by 
Updated on December 10, 2021
This week’s minorities in cartoons entry is Ginger Lopez. Ginger first appeared in “Betty and Veronica Spectacular” #50 (November 2001). Artist/writer Dan Parent created Ginger.
Maria Rodriguez, introduced in the 70s comics, pre-dates Ginger. However, Ms. Lopez appears more often in modern stories.
Background
Ginger’s main shtick is serving as an editor of a teen fashion magazine. Thus many of her stories (or appearances in other characters’ stories) revolve around her interest in fashion.
Oddly, Ginger was initially introduced as a replacement for Cheryl Blossom. This resulted in Ginger initially having a similar personality to Cheryl’s, and even a brief rivalry with Betty and Veronica. For a time, Archie even edited older digest reprints featuring Cheryl to change her name/hair color to Ginger’s! Fortunately, Archie came around, and stopped writing Ginger as an ersatz Cheryl.
Ginger and Cheryl eventually met each other, and even became friends, in a 2010 storyline. The story, “Battle of the BFFs,” centered around various teenage girl “best friends forever” competing on a game show. Subsequently, Riverdale’s teenage girls signed up for the game show. Ginger decided to sign up with the best friend-less Cheryl.
Unlike Maria (or Nancy Woods), Ginger has no steady boyfriend. Ginger’s usually shown on various one-off dates, including with Archie.
Ginger also appears in the mature readers-only series “Afterlife With Archie.” There, she’s secretly in a relationship with Nancy.
Other media
Ginger’s a character (and a friend of Cheryl) on the 2017 CW series “Riverdale.” Actress Caitlin Mitchell-Markovitz plays Ginger.
(Updated 3/20/17)
