Zanaya had not been to Zia Comics before. I took her after lunch at the Grounded Café (excellent pizza). She enjoyed it and loved all of the anime figures there. I told her that she had one job: Don’t let me buy any comics for myself. She saw a Vampirella with a sexy cover that she had to have and that was okay. As we went down the rack, I was looking for a My Little Pony comic for her, but came up empty. (She has wide-ranging tastes.) Then I found this new Archie comic. I couldn’t resist and Zanaya did not restrain me. (I didn’t bother explaining to the friendly cashier that the cheesecake comic was for her and the kid’s comic was for me.)
I had heard about this issue a few months ago. Everyone had the same groan of trepidation at the news. Archie Comics was licensing out Archie to another publisher, Oni Press. Certainly, no one saw this pairing coming. Oni isn’t known for producing kid-friendly material. The closest they might have come might be Blue Monday, a comic sort of inspired by Archie. It’s teens in high school engaging in hi-jinks. Everything else about the title is a bit more risqué than Archie and very set in the 80’s. (I’ve read three of their trade paperbacks. Funny stuff.)
Archie is still publishing floppies, in addition to their digests, but only facsimile editions and seasonal specials and such. They are not publishing a regular Archie floppy. Oni is publishing three titles: Archie, Sabrina, and Archie in Hell. Okay, that last one, I would have gone with Betty and Veronica instead. The Hell comic is the one causing some concern with this venture. Not to mention, we wonder if the Sabrina title is going to be a continuation of the horror comic. We want standard Archie, not scary Archie.
The issue on the rack had a friendly enough cover. (This is an alternate cover and was the only issue on the rack, so I haven’t seen the others.) The cover is a bit thick and the pages inside are on a heavy slick paper. It seemed a bit thicker than a normal comic and it does have a few more pages for your $5. There aren’t any ads inside, other than a promo for the next issue and previews of the other two titles. There’s a montage of Archie covers over the years inside the front cover, along with a puzzle page and a pinup (which is not exactly a Dan Decarlo Veronica in a swimsuit and its terrible). There’s also an editorial. The managing editor is an Archie fan, though mostly a Betty and Veronica fan, which begs the question why that isn’t one of their titles.
One thing I wasn’t expecting was that this would truly be a classic Archie Comic in format. It features three short stories: one with Archie, one with the gang, and a Jughead story. The art style is not the classic house style and nor is it something more realistic-looking. It’s kind of a rough cartoony style. It’s sort of illustrated like a kid’s storybook. (Dare I compare this to Tintin? It doesn’t have the detail work.)
The comic begins with a quick story about Archie dreaming. The longer story next is about a student film festival, where everyone wants Archie as their star. Archie is wearing the letterman’s jacket and addressing the audience like in previous Archie title, which was more realistically drawn and written than classic Archie. There’s a small continuity change. Archie’s vehicle is no longer a Mustang (or a Model T), but a Bronco without a top. Both of these stories are okay and well in-keeping with classic Archie. They seem to be meant to introduce the character to a new audience.
Lastly, it’s a quiet story with Jughead eating at Pop’s, who announces that he’s thinking about retiring. That’s not exactly an original premise in an Archie comic, but it’s written as a journal and seems more serious. This story was continued. Interesting.
The Sabrina preview was bright and colorful. It seemed lighthearted, but had a dangerous undercurrent of dark magic. It was sort of a cross between classic Sabrina and that scary, evil Sabrina comic. The Archie in Hell preview essentially seems to be Archie getting abducted by an apocalypse cult for human sacrifice. It looks like Sabrina is going to have to come to the rescue in this one. I wonder how long this series is set to run with this premise. I’m not much of a horror fan, so I’m not the audience for this.
Overall, it’s okay. I’m glad I gave it a chance. I’m not sure what the publishing schedule is, but if I see another issue, I’ll probably give it another shot to see what else they’re going to do with the characters. The Sabrina comic I’m kind of interested in, but a bit apprehensive. I don’t quite understand the obsession with turning Archie into something dark. (Well, actually I do. It’s the Agenda.) It feels like they’re only doing something like classic Archie, so that they can do the horror stuff that they really want to do.
I am curious if Oni has plans, or even sanction, to do more titles. If they’re going to eventually do a Betty and Veronica comic, they should get a different artist to draw them as they should be (the world’s most glamorous teenagers). It certainly appears they’d like to do a Jughead comic, but perhaps doubt he can draw an audience by himself. This is an interesting experiment for Archie. It might be foreshadowing for Marvel (definitely) and DC (maybe) licensing their characters to other companies to publish comics. It has happened before recently, but this time it could be for keeps.
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