Cricket O'Dell

Archie Comics character
full name = Cricket O'Dell


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gender = Female
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hometown = Riverdale
school = Riverdale High
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hobbies = Currency
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Cricket O'Dell is a fictional character appearing in the Archie Comics universe. She has no fixed appearance in the comics, appearing only sporadically.

Cricket is a nice and modest girl with an amazing talent: she is able to smell money—or monetary values—and determine its exact value/amount. Her nose can also determine whether treasure is genuine or not, or detect counterfeit money. This is useful if she runs across hidden riches or culprits trying to steal something valuable; in the latter case, this often earns her a rich reward. Despite this trait, she remains humble, and her friends (most particularly Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge) swear by her ability. One early appearance suggests that Mr. Lodge also has this unusual ability, and is quite disappointed in Veronica for her lack of it.

However, in her initial appearances, she not only could smell money; she was in love with it. She would fall in love any boy who had money, and once suspected Archie to be one of them because he dated Veronica Lodge (for a fleeting moment, this gave her a crush on Archie, which suggests that they are not related). Her crush ended quickly when Archie said "I'm practically a pauper" and she would turn her attention to other men with money. Nowadays, she is not portrayed as so crazy about money; she simply has the ability to smell it.

First introduced in the 1960s, Cricket appeared in the mainstream stories as well as the pre-Pussycats "Josie" series. In one story, Alexandra Cabot used Cricket’s ability to her advantage. Cricket soon disappeared from the comics, but was later brought back into view. Like a number of other characters, her appearances proved to have extremely limited use. She has appeared sporadically since then, as she often moves in and out of the cast, but she has yet to be officially retired.

Cricket shares some physical resemblance with Archie, namely red hair and freckles. They may be actually cousins, but it has so far been not made clear.

Jason Blossom, one of the snobs at Pembrooke Academy, thought of her as something of a novelty in one episode and brought her to meet his frat brothers. In that story the joke was on Jason as the overwhelming aroma of money knocked her out cold and burned her nostrils, thus ruining Jason's planned performance.

Though still rarely appearing, she seems to have appeared at least somewhat more often in the 2000s. Some of these appearances include:
* "Veronica" #169 (as well as several other "Veronica" stories)
* "Archie and Friends" #91.
* "Archie's 65th Anniversary Bash" (the 2006 Free Comic Book Day Archie Comic).
* The 2007 story, "Civil Chores" Part 3, in "Tales of Riverdale" # 24.
* The "Lodge of Terror" story in "Betty & Veronica Double Digest" #155.