Archie's Weird Mysteries: Invisible Archie

Okay, everybody, this is it.  So far we've had killer potatoes, twisted wishes, possessed cars, and giant teenagers.  Now we're getting into a more "classic" movie monster homage, with Archie Andrews, eternal teen, becoming the Invisible Man.

Now, I know what a lot of teenage boys would like to do if they were suddenly invisible, and none of them are not creepy, and most are illegal.  Let's see if this cartoon series holds true to Archie being the most pure and noble person on the planet (who has already seen one of his girlfriends naked this season) or is human like everyone else.

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Attack Of The 50-Foot Veronica

What else is there to say about Veronica Lodge?  Well, I don't think I've discussed her friendship with Betty that much, but watching this program and thinking back to some of the comics I used to read, I can't help but wonder if the relationship between Betty and Veronica is more than just "friends when convenient" but probably the strongest relationship about of any two characters in Archie Comics history.

This is a friendship that survives multiple backstabbing attempts as both girls attempt to win the heart of Archie, and if I remember correctly, there were multiple instances when the two of them realized that "if anybody is going to get Archie, better one of us than anybody else."  The two really are friends in the truest sense, with both of them constantly hanging out together, traveling together, scheming together, and generally helping each other be complete people.  Betty would probably never take as many risks in life without Veronica encouraging her, and Veronica wouldn't be as grounded and would probably be an even bigger snob without Betty around.

However, that's probably a full essay for another day, so instead let's look at Archie's attempt to do an homage to Allison Hayes' finest work.

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Driven To Distraction

You know the one thing I never understood about Archie Andrews?  Why does every young woman who's single decide he's the absolute best dating material to ever live?

I mean, sure, he's a nice guy, but he constantly has two women jumping in and out of his life (well, okay, only Veronica really jumps "out" of his life, Betty just moves into the background for a bit, biding her time).  His car is a classic junker, he never really seems able to hold down any kind of summer job, he's continuously broke, he's clumsy, goofy, and always getting into trouble.

There's a lot of other guys in town who are probably dating material (and in today's modern age we can even include boys who aren't the same race.  And yet, Archie's had five serious girlfriends that I can think of off the top of my head, and lord knows how many girls as simple "one-offs."

So what does that have to do with today's episode?  Well, when the inspiration for the episode is pretty blatantly Steven King's Christine, except the car is in love with Archie, it makes you wonder.

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Me! Me! Me!

Veronica Lodge.  Sometimes girlfriend, sometimes nemesis, sometimes enabler, sometimes de-enabler- okay, this sentence is going out of control.  The point I'm attempting to build to is that while Archie is almost always the "nice guy," Jughead is the "lazy, hungry guy," and Betty is the "nice girl," Veronica has a lot more variety to her roles.  In one story she might be attempting to help raise awareness for the needy or an endangered animal, the next story she's having her jet personally fly her a new purse because her other one is ten minutes out of style.  Sometimes she dotes on Archie Andrews, sometimes she and Reggie work together to set him and Betty up for failure.  Then, in the next story line, she and Betty are best friends again.

What I'm trying to say is that in the comics, Veronica is either an amazingly complex character with many layers to her...or is one of the most inconsistent characters ever written.

So, I hope you like her, because you're going to get an awful lot of Veronica in this episode.

Our story opens at Riverdale High, where eternal "nice guy" Archie Andrews is carrying a stack of approximately sixteen books out of the building.  He gets partway to the parking lot when Veronica's voice exclaims, "Archie! The door!"  Archie, apologizing, comes back to open it for her.  It appears Veronica's in full on "lazy rich girl" mode, but hold on, it gets better.

While Betty, Reggie, and Jughead bond over a) critiquing Veronica's behavior and b) joking about how broken Archie is that he just keeps doing whatever she says, we find out that Veronica only has all those books because "taking them home each day is easier than memorizing a locker combination."

