Comic Review: Archie Milestones #20 Jughead Super Hero Special

Archie Comics is in a bit of a doghouse with me.  A recent editorial decision has put them firmly in the wrong camp, again.  I don’t really want to support them, but I’m not buying the directly offending material.  I’m also just about out of space to store digests.  That might end my buying altogether.  In any case, I really wanted this one.

 

For all of the Archie Comics I’ve read, I have no experience with the Archie teens as superheroes.  I barely have any with the more famous MLJ superheroes.  This year, Archie has brought those characters back and put them in the Archie universe for laughs.  (They’re way late on trying to cash in on all the superhero movies.  This is probably being done to keep up the copyright on the characters.) 

 

This issue of Archie Milestones fits right in.  Continuing with the title’s theme of focusing on Jughead this year, this issue features Jug’s superhero alter ego, Captain Hero, as well as some of his other superpowered identities.  With Jughead, anything is possible.  This fits right in with the character.  (My favorite iteration is him in the Time Police.)  This digest reprints mostly full-length comics, not typical shorts, so you’re getting a bit more story development (for an Archie comic).

The digest starts off really well with a Captain Hero story by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz, a couple of long time superhero comic pros.  It looks great and is well-written.  Captain Hero’s powers are a bit ambiguous.  This will only get more confusing with further stories.  That almost seems to be the point.  There’s no origin story in this volume, unfortunately.

This was followed by a couple of classic Captain Hero stories, maybe from the 60’s.  They are fun.  In one, he has superpowers.  In the other, he has a gun and a bunch of super gadgets.  Archie and Reggie also get into the superhero act, but mostly fight each other. 

I’m not sure when the next story happened.  Archie and Betty, in their alter egos, join Jughead in this one.  The action is pretty dynamic in this.

Hmm. . .  I recognize one of these villains shown, the “Whistler.”  More on that later.

 

Captain Hero is featured in a couple more stories fighting villains.  Jughead, even in his civilian identity is totally jacked.  Must be all the protein from the burgers.

 

Another story from a later time has a more normal-looking Jughead/Captain Hero and seems to establish Captain Hero as a daydream, which would explain a lot. 

 

Next are two full stories from the Archie’s Weird Mysteries era.  It was sort of a teen X-Files/Kolchak the Night Stalker concept.  I’ve watched a couple of episodes and read a couple of comic books and like them.  The Archie characters are established well enough to work in about in any setting.  The first story has the gang meeting the Mighty Crusaders (MLJ heroes).  The second story has the Crusaders teaming up with the teens as their superhero alter egos.  The stories feature a couple of epic panels.  Fernando Ruiz does a great job on the crowd scenes, while Paul Castiglia’s writing juggles the multitude of characters and superhero pseudo-science fairly well. 

The next full story looks like it’s from the 80’s.  Jughead is recast as something like Bruce Wayne/Batman.  As silly as this story should have been, it actually comes off pretty entertaining as presented.  Superhero scribe Robert Loren Fleming and artist Gene Colan did the work, so little wonder they took it seriously. 

Some short tales round off the digest.  A couple by Rex Lindsey stand out.  The opening panel of the first one perfectly encapsulates Jughead.  He runs out of clean clothes and walks down the street wearing a superhero outfit.  In the next, we get a square-jawed muscular Super Jughead.   

 

Misgivings aside, I felt I got my $10 worth and I’d definitely recommend this.  I’d like to see more of the classic superhero stuff.  Some new Archie superhero stuff would also be fun, if they can get the right people doing the stories and art. 

 

I was going to compare the Archie superhero concept to the Archie spy concept in The Man from RIVERDALE.  I actually own a trade collection of that and recognized the “Whistler” from it.  However, I discovered that I somehow never wrote a review of it.  I’ll have to correct that next.