Pep 36: The Rise of the Redhead

Hitler's ascension as Germany's Furher in 1934.

The Joker's re-emergence in Batman 251.

Stalin's Great Purge.

Palpatine's imperial rise.

Not even those memories can steel you for the ineffable horror of....

The Advent of the Andrews

Formerly, Pep covers had basked in eternal summers of fighting foreign foes and rescuing pointy-tata-ed blondes in red dresses. But that ended with the advent of the Andrews, who is to the MLJ-Universe as the White Queen is to Narnia. With the advent of the Andrews, a perpetual winter blankets Pep in its icy pall, numbing the souls of its denizens.

See the grim Hangman, punisher of evildoers, reduced to a broad-shouldered cheerleader for the Riverdale Regime. And The Shield--oh, pity the once mighty Shield. See how he has been lobotomized into some kind of joker-zombie by the surrealistic pseudo-humor of the Andrewstrosstruppen, his face frozen in the classic Riverdale-rictus. The pillar of justice is now turned into a litter-bearer for the buck-toothed dictator. Observe how the Shield and the Hangman are mocked by cruel youths behind them who have been indoctrinated by the copies of the Andrews' Mein Festnahme in their hands and ice-water in their veins.

It's not hard to tell who the other converts to the new regime are. That sickening sycophant, Captain Commando, grins idiotically at his master's victory, no doubt offering his trio of Boy Soldiers to be folded into the growing Andrews-Jugend organization. And Danny in Wonderland-- in retrospective it's so obvious that he was part of Riverdale's Fifth Column, with his red-hair and surreal adventures. Danny is clearly John the Baptist to MLJ's Anti-Christ.

Bentley of Scotland Yard and Sgt Boyd cannot hide their displeasure. They do not welcome their new inset overlords and know that their days are numbered. The lunacy of the Archieverse has no place for their kind of strict rationalism. Bently and Boyd? Expurgated and forgotten; yet the Riverdale Reich lives on.