Josie and the Pussycats (initially published as She's Josie and Josie) is a teen-humor comic book about a fictional rock band, created by Dan DeCarlo and published by Archie Comics. First published in 1963, with regular issues through 1982, additional one-shot issues followed on an irregular basis. A reboot of the comic for the New Riverdale imprint launched in September 2016.
Hanna–Barbera adapted the comic as a Saturday-morning animated TV series in 1970, paired with an eponymous pop album. The band was subsequently portrayed in a 2001 live-action film, with musical performances released on an eponymous soundtrack album. Josie and the Pussycats appear as part of the 2017 live-action television drama series Riverdale on The CW, with the character of Josie recurring in the Katy Keene spin-off series.
Publication history
Cartoonist Dan DeCarlo, who had spent most of the 1950s drawing teen and career-girl humor comics such as Millie the Model for Atlas Comics, that decade's forerunner of Marvel Comics, began freelancing for Archie Comics. In 1960, he and Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee co-created the short-lived syndicated comic strip Willie Lumpkin, about a suburban mail carrier, for the Chicago, Illinois-based Publishers Syndicate. Casting about for more comic-strip work, DeCarlo created the characters of Josie and her friends. Josie DeCarlo, the artist's wife and Josie's namesake, explained that "We went on a Caribbean cruise, and I had a [cat] costume for the cruise, and that's the way it started."
DeCarlo first tried to sell the character as a syndicated comic strip called Here's Josie, recalling in 2001: