Bob Montana

Robert William Montana (October 23, 1920 – January 4, 1975) was an American comic strip artist who created the original likenesses for characters published by Archie Comics and in the newspaper strip Archie.

Early life He was born in Stockton, California, to Roberta Pandolfini Coleman and Ray Coleman. Both were in show business: Roberta had been a Ziegfeld girl and travelled with a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta troupe, while Ray performed banjo on the vaudeville circuit. "Montana" was Ray's stage name, and the family adopted the name legally in 1927. He attended Haverhill High School in Haverhill, Massachusetts. and graduated from Manchester High School Central in Manchester, New Hampshire. He studied water colors and book illustration at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and took courses in portrait art and illustration at the Phoenix Art Institute in New York.

Bob Montana presented his four-boy strip to John Goldwater while working as a freelance artist at MLJ. Goldwater thought it would be more appealing to feature two boys and two girls than four boys. Goldwater liked the name Archibald (after a friend) but Montana liked Chick. They settled on Archie. Montana and Harry Lucey collaborated on the first comic book story which was featured in Pep Comics (Dec. 1941), and its popularity led MLJ to assign Montana to draw the first issue of Archie (Nov. 1942).

According to Jane (Donahue) Murphy, a high school classmate of Montana's, Archie and his friends were based on people from their hometown and high school. She said Archie Andrews was based on Donahue's cousin, Richard Heffernan; Veronica Lodge on Agatha Popoff, the daughter of the local football team's doctor; Jughead Jones on a mischievous teen named "Skinny" Linnehan; while Miss Grundy may have been based on a high school typing and shorthand teacher named Lundstrom; however, Haverhill's school librarian is also believed to be the model for Grundy. and others have pointed out her resemblance to movie star Veronica Lake. and was a sergeant at war's end. During this time, he met and in 1946 married Helen Frances "Peggy" Wherrett, who had been working as a secretary at the army base where he was stationed.