Robert William Montana

 Robert William Montana (October 23, 1920 – January 4, 1975)

He was a comic strip artist who created the original likenesses for characters published by Archie Comics and in the newspaper strip Archie. Several years after Mr. Montana's graduation from High School in New Hampshire, a publisher commissioned him to draw a teen‐age‐oriented strip based on the “Henry Aldrich” radio show. Archie Andrews's brunette girlfriend Veronica was based on the blond film star Veronica Lake, while Betty, his blond girlfriend, was based “on an old girlfriend of mine,’ Montana once said. The principal at Archie's Riverdale High, Mr. Wetherbee, and Miss Beasley, a teacher there, and other characters also were said to have been based on Mr. Montana's classmates and Manchester neighbors. But the dunce of the strip, Jughead, was created “on the drawing board.” “I never knew him,” Montana said. The success of the Archie and friends story in MLJ Comics' Pep Comics (Dec. 1941) led MLJ to assign Montana to draw the first issue of Archie (Nov. 1942). Montana was soon drawing the Archie comic strip, doing both the daily and Sunday strip, which over the next 35 years ran in over 750 newspapers. In 1975, he died at age 54 of an apparent heart attack while cross-country skiing near his New Hampshire home, age 54. Montana was married, and had two daughters.