“…Yes, it’s Archie kissing Valerie, which certainly plays into fears of miscegenation far less than having a black boy with a white girl, but the fact remains that they’ve put it on the cover. And unlike Brandon and Dexter, two new characters that readers weren’t familiar with, Val’s the longest-running black character the company has, making her first appearance way back in 1969. In selling the issue with that image, they’ve essentially locked themselves out of a change, short of something drastic that would involve re-lettering the whole story to make it about Melody, which at this point would be pretty noticeable.”