Last week, as you may have heard, I spent in Pittsburgh with the wonderful Erin. This week I’m back home reading the comics I got while I was there. And like most people do when they go to Pittsburgh, I got several Archie comics. That’s what Pittsburgh is famous for, you know. So I thought today I’d talk a little about the Archies that came back to Louisiana with me.
Archie and Friends #140 was a book I missed out on when it was released a few months ago. A while back, Batton Lash and Bill Galvan did a great job on their series “Archie: Freshman Year.” In this second run of stories, Lash and Galvan told a different Freshman Year-era story about several of Archie’s friends, beginning here with the tale of what happened when Jughead briefly moved to Montana. As you can tell from the cover, it isn’t quite what one would have expected. Away from his friends, Jughead meets a young lady named Sadie Cameron, and unexpected sparks fly. This is a great issue, a very strong character piece for Jughead. Lash uses this Freshman year story to explain away a few things about ol’ Jug, from why he has no interest in the girls of Riverdale to the origin of his classic “S”-sweater that never made much sense for a Riverdale High student. Lash has a wonderful feel for these characters, weaving in jokes and puns that are perfectly appropriate for their ages and — for the most part — managing to avoid topical references that will serve to date the comic in a few years (a problem with a lot of Archie stories over the years). Galvan is a classic artist who is doing some of his best work, especially with Sadie. He manages to give her a unique look, setting her apart from the likes of Betty and Veronica while still maintaining the “Archie Comics” house style. It’s a great book.
Rating: 5/5
Also in Pittsburgh, I picked up the recently-released final chapter of “Freshman Year: The Missing Chapters,” as presented in Archie and Friends #144. Lash and Galvan are back, of course, but instead of a story focusing on one of the classic characters, this issue turns the spotlight on a new character introduced in their first “Freshman Year” yarn — Archie’s little-seen buddy Pencilneck G. Archie and Pencilneck grew close during Jughead’s absence, but largely disappeared after that. In this chapter, the “present day” Archie gang reminisces about their various introductions to Pencilneck, and we again encounter him in the present day.
Pencilneck and his group are almost like a “Bizarro” version of Archie and the gang, with Pencilneck filling in the Jughead role to a different “Betty, Veronica and Archie.” Seeing them interact feels like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine finds a whole different group — it reminds us of our heroes, but there are distinct differences. It’s a fun book, and perhaps best of all, it ends on a cliffhanger. Clearly, there’s another volume of “Freshman Year” in the works, and I for one can’t wait to read it.
Rating: 4/5
Next up is the latest installment in the Archie “new look” series, Betty and Veronica Double Digest #181. In part two of “No Baseball For Betty,” Betty Cooper is suffering from the fallout of her decision to try out for Riverdale High’s baseball team instead of playing softball this year. Her former teammates on the softball team feel like she’s abandoned them, while the boys on the baseball team are threatened that a girl is planning to replace one of them — and she’s good enough to do it. Betty’s relationship with Archie is especially strained when he, as the team captain, fails to stand up for her. Melanie J. Morgan has been the driving force behind these “New Look” comics, and it’s really nice to see her doing something different with them. She’s mostly written love stories of one sort or another (the tale of Archie “moving away” being a notable exception), so tackling this sort of story is a nice change of pace. It’s also great to see a Betty spotlight, rather than something focusing on Betty and Veronica, or Betty and Archie. Both of them are in the comic, of course, but it’s really about her. Rod Whigham does the art for this title, and does a solid job drawing semi-realistic characters that evoke the Archie house style.
Rating: 4/5
Jughead #200 is, of course, a milestone issue for our favorite eating machine, and it also has the distinction of being the first Archie comic to be released with two different covers. I only got one. In this landmark issue Tom Root (one of the writers of Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken series) leads Jughead to an out-of-the-way diner where a witch makes him a deal. She’ll serve him up the greatest cheeseburger of all time, but for a price… his perfect metabolism. When Jughead’s eating starts to catch up to him, Archie and the rest of the guys set out to try to rescue him, but they each get in further and further over their heads, leaving it up to a special guest-star to get them out of this one. This is a wonderfully funny issue. It’s a little darker, a little sharper than most Archie comics, but it doesn’t go so far as to be inappropriate for kids or upsetting to parents. It’s a solid, funny story that utilizes everything the Archie universe has to offer, as well as explores just what makes each of our core cast what he or she actually is. Rex Lindsey is a legendary Archie artist and he does his usual magic here. He tells the story well and gets to have fun with the characters visually — fat Jughead, Archie as a jerk, Veronica in rags. It’s a wonderfully silly issue and a fine way to celebrate 200 issues of Jughead.
Rating: 5/5
Finally is a book that I didn’t actually buy — a leftover from this year’s Free Comic Book Day that one of the shops was handing out. Sonic the Hedgehog: Hide and Seek and Destroy is apparently a side-story to the regular series. Written by Ian Flynn with art by James Fry, this issue shows us Sonic examining the ruins of Dr. Robotnik’s old territory, unaware that Robotnik is back and watching him. Robotnik had a pretty spectacular breakdown in issue #200 of Sonic’s ongoing comic, so this issue actually comes across as a fairly important one in terms of the character’s ongoing storyline. I’m not a regular reader of Sonic’s comic, but I am continually impressed with how the writers of this Archie series have managed to keep it going for such a long time. This is the longest-running video game comic of all time, and it’s not showing any sign of slowing down. Even in periods when Sonic’s games weren’t tearing up the charts, this comic has succeeded. This issue was solid, if not spectacular, and probably a must-read for fans of the ongoing.
Rating: 3.5/5
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