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.

10 Reasons Not To Read The Hangman

You remember The Hangman, don't you? He used to lurk in the back of Pep Comics, hiding in the shadows cast by The Shield's bright shining goodness.  If you don't remember, it's probably because you've never read any of his stories. Frankly, I'm here to make sure you DON'T, with my ...

Ten Reasons Not to Read 

The Hangman.

1.  It's full of torture porn that would make even the Cenobites grimace.

2.  Its grotesque close-ups of human terror will make you long for the cheery wholesome all-ages art of EC Comics.

3.  Its figure work is what you would get if Plastic Man had a baby with the WPA, while possessed by Satan.

4.  It will destroy your faith in the use of storyboard art as a means of storytelling and undermine your sense of narrative time and space.

5. The Hangman's punches have the power to turn human bodies into rubber upon impact, and it is NOT a good look for the human body.

6.  This is his sidekick.

7.  His name is "Anthracite" (which I consider bad enough to stand as its own separate item).

8. It will permanently pervert your sense of perspective as surely as if you were trapped in an Assyrian bas-relief from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II.  

9.  You'll feel as if you've fallen into a Nazi propaganda film about 'degenerates' who make Mike Sekowsky's villains look like the Greek ideal of beauty.

10.  You will realize that, as if the world were a Final Destination film, hideous and ironic death awaits your every step.

Oh, and here's a freebie for white folks:

it will not make you feel proud.

Pep 41: The Fall of Pep, or, The Subjugation of the Shield

Pep #41... has there ever been a sadder cover?

I'm sorry; you can waste all your tears on Ollie's discovery that Speedy was an addict, or little Bruce Wayne kneeling by his parents lifeless bodies in a dark alley, or that puppy falling out the Iron Ace's plane.

But none of those come close to this cover portrait of tragedy.

Behold, the once mighty Shield. Once his powerful thighs of justice propelled him into action with the force of a 1000 militiamen across the pages of Pepe. Here he stands cowed into eunuch-like thrall to his evil master, The Andrews Thing, his legs clamped together tighter than an over-tucked drag queen. Not content merely to have enslaved him, The Andrews completes the humiliation by forcing the Shield to publicly acknowledge him as Victor Over All and praise his "knockout" beauty. How utterly emasculating.

The fight against crime and America's enemy has been deemed to "gloomy" and is to be expunged from the Archieverse. Sidelined are the murderously grim Hangman and apostatic Dusty, swept aside from crime-fighting action into mind-numbering inaction, brainwashed at the Riverdale Re-Education Camp through hours of forced reading of Archie's 'adventures' in Pep Comics. What human can look upon their empty-minded grinning without revulsion and pity?

And all the while Forsythe P. "Jughead" Jones, Riverdale's Minister of Propaganda, laconically, mirthlessly utters the order to all of you, Archie's new minions: "You vill be one vith our Leader. Und you vill be happy, vether you vant to be or not."

Oh, the comic book irony! The Shield spent so much time and effort focused on protecting America from the fascist forces of the Europe, only to have his own domain overtaken by the fascist forces of Riverdale!

May we all remember this lesson of the Fall of Pep this Independence Day!

Pep 39: Painful Perspectivitis

Usually, the 3D nature of Pep covers helps the Shield. But on the cover of 39, perspective turns against him
like some sort of artistic auto-immune disease. It's distorted his limbs and jerked them to angles so painful even the Shield can't help showing it on his face. Psst! Shield! The lipstick doesn't help...


Plus, it's obviously thrown off his aim, so he completely missed hitting Attila the Vampire Cat-person Voodoo Japanazi Who Gets His Workout Gear from the International Male Catalog.


Dusty the Boy Bondage seems to have nodded off, or may have already died from having his entire brain exposed. Oh, unless that's his hair. Dusty's lucky! He might have been in danger if Simitar-san hadn't just been shot by Ayikanasiyu, the World's Most Awkward Marksman/Chaffeur and his inable female lookout, Seen-us DeMilo.



One benefit to the perspective though: the odious Hangman is trapped on an Escherian stair/ledge, with zero clearance and steps that approach but never arrive down at the groundfloor action. The farther he is in the background the better. In fact, without my reading glasses, I'd swear he was just a color-reversed Silver Age Batwoman.

Pep #38: The Shield Knuckles Down

Not even Archie's blatant attempt to overwrite this Pep cover with his self-aggrandizing advertisements can dim the glory of this eye-popping scene. Archie; post no bills!

The Hangman -- who doesn't look anything like Batman -- is where he belongs: in the background, sequestered from the rest of the scene by the boundary created by the cannon. At first I thought the Hangman was going to take that Nazi and do a Bane-style backbreaking maneuver. But then I realized he's in the middle of enacting a much more horrible punishment: he's forcing the Nazi to stare up at the ineffable horror of the name of ARCHIE, the Fuhrer of Riverdale. You think that Nazi's wearing jodhpurs? Think again; just like his soul, his body has evacuated itself when faced with the existential terror of the Andrews Abyss. Shame on you, Hangman (who is not designed to make you think of Batman at all)-- that's a fate too cruel to impose even on a Nazi.

Dusty's having a high old time, having switched out his starched cape for a parachute, as he plummets down to --

hm, well, judging by the file of tanks on that long pink winding road, he's the Grand Marshall at the parade celebrating the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell".

And the Shield? The Shield is no-nonsense this month! He has ZERO tolerance for Nazis who dare to steal American culture by doing the Lady Gaga Bad Romance Dance at their National Socialist Rallies. "You'll not be filming THIS choreography, Leni Riefensthal!" he shouts.

Usually I make fun of the Shield's apparent fondness for golden showers as a form of punishment, as this month's yellow cover reminds us. But, gosh, he's got other tricks up his sleeve-- specifically, his FIST! Watch him shove his fist in that aperture, causing the cannon to explode back on to its owner...! "And THIS one's for the Future Farmers of America!" he cracks.

Wow, is it warm on this cover, or is it just me...?

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...!