Josie
Josie (also known as Josie and the Pussycats and She's Josie) is a teenage humor comic book about a fictitious rock band, created by Dan DeCarlo and published by Archie Comics. It was published from 1963 until 1982; since then, a number of one-shot special issues have appeared without regularity. It was adapted into a Saturday morning cartoon by Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1970 and a live-action motion picture by Universal Pictures in 2001. Two albums were recorded under the name Josie and the Pussycats: one as the soundtrack for the 1970 cartoon series and the other as the soundtrack for the 2001 motion picture.
During the 1968 - 1969 television season, the first Archie-based Saturday morning cartoon, The Archie Show, debuted on CBS. The Archie Show, produced by Filmation Studios, was not only a hit on TV, but on the radio as well (The Archies' song "Sugar, Sugar" hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 1969 and went on to be Billboard's number one "Hot 100 Single" of that year). Competing animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions wanted to duplicate its success and contacted Archie Comics about possibly adapting one of their remaining properties into a show similar to The Archie Show. Archie Comics responded by offering to re-develop the Josie comic (which, by 1969, had lost its focus and popularity) into a comic about a teenage music band, and allowing Hanna-Barbera to adapt it into a music-based Saturday morning show.
Therefore, in 1969, many significant changes were made to the "Josie" comic. First, in Josie #42 (published in August 1969), Josie met a heavily built blond folk singer named Alan M., who over time became Josie's on-again, off-again boyfriend (much to the chagrin of Alexandra, who was also immediately smitten with Alan M. and never missed an opportunity to try and steal him away from Josie).
In Josie #43 (published in September 1969), Alexandra discovers that her cat Sebastian is actually a reincarnation of an ancestor of the Cabot family, who was executed for consorting with witches. Whenever Alexandra holds Sebastian in her arms, she can cast powerful magic spells. This ability would seem to give Alexandra quite an edge in her competition with Josie for Alan M., but the magic spells she casts always seem to backfire in some way. Alexandra and Sebastian's witchcraft powers were not used in Hanna-Barbera's TV show.
In Josie #45 (or rather Josie and the Pussycats #45, as this was the first issue to bear that title, published in December 1969), Josie and Melody have decided to start a band called The Pussycats, and ask Alexandra to be their bassist. Alexandra accepts... but only if the girls change the name of the group to "Alexandra's Cool Time Cats." Expecting Josie and Melody to yield to her demands, Alexandra is flustered when she finds that her brother Alex has appointed himself manager of the Pussycats and found a replacement bassist in Valerie Smith (later renamed Valerie Brown), a new girl in school. The Pussycats make their now-famous leopard print costumes (complete with cat ear headbands and a long tail) and perform at their first gig (a school dance), as Alexandra, seething with bitterness and anger, tries unsuccessfully to use her witchcraft to get back at the Pussycats and Alex.
The re-imagining of the comic also resulted in three casualties: Albert, Sock, and Pepper, who were eventually phased out of Josie's world. From 1970 on, most of the stories in the comic book revolved around the Pussycats traveling around the country and the world to perform gigs, with Alan M., Alex, and Alexandra (and sometimes Sebastian) in tow. When the girls weren't off performing, they would be at home dealing with the various trials and tribulations of teenage life (often including Alex's jealousy of Alan M., Alexandra's jealousy of Josie, and Melody's overwhelming sex appeal). The Josie and the Pussycats comic ran until 1982, after which the girls would often be featured in various Archie Giant Series issues and special limited-run series and one-shot books of their own. Reprinted Josie stories (including the occasional pre-Pussycats story) appear frequently in the various Archie digest reprint magazines.