Reggie’s Wise Guy Jokes #48
This is issue #48 of Reggie’s Wise Guy Jokes, published in January of 1979 by the Archie Comics Group. It’s got skateboarding on the cover as well as two single page stories that feature skateboarding, including what just might be the first ever guitar-as-skateboard!
Yipes! It’s the cover.
The first story is titled “Protection Correction.” Moose gets mad because his girlfriend (I assume?) Midge is entering a tandem skateboard contest with Reggie. Tandem skateboarding appears to be where one guys skates around holding a girl over his head. Hard to believe this did not catch on.
Archie turns his skateboard into a guitar in “Rock Knock.” Even though it is an acoustic guitar, you have to assume he must have been a huge Surf Punks fan… except…. this is the January 1979 issue and the copyright date inside says 1978. The famous Surf Punks “My Beach” album with Drew Steele on the cover holding a guitar/skateboard wasn’t released until 1980. The surf punks appeared in Urgh! A Music War, but that wasn’t filmed until 1980 and released until 1982. The artist for this might have come up with the concept, although it’s possible he saw a late 70’s era Surf Punks show live in LA, before the Epic Records release. Wikipedia says they were founded in 1976. Happy coincidence maybe? It’s not hard to imagine members of the Surf Punks occasionally checking into Archie Comics forts numerous surfing and skateboarding references, but It’s easier to imagine this is something Drew had already been doing before this was published. I thought there might have been appear in the move Skateboard Madness but after scrubbing through it I couldn’t see anything outside of Dennis Dragon appearing as “Dick Damage, the world’s first skateboarder.” The Unknown Movies mentions a “crude music video for ‘My Wave'” disrupting the storyline, but that article was written before the DVD release of the movie, which I heavily suspect has had some editing done to it. Maybe they couldn’t get the rights to the music from Epic.
The immortal Drew Steele and Dennis Dragon on the cover of My Beach, 1980.
