This week Archie dropped a preview of Jughead #4 by Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson that casually revealed that the famed crowned cap wearer is asexual, defined as someone who is not attracted to people of any gender. This is a follow up to writer Zdarsky’s comments at NYCC ’15:
“My view of Jughead is, over the 75 years [of his existence] there have been sporadic moments where he has dabbled in the ladies, but historically he has been portrayed as asexual,” Zdarsky said at an “Archie”-themed panel at NYCC. “They just didn’t have a label for it, so they just called him a woman-hater. But he’s not a misogynist — he just watches his cohorts lose their minds with hormones. People have asked me if there is going to be a romance if I’m writing Jughead, because I’m very romantic, and the answer is no, because there is enough of that in Archie. I think something like asexuality is underrepresented, and since we have a character who was asexual before people had the word for it, I’m continuing to write him that way.
While the characterization certainly fits in with Jughead’s long association with being dorky around girls and, perhaps, sublimating sexual urges to things like eating fries (while remaining slim, the bastard), not everyone was satisfied.
Fox news proclaimed in a headline “Archie Comics reveals Jughead is asexual in new issue” perhaps hoping that some readers would be unaware of the word’s definition and build up a good head of outrage steam over Jughead’s adoption of a life of asceticism and study. However the article could not work up much scandal:
All of the years of Jughead’s love for food since the inception of Archie Comics appear to have finally meant something, as the writers of the current series have announced he is asexual in a newly released issue.
And it just stayed calm from there. Maybe there is something to this asexual choice!
Of course, Jughead’s lifestyle is in opposition to the proclaimed “pansexual” Deadpool, meaning someone who is attracted to everyone and everything. Star Ryan Reynolds extended this idea all the way to having a boyfriend in the next movie, already all but greenlit, it seems. Maybe the boyfriend could be Jughead, and Deadpool could try to turn him to a new lifestyle?
BTW, Deadpool is based on the classic trickster character, perhaps best exemplified by Bugs Bunny, who I’m pretty sure was also pansexual, only they didn’t call it that in those days. We live in more enlightened times. Oh and here’s the Archie #4 preview, on sale today:
It’s definitely hard to keep up with the new terminology, and there’s a good chance I have this wrong, but I’m pretty sure asexuality implies a lot more than abstaining from sex and romantic relationships. So it makes little sense to say Jughead is “sublimating sexual urges to things like eating fries.” As an asexual, he’d likely deny he has any sexual urges to sublimate, and if, as a healthy teenage boy, he occasionally needs to masturbate before he can get to sleep at night, he’d see that as a simple bodily function unrelated to the future possibility of copulation. (I am curious what asexual people think about while they masturbate, if anyone could enlighten me.)
Or is it that in Jughead’s case, “asexual” is simply being used to mean he isn’t interested in dating (for the moment)?
Asexuality is so rarely talked about, it’s nice to see a comic character actively identified as such, just so people are more aware what it is and that it isn’t a lifestyle choice.
One of the things I enjoyed about Keanu Reeve’s Constantine was that the character seemed noticeably asexual, though instead fans kept speculating whether he was supposed to be gay.
Again, so impressed by Archie modernity, compared to dc and marvel conservatism.
Jughead was always asexual. The beauty is, they didn’t feel the need to beat you over the head with it. It just didn’t come up. I’d feel better about it if the motivation for this was not to get headlines on comicsbeat, etc. It’s just like Marvel- completely motivated for media attention. Comics suck.
I legit can’t tell whether or not that last comment was intended as a parody of the usual “why do they need to beat me over the head with it” argument.
It’s especially funny to me, because I’m in the middle of re-reading all the original Marvel comics in order, month by month (I’m currently up to 1965), and the constant forced love triangles in nearly every issue of every series could quite literally be described as beating readers over the head with their straightness.
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