Archie Comics 2019
Written & Pencilled by Dan Parent
Inked by Jim Amash & Bob Smith
Coloured by Glenn Whitmore
Lettered by Jack Morelli
Archie and his friends present a collection of quarterly classic-style stories sure to be music to your ears! Follow Archie from the record store to the recording studio to the music awards in this collection of stories of musical mishaps and mirthful melodies!
I have been having a bad week or so and I have been kind of down in the dumps with situations I have absolutely no control over. The harsh reality of that is that’s life right but then I see this and I get that sort of nostalgic misty eyed look and I sit down to read. While it won’t make life better per se it does make me happy for a few brief shining moments and reminds me that there is good amidst the bad times and I can handle whatever life throws at me.
While we all praise the new direction that the Archie line has taken and the emergence of Riverdale as a premiere show on television it doesn’t pack the same wallop that the original ever has and I love the fact that Dan Parent understands this. These short vignettes tell complete stories and they have all the impact of those half hour television comedies like Happy Days or Laverne and Shirley, heck even a sprinkling of Coupling in there to boot. This is an American gem and these iconic characters have spent generations entertaining audiences while serving a few life lessons along the way.
There really are some amazing stories happening in this book. To see Jughead get food poisoning from a Diner is completely unexpected, kind of like seeing Shaggy and Scooby-Doo getting sick from eating, however even through it all Jellybean shines as a little rising star. Also I love the fact that Jugs inherited his mother’s nose and that’s just an aside. This is one of the more perfect ways to open up a first issue in my humble opinion.
One of the things about the Archie line of comics is that they aren’t afraid to show the kids friends having a myriad of different body types. Perfect example is the second feature here. Brigitte is an unknown to me but then the kids seem to have friends we’ve never seen or heard of before so that’s nothing new but I will say that it’s one of those reasons why I love the way Archie continues to be on the cutting edge of comics incorporating real world like characters into their books.
Which leads us to Dan’s pencils and the amazing team behind him completing the looks. This is straight up old school stuff here and I love it, no need for fancy overdone linework just plain old simple, strong and dynamic interiors that make us all feel right at home. There are some great colour effects but overall it brings me back to the old four colour work that used to be the only kind available. Love the body types, the expressions on the faces and the way that Dan utilises page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels. This is as close to that perfection of my childhood that I think I’ll ever get.
There are some absolutely wonderful tongue-in-cheek moments based off real life events in this issue that just make you want to howl with laughter. The names and imagery at the Awards ceremony were priceless and I wanted to see so much more of that! I mean that they served what was dished out well yeah that was fun too but to see them among today’s peers, many of whom are far worse then our intrepid teenagers was full of moments of pure joy for me.
All of this, the writing, the pacing, the characterisation alongside these amazingly solid interiors just made me smile, made me laugh and made realise that overall life’s good and it’s always what we make of it alongside those rare special few whom we call friends!