by Aubrey Sitterson
Jed Dougherty’s Art
Published By Archie Comics
In the back of the book, Jamie L. Rotatnte gives a behind-the-scenes look into the creation of the new Archie Vs the Worldcomic.
I’m reminded of the times when an actor has a great time, makes a ton of money and meets people who will become friends for life, but the film still gets a bad rating on Rotten Tomatoes, costing its producers millions.
Archie Vs The World continues the odd trend that the company has been following of taking stories from other authors and putting barely recognisable versions of Archie’s classic teens in them.
These aren’t parodies or homages. They’re also not very good.
This time, the backstory of why we are in Mad Max is barely described. Then, Archie, who has a super muscular build, recreates scenes from this franchise alongside ridiculously exaggerated version Reggie, Cheryl and Betty and Veronica. All of these old Riverdale friends, narrated and portrayed by a Jughead that looks like Scooby-Doo’s friend, Shaggy. The episode also features a short scene featuring Sabrina the witch as well as cameos by Josie and Pussycats, and Cosmo the Merry Martian in a Hitchcock style walk-on.
The story is telling itself a serious tale. Some parts, like Archie driving in his red jalopy across the wasteland, may seem funny, but you will soon realize that the author is being very serious. There are only 20 pages, so the story is episodic and there’s no time for characters or ideas to be developed. We learned most of our “knowledge” from the Mad Max films.
Jed Dougherty’s artwork is good for what it was, but at times, I thought I was reading stories from the early 1980s 2000AD by Carlos Ezquerra and Massimo Belardinelli. Dougherty channels them well even if he isn’t aware of it.
Archie is not a fan who will never change. Archie Vs The Worldreminds of early Star Trek novel where authors wrote their stories, called Kirk and Spock and the Enterprise their ship and expected us to accept it.
This is a case where I don’t believe it.
It’s possible that you won’t want to purchase it either.