

Chuck’s artistic expertise is put to use in two more adventure-oriented series. In the fanciful Explorers of the Unknown (1990-1991), “F/X” Clayton is a master of special effects. In the C.S.I. inspired Archie Mysteries (2003-2004), Chuck’s talents are put to use as forensics artist. But is increasingly a supportive character, rarely featured in his own stories, and less often seen at all. But Chuck Clayton does have one more moment in the comic book spotlight.

Chuck Clayton and his own Graphic Novel

A four issue mini-series of sorts was launched in Archie & Friends with issue #126 (2/09). (Archie & Friends was a successor of sorts to Archie’s Pals‘n’Gals, which had been cancelled in 1991.) Written by Alex Simmons and drawn by Fernando Ruiz, the series was titled “The Cartoon Life of Chuck Clayton.” The interconnected stories featured Chuck’s efforts to encourage drawing comics in elementary students as a cartooning teacher at an after school arts program at Penny Pond Elementary School. Ruiz’ art work was especially appealing featuring both Chuck in “real time” and his artistic flights of fantasy. The four issues were collected into a graphic novel format and released in 2000.

Chuck Clayton Fades From View

With the 2010s, Archie comics began featuring a raft of more serious takes on the Archie characters, beginning with in 2010 a radical reboot of the Life with Archie comic book, now published in a magazine size format. This new Life with Archie followed two different possible timelines one in which Archie married Betty and the other in which he married Veronica. Chuck and Nancy made occasional appearances but never were central to the plotlines.

In an even more dramatic departure, the zombie invested Afterlife with Archie series did occasionally include Chuck Clayton in the background. He was probably most noteworthy for being entirely oblivious to Nancy’s secret lesbian affair with Ginger Lopez.

Chuck and Nancy were entirely absent in the 2015 reboot of Archie, in which Mark Waid tells stories with a mix of humor and angst with a more contemporary and realistic revisioning of the characters. Students of color were in evidence, just no Chuck Clayton.

Chuck and Nancy still appear occasionally in new stories in what has come to be called the classic style of artwork but given the relatively few new stories published in this genre, their presence has beens minimal.  

Chuck Clayton’s Evil Twin on CW’s Riverdale

Riverdale debuted on the CW network in January 2017. Jordan Calloway was cast as Chuck Clayton. Handsome, with an athletic build, Calloway looked the part, but that was about as far as the similarities went.

This Chuck Clayton was a womanizer, manipulative and without honor. Nancy Woods was nowhere in sight. Briefly dating Veronica in season one, he bragged to his friends that he had slept with her even though they hadn’t. Betty, who has a darker side in the series as well, comes to Veronica’s aid, setting up Chuck in a hot tub scene. Chuck is taught a lesson, handcuffed and humiliated. Female empowerment is accompanied by a portrayal of a Black male as sexual predator.

In the second season of Riverdale, an attempt at redeeming the character seems underway as he tries to romance Josie McCoy in a more respectable fashion. But the CW network soon had a more prominent role in mind for the talented Calloway, as the tormented antihero, Painkiller on another comic book based series, Black Lightning.

Riverdale’s often unfortunate treatment of its Black characters warrants its own article. Suffice to say here that the stereotype of the Black male as brute/thug is further perpetuated by the introduction of “Mad Dog” Moore, a boxing juggernaut Archie encounters while incarcerated at a juvenile prison camp (long story). While Mad Dog ultimately turns out to be a heroic figure and a dependable friend, his name alone suggests the problem with the character.

Chuck Clayton’s story, while often problematic, is more complicated than the label of “token” can fully capture. If interested in other articles about Black characters in comic books and comic strips check out articles on

Before Black Panther, there was Lothar

The Dove, the First Black Superhero?

Friday Foster, Black Heroine, White Creators

African American Heroes and Villains in 1940s and 1950s Comic Books

African Heroes and Villains in 1940s and 1950s Comic Books

Noteworthy Chuck Clayton Appearances

reprinted stories not included

Early Chuck Clayton:

Life with Archie 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 119, 135, 139 (6/71-11/73), 189 (1/78)

Jughead 195 (8/71)–Never asked a girl on a date,

Pep 257, 258 (9/71-10/71)

Archie’s Pals’n’Gals 67, 83, 92 (12/71, 1/74, 3/75)

Everything’s Archie 25, 26, 40 (4/73, 6/73, 6/75)

Archie at Riverdale High 25 (6/75)–aspires to live in New York City, also 38

In his own feature:

Laugh 280, 282, 291, 312, 314, 315, 317, 324, 326, 333, 337, 341, 367 (7/74-10/81)

Pep 292, 297, 309, 315, 316, 319, 324, 326, 334, 342, 343, 345, 373 (8/74-5/81)

Archie’s Pals’n’Gals 95, 98, 101, 104, 105 108, 110, 113, 114, 116, 120, 122, 124, 127-

134, 136, 139, 141, 143, 148, 156, 159, 165 166 (7/75-11/83)

Archie’s TV Laugh-Out 35 (11/75)

As Archie’s best friend, teammate and co-adventurer:

Archie at Riverdale High 45, 47-73, 75, 77, 79 (6/77-3/81), also in 86-88, 91, 95, 98, 99,

101, 102 (4/85)

As aspiring cartoonist:

Laugh 395 (6/86),

Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals 197 (6/88), 208 (8/89), 214-216, 222 (4/90-5/91)

Archie Giant Series Magazine 601 (10/89)

Explorers of the Unknown (as F/X Clayton) 4-6 (12/90-4/91)

Riverdale High 5 (4/91)

Life with Archie 285 (7/91)

Archie & Friends 16, 17 (11/95, 2/96), 37 (10/99)

Veronica (as artist for Powerteen) 111, 127, 140 (5/01, 7/02, 7/03)

Archie’s Mysteries (as a forensics artist) 25-34 (2/03-6/04)

Archie (Archie: Freshman Year) 590-591 (12/08-1/09)

Archie & Friends (Cartoon Life of Chuck Clayton) 126-129 (2/09-5/09)

Graphic novel:

The Cartoon Life of Chuck Clayton (2010, reprints Archie & Friends 126-129)   

Mark Carlson-Ghost