1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?

[Douglas G. Wilson]

The word "dull[s]ville" suggests itself.

I see "Dullville" in more-or-less appropriate figurative use as early as
1951. It could have been in existence -- although likely infrequent and
not universally familiar -- as early as 1947.

Whoever inked the strip's text could have copied this word wrong, for
any of several reasons (perhaps even intentionally), e.g., in tracing or
transcribing a partially illegible draft.

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The defacement of "butthole" in the Zanesville paper is interesting. To
my eye, this is extremely unlikely to be fortuitous: I believe someone
disliked the word and scrubbed it out. Is it possible to guess when/how
this occurred? I picture some reader (in 1947, or maybe in [say] 1987)
simply defacing a copy, the copy which was digitized for N'archive,
which appears to be labeled "Ohio State Museum / Newspaper Division".
Might it be possible to review a different copy (in a different library
or whatever)?

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Has somebody already noted the date of the item? Maybe set up for print
on 1 April, I suppose? Do strange things appear on the same date in
other years?

(In the Elyria paper I find "Archie" from 2 April 1946, without anything
stranger than "chippin' your gums". The 1 April 1946 installment is
devoted to Archie's friends playing a trick on him [but Jughead seems to
take the medicine instead]. I don't find anything explicit for the
special day in 1947.)

-- Doug Wilson

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