Okay, let's address the first thing here.  Archie can't be there every minute of every day.  We've established he hangs out with other people and has other activities, so the idea that Veronica would always have Archie there to carry her books not just to and from her house each day but between classes is insane, even for a show that last episode gave us potato aliens.

Second, she has sixteen books.  When I was in high school we didn't have that many books.  What the heck is Riverdale High trying to teach kids that they need so many books?

Veronica begins massive amounts of whining for the next few minutes, and between complaining that Archie needs to put the top up on his car so her hair doesn't get mussed, her spoon landing on the ground and needing a new one, and the phone being inches out of reach because leaning slightly is for peasants, I say, peasants, well, Veronica becomes by far the most obnoxious character on the show, and is in a strong running to catch up with Orko and Snarf.

Fortunately, Mr. Lodge is watching the whole thing, and he is not amused by his daughter's antics.

First off, I don't think it's ever come up before, but Hiram Lodge there talks like he understudied for Thurston Howell the Third.  Second, I've always liked that Archie Comics has a somewhat contradictory back story when it comes to Hiram.  Sometimes his family were the original founders of Riverdale and he comes from old money, other times he attended public school and earned his money before marrying into even more money.

Here, he's just rich and has a touch of Locust Valley Lockjaw.  Perfect.

Veronica gets a call from Archie to hang out at Pop's, but Hiram interrupts by telling Archie over the phone that Veronica has "chores."  Hiram lectures his daughter on the fact that "one day all this will be yours" and how staying rich is hard work.  It's almost like the more money you have, the more problems you see have. 

So what sort of chore does Veronica Lodge get assigned to teach her that hard work is important?  Balancing her checkbook?  Donating clothes to charity?  Cleaning up the mess from the last party Archie invariably broke something during?

If you guessed "pack exotic artifacts for a museum to pick up and exhibit while the butler supervises her" then man, I just don't even know how your mind works.  You are right, however.

"This room belongs in a museum!" - Hiram Lodge, attempting to be cute.

Meanwhile, at Pop Tate's, Jughead, Reggie, and Betty (really?  Do those three EVER hang out by themselves?) enjoy a few burgers, by which I mean Jughead enjoys a few burgers.  Archie shows up and updates everybody else that Veronica is "still" packing things, which I guess is the script's attempt to let us know that time has passed.  Betty just happens to have a pamphlet about the upcoming exhibit, and something the gang notes is a statue to ... I have no idea how to spell this guy's name, because it's said strangely by Archie.  "Snakebah?"

Anyway, Snakebah is a statue, and the name translates to "granter of wishes," according to Betty.

Personally, I think it translates to "raise the roof!"

This just happens to be the last object Veronica has to pack (naturally), and after Smithers attempts to once again get Veronica to consider other people for a chance, she retorts with "I wish everyone else was just like me."  This causes the statue's eyes to glow and an actual earthquake to tremble the land, but Veronica doesn't notice either because...well, being whiny apparently makes you immune to feeling things?

Later, when Mr. Lodge is looking over the packed boxes with Smithers, the doorbell rings.  Hiram asks Smithers to get it (extremely politely, I might add), and Smithers is quick to retort with a "ooooOOOOoooh, I don't wanna!"

Stay with me, folks, it sounds like this is going to get awful, but it gets fantastic instead.

At Pop Tate's, Veronica's wish is spreading, as Pop Tate, previously happy to serve burgers to eager customers, is now whining about needing to cook and insisting people "cook their own burgers."  Archie decides to call the doctor to come see Pop Tate and steps outside to use the pay phone (remember, this came out in 1999, cell phones weren't HUGE yet).  This means he doesn't see the huge flash of light behind the counter, but he does bump into Veronica.  He leads her in, explaining that things are strange, when this site meets his eyes:

That's right.  Overweight, middle-aged Pop Tate has turned into another Veronica.

This, of course doesn't phase Veronica at all, as she complains about being double parked.

Anyway, Archie now gets to deal with two Veronicas fighting over him and arguing over which one is the "real" Veronica.

