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Archie #22

Started by Vegan Jughead, July 19, 2017, 09:13:48 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Vegan Jughead

Archie #22 is sweet and heartbreaking at the same time.  I recommend it. 


It seems like #23 will be a weird time to change artists from Pete Woods to Audrey Mok.  They claimed #23 starts a new arc, but it's going to be really a continuation of the current story.  I like Audrey's art much better than Pete's, so I'm fine with it, but I wish this book could stick with an artist. 

DeCarlo Rules

#1
It's probably more a question of what page rate an artist is willing to work for, and for how long. Without some explicit commitment denoted in a written contract, any artist is more likely to gravitate towards available work at a better rate, regardless of who's offering it. That's pretty much the definition of a freelancer.

Then again, there's never been any guarantee at ACP that the artist who drew the story in the previous issue would be the artist who drew the story in the next issue, even on titles where one particular artist might be more likely to draw it than any other. It just goes hand in hand with the philosophy that it's not the artists and writers who are important here, it's the names of the intellectual properties owned by the company that are selling the product.

Mr.Lodge

In other words, it's just ACP operating with their head up the rear. They seen to have no rhyme or reason what they want to do or be. Sounds like bad leadership or lack of. Just ask Fernando Ruiz. The way they treated him, Dan DeCarlo and others is disgraceful. ACP needs Fernando and Gisele, good leadership, real direction.

DeCarlo Rules

The only observation I'll make here is that REGGIE AND ME and JOSIE had the same creative team for the length of their runs, and JUGHEAD had 2 different writers and 2 different artists. ARCHIE has had a single writer and a different artist for each story arc. You can hardly judge Adam Hughes B&V for comparative purposes due to the fact that it only ran 3 issues, the first issue of which was locked into retailers' preorder numbers.

My takeaway from that is that the people who continued to buy ARCHIE after the first story arc either liked Mark Waid's story a lot better than the stories of the other writers on the other New Riverdale titles, or they just want to buy a comic which features Archie and his supporting cast, and they care less about Reggie, Josie, and Jughead as main characters. Possibly a combination of the two factors, but if I had to bet which side sales were leaning more heavily on, I'd go with the fact that it's ARCHIE, rather than that it's written by Mark Waid, since I doubt the main consumers buying ARCHIE are followers of Waid's work on other comic books.

DeCarlo Rules

You can probably expect to see a sales bump on the "Over the Edge" arc issues of ARCHIE due to retailer speculation, following in the same pattern as prior retailer speculation on VERONICA #202 (first appearance of Kevin Keller), and LIFE WITH ARCHIE #16 (The Marriage of Kevin Keller cover variant), #23 (Francavilla
"Afterlife With Archie" cover variant), and #36 & 37 (the "Death of Archie" issues).

DeCarlo Rules

So what do these characters have in common?

Charles (Professor X) Xavier
Dr. Niles (The Chief) Caulder
Barbara (Oracle) Gordon
Anita (once dated Jughead) Chavita
Harper Lodge
Betty Cooper

DeCarlo Rules

I actually read ARCHIE #20-22 a couple of weeks ago, just to see what all the hubbub was all about. "Over the Edge" seems like a pretty cheesy attempt at some soap-opera theatrics, troweling a copious layer of angst on top of the usual behavior of Archie, Reggie, Veronica, and Betty.

Reggie acts like a jerk as usual. He doesn't care so much about taking Archie's car as just making him look like a dweeb in front of Veronica, and Archie, predictably, is just dumb enough to fall right into his trap. He'd just as soon do something both stupid and dangerous (not that there's one chance in a million of his car beating Reggie's in a street race) if he thinks that there's even the slightest possibility it might save his reputation from looking like a "loser" in Veronica's eyes. If that's all Veronica cares about Archie, she's not worth the bother.

