Declaring today Kevin Keller Day, Archie Comics has released its own video for the It Gets Better Project featuring cartoonist Dan Parent discussing the creation of the publisher's first gay character.

"When we introduced Kevin in Veronica #202, it was the first Archie comic to sell out in 70 years," says Parent, who won this year's GLAAD Media Award for outstanding comic book. "That's a good sign, it's a sign the character is going to stick around, or is starting out very well. We didn't want it to just be, 'This is the gay issue of Veronica,' and then just drop it and never come back to it. We were introducing a character that we really wanted to have some legs. So we worked very, very hard on the issue, probably harder than any story that I've worked on, and the readers responded really favorably."

Archie has also teamed with the It Gets Better Project for promotions across the organization's social-media platforms. Plus, there's a sale on Kevin Keller comics.

The character will experience his first kiss next month in Kevin Keller #10 in a story said to be inspired by the American Family Association's 2012 protest of the Life With Archie issue depicting the wedding of Kevin's adult counterpart. The group demanded that Toys R Us remove the magazine; the issue ended up selling out.

Founded in 2010 by writer Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller, the It Gets Better Project is dedicated to communicating "to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth around the world that it gets better, and to create and inspire the changes needed to make it better for them."