Forgotten Archie Characters: Pearl

 

Well.

I see why SHE didn't show up in CW's "Riverdale".

Mickey Rooney = KJ Apa

 I had to explain to someone the other day that, from a comic book perspective, this person

Even through this 40-year-old screen cap, you can sense how terrible he is.

is the same as this person.

Even through this five-year-old screen cap, you can sense how confused he is.

If you don't understand, you will soon. If you do, sit back and enjoy the ride anyway.

The bottle ginger is, of course, Keneti James Fitzgerald Apa, a.k.a. KJ Apa (see below auditioning for the role of "Flower" in DC's Sgt. Rock's Easy Company).

Don't get confused; the "a.k.a" is not part of his name. If it were, it wouldn't have periods. For some reason.

Like Dwayne Johnson, Apa is half-Samoan. Unlike Johnson, his name reflects this much more strongly than his appearance, but the fact that his hair's been dyed cartoon-red for most of the last five years hasn't helped.

A Samoan village Savae (chief), in fact, with all its epic highs and lows.

It's been dyed cartoon-red, of course, because he's been playing literature's greatest monster, Archie Andrews.

ARCHIE IS.
ALL HAIL THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS.

KJ Apa is, by all accounts, a nice (if a bit odd) young person who tries hard to maintain his dignity while starring in, how do we put this, not the most respected show on television.  

Oh, sure, it's easy to make fun of it when Archie gets attacked by a bear, but when twee pretentious Leonardo DiCaprio does it, HE gets an Oscar.

You go, KJ; all the best to you.

This, on the other hand, is Mickey Rooney.  

Even for Mickey, he was unusually upset on this occasion.

Talk about epic highs and lows. Mickey Rooney had a very long career as a character actor (at 5'2", he wasn't going to be a leading man in oldtime Hollywood), living to be 93 (despite a truly tumultuous personal life).

The earlier pic is from his 1981 sitcom when he was only, um, 87? 72? 63? 52? 44?
Who can tell, he always looked like that.

It co-starred Dana Carvey, as his grandson, when Dana Carvey was still hot.

And Nathan Lane, as Carvey's roommate, when Nathan Lane still looked ....
exactly like Nathan Lane always looks.

All articles about Rooney will quote Hollywood royalty saying he was One of Hollywood's Greatest Actors.

"Least Cautious", certainly.

Um. Okay, Hollywood; you're entitled to your opinion, although I've never met a regular person who shares it. He seemed like a shouting, scenery-chewing vaudevillian in everything I ever saw him in, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

I don't mean to deny the man his due, mind you.

He was a main player in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, after all, and that always counts for something.

If nothing else, he made possible the line: 
"What could go wrong with an Old Fashioned?"

And he was in Pete's Dragon, which was fun.

Why not just hire an actor who naturally hallucinates dragons already?

But his real impact was his early work as a child star when he starred in sixteen (!) films as Andy Hardy, the personification of American teenage wholesomeness and good intentioned earnestness. And Andy Hardy...

As personified by young(ish) Mickey Rooney

was the template for...

Archie Andrews (first appearance). Or 'Chick", as his friends never ever call him, not even once, in 80 years.

So KJ Apa is playing Archie Andrews who is based on Andy Hardy as played by Mickey Rooney. Now you know.

P.S. There is one other odd fact I noticed while writing this.  I refuse to let it creep me out. 

Much.

Among his many roles, in the Rankin-Bass's stop-motion special "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town",  Mickey Rooney played Kris Kringle who, impossible though it is, appears to have been based exactly

"No, really... a bear!"

on KJ Apa.

Pictured: end game.

A Peppy Development on Riverdale

 Oh, I see...

the newest development on the show Riverdale (which, yes, is still a thing) is one which has utterly confounded everyone as being incomprehensibly beyond the pale, even for a show that has exemplified "madness" as method.

To me, on the other hand,

it's the first thing on the show that has made any sense in YEARS.

Not that I've been watching, of course; I value my sanity too much.  

A difficult choice.

But reading about this latest episode, which deals with the after-effects of a bomb exploding at Archie's house, sent me dashing to television to watch. In short, Archie and Betty should probably be dead but instead...

they have superpowers.

Betty has some sort-of "Spider-sense" ability (very useful when you are an FBI agent) and Archie has mysteriously picked up a lot of extra mass, becoming extra dense (no jokes) and his skin becoming nearly impervious (which is why he and Betty, whom he was in front of, survived the blast).

Let me think REALLY hard about that.

• A red-headed male.
• Who was the star of Pep Comics.
• Who gains the power of superstrength and impervious skin.

It took him some 80 years. But the ever-insidious Archie finally has replaced the Shield fully.

By BECOMING The Shield.

Even I have to admit....

"Archie" is knocking it out of the park lately.