But of course if either of the idiots responsible for creating this dangerous game of chicken were to suffer as a result of it, we'd just say... "Serves him right for being such a total dick" or "What kind of idiot cares so much about his 'image' that he gets suckered into something like that?" and that they got what they deserved. But of course that would be too easy, so Archie not using his brain and acting stupid results in poor Betty panicking and not using her brain and acting stupid to try to save him... and of course, blameless as she is, she's the one who had to wind up suffering for it.

Because it's always the innocent and blameless who have to suffer for the jerks and dumbasses of the world, who somehow or other always seem to lead a charmed life. Now in the real world that would be a life-changing event for both Archie and Reggie, and either wind up destroying them, or wising them up and straightening them out, making them re-evaluate their whole outlook and behavior. But we can be pretty sure that isn't going to happen here, because their characters are already written to be what they are... Reggie will always act like a jerk, and Archie will always be good-intentioned, but stupid enough to act like a selfish chump anyway.

Mr.Lodge

It was really cheesy and I knew all along that nobody was going to die. If anybody deserved to die, it's Reggie. He'll piss off the wrong person at the wrong time under the right circumstances and he'll wish the police get to him before they do.

DeCarlo Rules

If they were giving the reality treatment to a typical plot involving Reggie, it might be Moose Mason being arrested by the police, while Reggie Mantle lay in the ICU after being brutally beaten by Moose, regretting the day he stopped being a cartoon character who could instantly recover from those kinds of injuries by the beginning of the next story.

In the context of cartoon reality, it's funny when Reggie acts like a total jerk or pranks people, or when Moose goes into a blind rage and beats the crap out of Reggie, or when Archie is oblivious to anyone's feelings but his own... not so much in a storytelling mode where you're trying to treat the characters 'seriously'.

Tuxedo Mark

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 06, 2017, 05:24:56 AM
In the context of cartoon reality, it's funny...when Archie is oblivious to anyone's feelings but his own

Not sure why this would be considered funny. I'm currently re-watching an episode of "Archie's Weird Mysteries" where Archie is obsessed with his car and not really paying attention to the girls. The girls are offended but just kinda take it, and they sigh in frustration. I keep thinking "Quiet DUMP the idiot! He's not gonna notice your lack of presence in his life anyway!"
BV-kiss-small
Riverdale Reviewed
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Every episode of "Riverdale", "The New Archies", and "Archie's Weird Mysteries" reviewed.
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DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on August 06, 2017, 02:52:22 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 06, 2017, 05:24:56 AM
In the context of cartoon reality, it's funny...when Archie is oblivious to anyone's feelings but his own

Not sure why this would be considered funny. I'm currently re-watching an episode of "Archie's Weird Mysteries" where Archie is obsessed with his car and not really paying attention to the girls. The girls are offended but just kinda take it, and they sigh in frustration. I keep thinking "Quiet DUMP the idiot! He's not gonna notice your lack of presence in his life anyway!"

It's something that I think about whenever I see it in a story, and it's something that makes Archie an exasperating character, especially since he's the main protagonist in most of these stories. It's one of the things that makes it hard for me personally to identify with Archie and to root for him. I don't want to see him win, I want to see him lose, because that makes for a funnier story. But as long as the story is existing for the purpose of creating comedic situations, and the characters are drawn in a simple humorous manner, ultimately you can't get too worked up about it, because you know the events of the story have no cumulative effect. By the next story, it will be as though none of the events happening in this story ever happened. That's why Archie never really learns any life lessons, or grows or changes as a character. There can be stories whose resolution seems to result in Archie learning some kind of lesson, but ultimately that has no effect on how his character (or Betty's, or Veronica's, or any of them, really) are written or behave in subsequent stories.

At least that's how the character was conceived originally, and how it worked in classic-style Archie stories for 75 years. Now they're trying to retrofit those characters into a different storytelling mode altogether, one in which stories are routinely ongoing, and there IS supposed to be some kind of cumulative continuity that would allow the characters to change and evolve in the progression of the stories. It's not a situation comedy any more, with familiar tropes repeating themselves over and over in short, self-contained stories -- they want to try treating the characters as more "real". It doesn't work for me.

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