RIP Victor Gorelick

Yesterday, I heard the sad news that longtime Archie Comics editor-in-chief Victor Gorelick passed away last week.

A lot of you know that I write a weekly comic, which is *really* hard to do on top of everything else, and a lot of that drive and passion and humor comes from my lifelong love of Archie Comics.

This photo is of just part of my tattered stash of Double Digests I’ve accumulated over the years. The only thing that would stop me from buying a new digest was me skimming through the pages at the supermarket. Why? Because they recycle stories, and I could tell by one frame whether I already owned it, and if there were too many recycled stories, I wouldn’t get it, because I couldn’t always afford it.

Even with that criteria, I still have hundreds of these.

To be honest, I didn’t know who Victor was until one day years and years ago, when he appeared in an Archie comic in one of my digests. As in, in the comic strip itself as a character, and that was such an eye-opening read for me, because prior to that, I hadn’t really put too much thought into the people behind the pages I gobbled up, laughed at, and memorized as I read it over and over while eating.

From then on, whenever I opened a new digest, I’d quickly scan the front page, and his name always stood out, because it was almost always there. And now that I write my own comic, small though it may be, I’m forever grateful for all the creative drive and passion that he inspired in me. He didn’t know who I was because I don’t think I ever wrote to them, but I knew who he was.

Thank you, Victor. See you in Riverdale in the next life.