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.

Transquartomuralism, thy name is Archie.

So... I'm reading Archie and watching Riverdale. What IS the world coming to...?!

Politics Make Strange Bedfellows

Politics –and similar exigencies--make strange bedfellows. Like the time Bronze Age Batman and the Joker and teamed up to solve the Penguin’s “murder” in Brave & the Bold. Or the time Lex and Superman worked together to fight famine in Africa in Heroes Against Hunger. Or when Captain America joined with Hitler to fight worldwide currency inflation. I forget which story that was.

Anyway, thanks to I find myself similarly wedded to the unlikeliest of bedfellows: Archie Andrews.

Thanks, Slay Monstrobot, for exposing this.

As longtime readers of the Absorbascon will know, Archie Andrew is my bête noir. His slow banishment of the heroic Shield from the pages of Pep, his mental enthrallment of the youth of America, his apostlehood of surrealism in comics—the depth and breadth of his evil are unfathomable and illimitable, unbounded as they are by either space/time or the Fourth Wall.

Yet, politics find me arm-in-arm with my Arch-nemesis in solidarity against… One Million Moms, who are boycotting Archie Comics and Toys-R-Us, which is carrying a comic in which Riverdaler Kevin Keller marries his boyfriend. First, a new editor’s notes. I do not know that there are actually one million moms in One Million Moms; I rather doubt it, the same way I’m not really concerned about any threat from Insane Clown Posse or The Butthole Surfers. Also, in the “present day” continuity of Riverdale, Kevin (like the rest of the Archie gang) is a highschooler, with limited dating experienced due to having moved around a lot with his military family. “Kevin’s Wedding” is an “imaginary story” of the future, just like the “Archie Marries Betty” and “Archie Marries Veronica” comics. I will also add that I am opposed to Kevin’s marriage because the story depicted him as a wounded veteran marrying his physical therapist, which is all kinds of professional wrong and which, as we have learned previously here at the Absorbascon, is the road to perdition.

That said, I am obviously not against gay marriage generally or against the general concept of Kevin getting married. Even if I were, I hope wouldn’t take the same stance as this pressure group/rock band One Million Moms ™. Because, even if ‘gay marriage’ is a thing you don’t like, it is still a thing that is happening in the real world—quite a lot—and as such is fair game for inclusion in comics. Of course, rape and murder happened quite a lot in the real world, but I wouldn’t want those in Archie Comics. But if you want to put gay marriage in the same box as rape and murder, One Million Moms, then further discourse on the matter would probably be fruitless. Meanwhile, good luck influencing Toys’R’Us, who I can only assume don’t give a darn what mothers thinks, or their brand name wouldn’t be a grammatical and orthographic horror-show.

By the way, if you get the chance, buy Kevin Keller #1; not only was it kind of touching it was freakin’ hilarious, particularly the Kevin’s Almost First Date and Reggie Gives Kevin a Makeover parts.

What I am really interested in talking about is NOT Kevin Keller, but about the fact that Archie—friggin’ ARCHIE—is leading the mainstream comic book pack on social issues. It’s great, and we should applaud the Archie Comics folks for their efforts to be modern, relevant, but still wholesome. What bothers me is that my preferred comics genre—DC’s ‘super’ titles—are so far BEHIND the curve in representing the realities of gay people being part of modern society.

Don’t get me wrong; I have been very happy to see that the Legion folks stepped right up to the plate and unabashedly portrayed Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet as a couple (a tradition from the Giffen Five Years Later Era). And, of course, Kate Kane has her own title as Batwoman, where her personal and romantic life is very much integral to the story.

However, I cannot help feel that in the New52—so far—it feels like we have taken a step backwards in the portrayal of gay people from what preceded. In the Old52, we could at least point to a handful of gay men in the DCU; admittedly, no one as high profile as Batwoman, but still there were some. There is, to my knowledge, no one to point to in the New52. Naturally, the whole new DC universe is still unfolding and new characters (and old characters newly recast) are being revealed every week, so my observation may simply be premature. But, even if there are no main characters who are gay men, I’m still looking for some sign that gay marriage—a growing modern reality that even Archie Comics has acknowledged and incorporated into its universe—exists in the DCU. I’m not looking for a “Very Special Issue” about it; I don’t think it merits it. But as one occasionally sees straight married couples in the DCU during the course of a plot, one might expect also, at some point, to see a gay married couple as well.

I am aware that the issue is not without controversy in ‘the real world’. I am also aware that superhero comics, on average, do not court social and political controversy. However, I am also aware that DC didn’t wait until integration and ‘miscegenation’ were no longer issues before showing black Americans with white ones in their stories; or am I wrong in that?

