Veronica Andrews.

Say it ain't so! The quintessional blonde versus brunette rivalry coming to an end? Can't be.

Comic geeks, pulp romantics, and pop culture enthusiasts are all abuzz with the news that teenage comic icon Archie Andrews is tying the knot with brunette li'l rich girl Veronica Lodge (and, unfortunately, I don't mean to tether her to rival blonde Betty Cooper) after, uh... seventy years of dating. In that time, Archie fans have witnessed the high school rivalry between the main characters recycled over and over again, the (sometimes playful) enmity between Veronica and Betty remaining a constant understory with its own spin-offs. Even now, those enraptured by the pulp soap opera can catch details on blogs from the characters in a way that's almost true-to-form to the snickerings of real, red-blooded, Facebooking, Twittering, cellphone-addicted adolescents in every home with a computer.

If you're a parent, you're probably snickering right about now. You understand.

It's really a clever marketing tactic, don't you think? Such an "announcement" would certainly awaken geeks everywhere, reorioenting their attention from whatever is at hand and back to the Archie comics of their youth. We might even expect that, in time, the wedding bells will be replaced with the din of new and deeper rivalries. It's good copy.

Will Archie have an affair? Will Betty sabotage the marriage? What about Jughead and Moose and Reggie?

This might all seem like silly comicbooky stuff to a lot of people, but there's something to be said for the sexuo-cultural anthropology exhibited in these comics, and in comic stories in general. The Veronica/Betty rivalry illustrates many of the same issues people face, and in making fun of the dating scene, it itself reflects many truths and foibles and anxieties about it.

But more to the point for a sexblog, it also helps entice the imagination. There is Archie slash out there, and for years, spanking enthusiasts have enjoyed twisting the comic themes for their own (... ok, our own) deliciously seditious, uh, ends. How many of our own fantasies, especially from childhood, were sparked and nurtured because of comics such as these?

Archie and Veronica. But we polyamorists were always reading between the lines anyway... how much simpler, how hot it would be if these inked minxes pursued their own poly lifestyle. Oh, the Riverdale gossip that would happen then.