I've forgotten so many details about the two parallel timelines by now. I've always meant to go back and re-read both possible future stories, but just have never gotten around to it. TBH, as I recall it was hard to keep the various differences in all the supporting characters between the two universes straight jumping back and forth from one timeline to the other in each chapter. I always wanted to go back and read each (AMB & AMV) half of the series straight through by itself (and maybe take a few notes), just to see if it held up and was self-consistent in both halves. I'm surprised it took you so long to get around to reading this, SAGG... but maybe you've rekindled my interest in getting back to it again. I remember there was that weird bit where (the AMV) Veronica's plane disappeared while in flight somehow, and then when she landed, she wound up in the Bettyverse, but now I forget what happened and how that whole plotline played out. And the stuff with Dilton's machine connecting the various parallel timelines of the Archie multiverse, and a whole bunch of cameo appearances by Pureheart and other versions of Archie. Before reading the DoA story, I hadn't known about most of this stuff like Ambrose, etc. (It was hinted that Ambrose is responsible for all those wild fantasy stories of Little Archie's, because he has the natural power of travelling between parallel timelines of the multiverse.) I didn't even know who Jellybean was at that point. I just picked up The Death of Archie with a pretty cynical attitude of "Oh brother, they'll shamelessly exploit just any cliched comic book marketing gimmick as a desperate ploy to goose sales, won't they?", and really got intrigued to read the whole saga from the beginning when I encountered this 2-page text flowchart at the beginning of the book, detailing and summarizing all of the various preceding events in both parallel timelines that had led up to the DoA story.
IIRC, wasn't the AMB side drawn by Pat & Tim Kennedy, and the AMV side drawn by (at first, I think, Norm Breyfogle, and then later by) Fernando? And unless I'm forgetting, weren't both stories written by Paul Kupperberg?
I will make one observation, though. Everything about the series LIFE WITH ARCHIE seemed designed to appeal to the more typical comic shop consumer. The parallel timelines, continuing subplots and soap-operatic elements, all the science-fiction tropes, you name it. And yet ACP absolutely dropped the ball on this one by making LIFE WITH ARCHIE available only in magazine format, which is pretty much reviled by both comic book collectors and comic shop retailers -- they didn't correct that mistake until the last two issues that made up the Death of Archie story. They should have made LWA in two formats... magazine for the newsstand/bookstore consumers, and traditional floppy comic for the comic shop consumers. Those last two issues of LWA in floppy comic format were the best-selling floppy comics that ACP ever printed. If they'd done that from the start, they might never ever have needed to resort to such a dramatic and irreversibly final conclusion to the series. That oversight in marketing the title from the very start is REALLY what led to the Death of Archie.
IIRC, wasn't the AMB side drawn by Pat & Tim Kennedy, and the AMV side drawn by (at first, I think, Norm Breyfogle, and then later by) Fernando? And unless I'm forgetting, weren't both stories written by Paul Kupperberg?
I will make one observation, though. Everything about the series LIFE WITH ARCHIE seemed designed to appeal to the more typical comic shop consumer. The parallel timelines, continuing subplots and soap-operatic elements, all the science-fiction tropes, you name it. And yet ACP absolutely dropped the ball on this one by making LIFE WITH ARCHIE available only in magazine format, which is pretty much reviled by both comic book collectors and comic shop retailers -- they didn't correct that mistake until the last two issues that made up the Death of Archie story. They should have made LWA in two formats... magazine for the newsstand/bookstore consumers, and traditional floppy comic for the comic shop consumers. Those last two issues of LWA in floppy comic format were the best-selling floppy comics that ACP ever printed. If they'd done that from the start, they might never ever have needed to resort to such a dramatic and irreversibly final conclusion to the series. That oversight in marketing the title from the very start is REALLY what led to the Death of Archie.
? But now is available again? A
!
?
.