Riverdale or bust?

Funny thing is I was never really into Archie Comics until very recently. Their Sonic The Hedgehog line has long been a... I won't say “guilty pleasure”... indulgence, maybe, as they inspire pleasant childhood memories but as to the main Riverdale line they were never a thing to me.

I knew they existed and their basic set-up from jokes in US sitcoms and it turns out one of my favourite kids' shows ever, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, was based on one of their properties but the comics don't have much distribution here. Still, I checked out the reboot when it happened and really bloody liked it.

I loved Archie's charming klutziness; Jughead's role as the beleaguered asexual straight man; Betty's aggressive practicality; and, Veronica's obvious desire to be useful in spite of her social cluelessness. I found Cheryl Blossom to be a gloriously vicious villain and I heartily look forward to reading Jughead's brief “romance” with Sabrina once I catch up on his title.

And then there's Riverdale...

I'm not going to lie, what I know about this series comes entirely from blogs and tumblrs which paint a... varied picture of the series that leaves me swinging between “Give it to me now!” and “Why would you do that?”

On the one hand, from the gifs and clips I've seen, Betty and Veronica have all the romantic and sexual chemistry in the world and that's an interesting angle: turning the most famous love triangle in comics into an equal threeway attraction instead of two girls pursuing one guy. On the other hand, the producers have literally come out and said it ain't happening so its queerbaiting on an epic scale.

That said, Kevin Keller is no longer the only gay in the village (no spoilers but it is a named character from the comics) yet Jughead Jones of all people got straightwashed out of the famous sexual disinterest that the comics only recently (as far as I'm aware) literally labelled as asexuality.

There seems to be a storyline involving Cheryl and Betty that goes quite hard into the psychological consequences of bullying and yet there's also, it seems, a storyline where Archie sleeps with a teacher that's... not so well handled, apparently. Like, literally, Archie is still a minor and nothing about the storyline makes out the adult to be in the wrong.

This series looks to be an absolute trainwreck and I'm more than capable of enjoying that but there's the teacher thing and the Jughead thing...

… and somehow, after reading only a dozen or so issues of the reboot, I realise I have really strong opinions about these characters.

So, regardless of how the show turns out, I think we can call the comics reboot a creative success. 

The Comics Ramble: Archie #1 (an old-fashioned, traditional reboot)

To be completely clear: I am English, so Archie Comic aren't a big cultural touchstone for me. I know the basics (Archie the everyman, Jughead the comedy bestie, Betty the girl next door, Veronica the rich girl, Reggie the sleaze, Kevin the gay one...) because they are a big cultural touchstone in the US. Penny & Aggie, one of my favourite webcomics ever, is massively influenced by Archie Comics, by Dan deCarlo's art in particular; there are endless jokes about the central love triangle in US sitcoms, which growing up in the nineties were the only sitcoms worth watching; and, of course, I remember a few years ago when the internet exploded in all directions at once when a gay character was introduced.

So I don't have a very deep understanding of these characters. I love that Betty Cooper is good with cars and “smells of flowers and motor oil” but for all I know that's just how she's always been. It feels new but that might just be me falling into a trap of seeing these comics as old-fashioned.

This doesn't mean nostalgia plays no part in me liking this comic. We open with a full page of Archie Andrews standing in front of Riverdale High introducing himself to the audience, who he'll talk to on and off for the rest of the comic. You know what that reminds me of? Saved by the Bell. The original, proper Saved by the Bell and Zack Morris explaining the episode's plot to the audience.

I loved Saved by the Bell as a kid. It has aged phenomenally badly but I have very fond memories. Student Bodies was better, anyway.

Anyway, Archie #1: opening situation is that Archie and Betty have been a couple forever and for some mysterious reason known only as The Lipstick Incident they have broken up. Everyone is gossiping and the romantics, here represented by Kevin Keller and two random girls, are in a dead panic because this completely implodes their views of the world and romance. Through it all Archie displays this somehow charming mixture of knowing he 's being talked about but being completely oblivious to how much and why it's happening.

And particular praise has to go to Mark Waid's Jughead. My view of the character from that one old Jughead Double Digest I read was of a harmless, burger obsessed goofball but here he's presented as the most emotionally intelligent person in the group. He's the lone voice of sanity urging people to let Archie and Betty hash things out themselves instead of pursuing a semi-zany and mildly convoluted scheme to force them back together. Of course, stopping that plot involves his own zany and convoluted scheme which is all to the good. Good, traditional hi-jinx.

Which I suppose brings us to the elephant in the room: what has been modernised and how? The art. The art has been modernised, the script has not. Waid's script, unaltered, could have easily run in this series decades ago. A break-up, school gossip, a homecoming dance, a scheme involving the homecoming couple vote and some crazy glue. One smartphone gag aside, this is not a 2015 plot, it isn't a specific year's plot at all, so long as teenage drama has been something people write this could have been published any year. Fiona Staples, meanwhile, modernises the hell out of Riverdale.

She doesn't change everything, most of the characters are on-model to a greater or lesser extent. Principle Weatherbee and Mister Lodge (in a stunningly well-framed cameo if I remember his relationship to Archie correctly) are almost perfectly their old selves moderated through Staples' style. Jughead's inexplicable crown survives intact because some signifiers are too important to jettison just because they make no sense. Staples modernises a lot of other things, though: the halls of Riverdale High are crowded with teens dressed in modern clothes and (I'm just going to say this) if there was a perception of the series being old-fashioned then it was a smart move for Staples and colourist Andre Szymanowicz to make such a big visual thing of the school's ethnic diversity. Whether or not it was a hugely whitewashed environment before, which I doubt but I know how perception trumps reality, this was a smart move.

And, my goodness, but Staples is great at facial expression. There's a lot of the script that's left for her to sell through artwork rather than dialogue and she knocks every emotional shift the characters undergo right on the head.

Not only am I looking forward to the next issue, which promises the introduction of Veronica Lodge, but I'm looking forward to the Jughead series advertised at the end of the issue.