Miskatonic University Press

Archie casts a spell

archie libraries

“Book Banter” is top-notch Archie, written by the great Frank Doyle and drawn by the great Harry Lucey. Archie and Jughead are in the library, and Archie is reading Emily Ghost’s Handbook of Spells and Incantations. (That name is a play on Emily Post.) He reads three spells that, without them knowing, all affect Reggie. It’s a really funny story.

Archie studies an eldritch tome.
Archie studies an eldritch tome.

Archie and Jughead are in the library for the entire story—it ends with them leaving, and we see the outside of the Riverdale Public Library. Inside the library, as shown in the panel above, Jughead must be in the fiction section, because nonfiction would never be labelled by the initial letter of the author’s last name. But surely the public library’s fiction section can’t be so small!

“Book Banter” first appeared in Archie #160 (December 1965) but I read it in Archie and Me (Jumbo) Comics Digest #16 (May 2019). It was written by Frank Doyle, pencilled by Harry Lucey, and inked and lettered by Mario Acquaviva. It is copyright Archie Comic Publications.