I remember looking at the DCU when I was a kid as a more advanced placed, both scientifically and sociologically. Is that no longer the case? Am I now living in a world that’s ten years ahead of the DCU, instead of the other way around?

Archie Comics has always been about preparing young kids for the world they were going to grow into as teenagers. Is DC Comics now just about preserving for adults the world we grew up in as kids?

THERE IS NO GOD

And I blame Glen Weldon for this. Somehow.

Haikuesday with Actor John Ostrander

Now, I know I've been kind of harsh on poor Supergirl supporting character, actor-neighbor John Ostrander.

But that's mostly because every time he speaks it's so irksome that I feel like signing up for the Red Lanterns.

Yeah, I wish I could forget about you, too, Actor John Ostrander!

And he speaks SO DARNED MUCH.

Because he's an actor, you know.


He's a confluence of character cliches and verbal ticks that are all among the Sure Signs of Bad Comic Book Writing, including the Wacky Neighbor, the Comic Relief Victim, the Person Who Is His Profession, the Mouthpiece of False Street Talk, etc. The character Actor John Ostrander would be high on the list of anti-character witnesses in the Trial of Paul Kupperberg for Crimes Against Prose and the Comic Book Reading Public. Although I'm sure Paul is a wonderful person. Who works for Archie, now, by the way. Not that there's anything wrong with being a minion of the red-headed devil who destroyed America's original patriotism-themed superhero, the Shield.

Anyway, fair play dictates that credit must be given where credit is due. Even when it's to an odious toad like actor-neighbor John Ostrander.

And you have to give credit to a supporting character who, even though his life is threatened, manages to use his fear-induced stutter as a means for sputtering out ...

a haiku.

A- act-u-al-ly,
I was hoping you'd forget.
N- no ... no such luck.

Didn't notice it the first time, did you?

What haiku can YOU compose to damn or praise John Ostrander or Paul Kupperburg?

Pep 40: Don't Judge a Book

On the surface, this is a perfectly ordinary Pep Comics cover. The symbolic yellow skies. The 3D effect of The Shield jumping outward toward the reader while pummeling a host of Japanazis. The Damsel in Distress. The Hangman leaping in un-helpfully in the wee background. Dusty practicing his pull-ups for the President's Physical Fitness test at school.

But this cover is a masterpiece of deceit that has turned my computer into a house of lies. Why? Because...

THIS SCENE DOES NOT APPEAR IN THIS COMIC!

The contents of this comics are:

The Shield molests an innocent Martian tourist (as seen earlier on this blog).

A two-page Shield prose story (to keep mailing costs down)

Captain Commando and the Boy Commandos doing a conga line to defeat Nazis. Don't ask.

Whoa. Because that's not gay at all.

A story about some seriously hot hillbilly named "Catfish Joe".

Whoa. Because that's not gay at all.

This guy:

Translation: "B5! Over here! BINGO!!!"

The story of Androcles and the Lion as reenacted by one of comics' greatest thespians, Li'l Chief Bugaboo:

Whoa. Because... well, you know.

The Hangman getting hit by a car. God, I love that every time I look at it.

Bentley of Scotland Yard discovers a mummy that vomits chocolate pudding.

Um.... What else would be wrapped up in mummy bandages...?

BUT... no Japanazis. No Red Cross nurse. No Dusty doing pull-ups.

Should I demand my money back...?!

P.S. Oh... and there's ...

THIS:

The Real Adversary

Could Archie be any more vile? He's like a fourth Fabulous Furry Freak Brother.

And where was Dr. Wertham when we needed him, any way? No doubt, he was in Archie's pay, destroying any threats to the Riverdale iron hegemony.

Pep 37: Awakening from the Nightmare

Phew! That cover is SUCH a relief. The Shield, with heavily inked musculature (even in his hair!), is pole-vaulting into a hay-carpeted redoubt teeming with Japanazis, who are apparently in the midst of boring to death some bound Americans, several of whom have already nodded off. Dusty, his cape in extra-starched glory, is socking Tojo Junior in the jaw with, um, a Nikon camera? It's hard to tell, but I'm sure Dusty is indulging in adolescent war-time smack-talk: "Turns out your inferior foreign electronics are good for something after all, Colonel-san!" And the odious Hangman is relegated to the background, busy casting shadows and mopping up the also-rans. ALL IS AS IT SHOULD BE on the cover of PEP!

You see, I had this horrible nightmare last night. There was this red-haired beaver or woodchuck or something in black pullover with an R on it, and he was using his buckteeth to chew away at the cover of a Pep magazine, just chewing it all away, and as he chewed it, it was killing off each character as he ate their picture on the cover, first the Hangman, then Dusty, then the Shield, with finally nothing left to stop him from consuming the entire soul of the nation=== the surreal horror of it was overwhelming.

Phew! Thank Jove it was just a dream...!

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.