In Veronica #202 (carrying a November 2010 cover date), Veronica Lodge falls for “the hot new guy” in town. Except Kevin Keller, the hot new guy in question, is gay. Hijinks ensue.

Back in May, I blogged about Archie’s first interracial kiss, and the fact that it really wasn’t that big a deal. There was some coverage of this in the press back in April (why break the story when no one can buy the product?), but now that the comic is out it will be interesting to see if this story gets any more attention than that one. After all, we’re living in a time when the policy of the Montana GOP is to make homosexuality illegal and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” gets filibustered.

I wonder what Frederic Wertham, whose Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 talked about Batman and Robin being gay, would make of all this.

OCTOBER 17 UPDATE: Looks like Archie Comics is on to something. Veronica #202 is the first comic in Archie Comics history to go into a second printing, according to Comic Shop News #1217.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
—Aristotle

In case you ever wondered what a Pac-Man game made out of humans instead of pixels would look like, here’s an oddly compelling stop-motion video that shows you exactly what that would look like. And here’s the site where you can get more info on it.

Facebook spam.

The spam-prevention system Facebook has in place is explained over here, but as you’ll see by the comments on that thread there are still a few bugs in the system. Here’s a comment from September 9 from one Alan Page:

Google “The Secret of Real Work At Home Success” site:facebook.com and you will see about 3,430,000 results. Someone is creating fake accounts and posting this spam ‘comment’ on thousands of groups. This has been going on for over a week and Facebook is doing nothing about it! The volume of spam indicates that it must be automated.

I just did, and I got 4,340,000 results. Looks like the problem is getting worse, not better.

Oh, those crazy kids and their wacky YouTube.

Hey marketers, want to know what the kids are watching? Try visiting PruaneTube, for one example: 30 million views to date and counting.

Takeaway for marketers: Yep, 30 million views. Watch. Listen. Learn. And if you’re trying to talk to these same kids, think about how what you’re saying (and how you’re saying it) might be resonating in this context.