The CW show is great. The teen comedy/drama that is Riverdale is exactly in their wheelhouse. It strikes a smart balance between pinging the iconic elements of the characters (e.g., Archie's romantic conflicts, appearance, and strange social positioning at both the center and outside of his high school society) and putting new spins on them (e.g. Betty as a proto-psycho, impoverished Veronica, Jughead from the wrong side of the tracks, bi-curious Moose, survivalist Dilton). Despite its slightly out-of-time feeling, it's doing a good of tackling contemporary issues like slut-shaming and the vanishing of middle America.
Which is similar to Archie comics. Even before their recent reboot in which they abandoned their long-standing house art style, Archie comics were already pushing boundaries with the likes of "Afterlife with Archie" and the introduction of gay headliner Kevin Keller.
Reboot Archie is taking full advantage of the fact that it's not a superhero title (whose readers require a certain level of gravity) and that its characters are unshakable icons, which lets writers be just as weird with them as they want to be.
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| Transquartomuralism, thy name is Archie. |
3 comments:
I know! I am reading Archie too, and I didn't even read it as a kid... but it is pretty darned good.
Because of you, I'm now hooked on Riverdale. Thanks, Scipio.
Not quite on topic, but I thought it at least faintly possible that you'd find this cover at least faintly interesting. Regrettably, it does not reflect anything in the issue's actual content, but it's a brief diversion, anyway.
https://www.comics.org/issue/228106/cover/4/
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