We tend to think that after the publisher Archie published the character Archie their output was all teen comedy for the next fifty years when nothing could be further from the truth. Most enlightened comic book guys have at least heard of some of their lesser known entries in other genres, like Super Duck, Cosmo the Merry Martian, , The Adventures of Young Dr. Masters, etc. But when it comes to the obscure it’s hard to beat 1950′s Adventures of the Dover Boys. It was a one-shot trial balloon for an adventure series in the “boy adventurer” genre and concerned the Dover twins Tim and Dan and their search for Aztec treasure with their Uncle Bill. It borrows heavily from such boys novel series as The Hardy Boys (the title of course being a play on The Rover Boys* series) and radio serials like Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy (which was still airing in 1950). It’s fun stuff and shows the serious style of Archie artist Harry Lucey (better known for drawing Sam Hill, Private Eye for the publisher) to good advantage. I have no idea why Archie hesitated from launching the Dover Boy as a full series- the final panel is plea to readers to write in if they wanted to see more, and apparently not enough did.

*Due disclosure compels me to reveal that in my youth with artist Scott Bieser I created a comic book series called The Rovers the title of which was also inspired by The Rover Boys. If I ever get my crap together I may just post one of those comics here, but that’s not where the smart money would be.