Do you kiss Betty and/or Veronica with that mouth?

Paul Di Filippo says:

This is not an artifact of me fooling around with Photoshop. Nor can I imagine some Google drone did this during the newspaper-scanning process. You're welcome to look at the original here.

My guess is some bored artist or letterer in 1947 seeing what he could sneak past the editor.

Do you kiss Betty and/or Veronica with that mouth?

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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usonia

Blít tholé was a common post-WWII phrase. I don’t get what’s so weird about this.
- niktemadur
  
  Well you don’t hear it in movies of the era, so the Hayes Code probably had an opinion and verdict on the term.
ROSSINDETROIT

That’s a funny strip even without the rough language.
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

Why does Archie look like a pissed-off Honus Wagner in the second panel
Awesomer

Reminds me of the controversial Nancy Drew book The Clue in the Clock.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XDXCHOC3MSV5MBEOPV76POG7EE Jonathan
  
  Can you explain this obvious in-joke? I’ve heard it repeatedly, and I have NO idea what it means, despite some extensive sleuthing of my own :)
  - http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis
    
    Must be a Simpsons joke
    http://www.snpp.com/episodes/BABF08
buggzzee23

could it be an excerpt from this parody? :
http://donosdump.com/Jozine/GoodmanBeaver.html
- CognitiveDissident
  
  OMFG, Sharchie!
  What a funny parody!
  I read that in the 70′s, funny then, funny now!
  - buggzzee23
    
    Here it is in a readable pdf:
    
    http://archives.tcj.com/journalista/goodmangoesplayboy.pdf
http://www.facebook.com/people/Roddy-Heading/690220439 Roddy Heading

Considering the era, the context and the phrase, I think Master Andrews is using a teen hip contraction of the expression >> “ Buttonholed “-
a petty mundane repetitive task..
Charlie B

In that milieu, wasn’t a “butt” the nether end of a “fag” – and therefore something everyone had in their mouth at one time or another? I don’t see the controversy. Everbody sucked their fags through the butt in those days.
- freshacconci
  
  Archie is an American comic. Doubtful they’d use British slang.
  - Ito Kagehisa
    
    In reading first-person accounts of WWII by Americans (inherited from Pappy, who apparently had a fascination with Ernie Pyle) I seem to remember seeing “fags” used in the 1940s by Americans. But maybe that was just because they’d passed through Old Blighty on the way to war.
Preston Sturges

Here’s a handy online medical dictionary definition of “anus,” and Google AdWords thoughtfully tells you where to find salt water aquarium shops where you can buy “brown starfish.”

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Brown+starfish
http://devojane.blogspot.com devophill

“Prime” and “Butthole” are my new favorite antonyms.
- niktemadur
  
  Yeah, “prime” still sounds cool and hip and… well, prime.
  
  But then Archie went all born-again Jesus freak on us, then kinda gay, then I lost track, except the bit about the stupid little cockfart popping the question to Veronica instead of Betty.
Palomino

I’m 47, and I remember my mother buying ”beef butt”, I can still see the sign.

This is a comic book, which is rife with wit, social commentary and wordplay. Take into consideration the subject matter and what he’s responding directly to ’….must be PRIME’, as in PRIME CUT

Therefor he’s responding to PRIME BUTT (like Boston Butt, cut of meat) with BUTTHOLE, as in he’s left eating the butt’s hole, not the prime cut of butt.

Finally, in my research, there may be a social commentary on the movie marquee. At that time, there was a new gadget called the Violet Ray, a sun lamp, was a cure all “sun lamp”, by Tesla of all people. The title of the movie is Sun Over Hollywood with Violet Ray. Very funny.

http://teslapress.com/electrotherapy.html (scroll down to “the violet ray”)

The violet ray conducts electro-energetic life-force enhancing properties into the body.
- ROSSINDETROIT
  
  Good catch on the Violet Ray. It was a UV lamp that gave a lot of sunburns and probably a few melanomas.
  I don’t think you could say Butthole back then without people thinking just what we do now. More possible synonyms: cesspit, toilet.
Hanglyman

…at times’ what?
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

Maybe butthole (or butt hole) meant dead-end job. There’s a lot of references in Google Books to the word “butthole” and “butt hole” being used in fox hunting and other animal hunting to refer to a cul-de-sac or any other dead-end. For example, 1898: “Then the conclusion is ” They’ve a got the old badger up into a butt hole.” This means that he can go no further, except over the body of the assailing dog”

1912: “But our idea of a badger hunt was to send a dog up to the badger underground, to keep the brock occupied in a “butt- hole” — that is to say, a cul de sac in the ramifications”

1943: “Thus the rabbit who bores a new emergency exit within convenient reach of his own butt-hole confers a benefit upon posterity, although patriotism was far from being his motive.”
- Preston Sturges
  
  A badger in the butthole? Ouch!
- niktemadur
  
  Excellent find, but putting Archie’s comment into context, he’s not talking about a dead end job, but that sometimes the job can be annoying and/or tiresome.
- Ito Kagehisa
  
  Well done sir.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenahoo Ken Williams

What’s that “Montana 4 – 2″ business in the second panel? Is that some bible verse I’ve overlooked?
- Robotech_Master
  
  Artist and date, probably. You see that in a lot of newspaper comic strips.
- niktemadur
  
  Isn’t that typical of comic strips? Author and either the date he/she wrote the strip or the date it was published, I’m sorta sure it’s the former.
Tay Boy

For my part I’m mildly obsessed with the ironwork on that fantastic school desk.
noah django

ｷﾀ━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━!!
MarcVader

This is not really Boing Boing’s beat. :)
ROSSINDETROIT

This morning it occurred to me that a ‘Butt’ is also a keg, cask or barrel. Thus Butthole would be the access port, the same as bunghole. I do not know how that relates to a boring or repetitive job, but it’s a clue.
Okay, it’s Monday now and I’m going to move on and think about something else.
http://www.facebook.com/rogerowengreen Roger Green

4/2 IS the date in 1947.
Thad Boyd

…nobody’s posted the “beat off three other guys” cover yet?