text: Josie and the Pussycats (initially published as She's Josie and Josie) is a teen-humor comic book about a fictional rock band, created by Dan DeCarlo and published by Archie Comics. It was published from 1963 until 1982; since then, one-shot issues have appeared on an irregular basis. A second series, set in the New Riverdale universe, launched in September 2016.
  The series was adapted into a Saturday morning cartoon by Hanna–Barbera in 1970 and a live-action motion picture by Universal Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2001; each of these productions was accompanied by a Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack album. A completely African-American version of the band also appeared in the drama series Riverdale on The CW, after which the character Josie joined Katy Keene.
  Publication history
  Cartoonist Dan DeCarlo, who had spent most of the 1950s drawing teen and career-girl humor comics such as Millie the Model for Atlas Comics, that decade's forerunner of Marvel Comics, began freelancing for Archie Comics. In 1960, he and Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee co-created the short-lived syndicated comic strip Willie Lumpkin, about a suburban mail carrier, for the Chicago, Illinois-based Publishers Syndicate. Casting about for more comic-strip work, DeCarlo created the characters of Josie and her friends. Josie DeCarlo, the artist's wife and Josie's namesake, explained that "We went on a Caribbean cruise, and I had a [cat] costume for the cruise, and that's the way it started."