"This should be a lot more fun than it's turning out to be."  - Actual quote from Archie Andrews

Can we discuss the fact that not only did Pop Tate's body and personality change, but his clothes reshaped themselves to be tight on a teenage girl's body?  This Snakepah-whatever thing doesn't do anything by halves.

While Jughead and Reggie keep Pop Veronica safely stored away in, well, the storeroom, Betty, Archie, and Veronica decide to investigate this mystery further.  Things aren't any better outside, though I find it interesting that either all the women in town decided to wear yellow dresses that day and all the men wore lavender shirts and jeans, or the character designer got REALLY lazy when he decided to dress up a city of Veronicas.

Veronica spots another "her" about to steal her car, and takes off into the crowd of duplicates, which, let's face it, is probably dumbest thing she could do at this point in time.  She tries to get a Veroni-cop (see what I did there?) to get involved, but the cop simply whines that the thief is too far away and it would involve chasing her and then catching her and then filling out paperwork.    Veronica starts to realize how she acts around others around this point, but it helps that she meets a Veronica mail carrier who complains about lugging a heavy bag of letters around.

The icing on the cake, however, is the Veronica mime.  You read that correctly.  Veronica.  Mime.

Glorious.  Just glorious.

The Veronica mime starts complaining about needing to mime things, wondering why she can't just "tell people what she's doing."  In a moment of comedic gold, the Veronica Mime starts pushing at the air around her while yelling "Look at me, everyone, I'm trapped in a box!"

Then the crowd turns on Veronica for....reasons?  She finds herself running away from a small mob of identical clones of herself, but manages to catch back up with Betty and Archie.  She, again, not being the brightest bulb in the box, laments that just a few hours earlier she was wishing that everybody else would be "just like her."  Betty, being a pretty bright bulb when it doesn't come to snuggling on couches, catches this and asks her to explain.

The trio are able to connect the strange happenings to the statue of Snakebah,  They call the Lodge household to have Hiram get the statue back, but both Hiram and Weatherbee are too busy sitting by the pool with the phone just out of reach.  The three need to go to the museum and find the statue themselves.

Remember how I've been promising this episode gets amazing?  Well, here it is.

Betty reads some more of the pamphlet and notes that the idol used to be kept on a high pedestal surrounded by death traps.   So whoever the Indiana Jones of this world is, he had to bust in and steal the idol from where it was being stored.

The amazing part?  The Museum has faithfully recreated the pedestal the statue used to sit upon, including all of the death traps.  This, in itself, is absolutely fantastic, because nobody seems shocked that a museum, a place that receives public and private funding, would go so far as to risk murdering a visitor who wants to see one of the prized exhibits.

Seriously, Archie, I think we found your next "weird mystery" and it's "what the hell is going on with the museum board of directors?"

At the museum, things start going from bad to worse as Archie takes off down the hallway towards the exhibit.  Betty and Veronica start to follow, but partway down there's another flash of light and Betty starts whining about, well, everything.

Veronica tries to rush ahead to catch up with Archie, but doesn't pay attention to where she's going and runs headfirst into a low stone archway.  Because if a museum is going to equip a place with death traps, it may as well make people crouch to avoid traumatic head injuries.

May I just point out that this is twice in a row that a female lead character has been knocked unconscious by a blow to the head?

Veronica wakes up hoping it was all just a bad dream, and upon seeing Archie stand over her offers her hand to him to help her up.  He turns her down flat, whining that her hands are probably dirty and sweaty.

I know it's a negative trait of Veronica we're dealing with here, but I kind of agree with Archie there.  Sweaty hands are the worst.

Veronica is left on her own to deal with the problem, and instead of trying to do a long, flowing narrative of how she avoids the death traps, I'm just going to show you the things that a MUSEUM, an honest to god MUSEUM that doesn't even charge the people at the front door to come in and see things, built to add "realism" to an exhibit.

First, the giant stone that can crush you upon entering.

Then there's the pressure plate that triggers the deadly darts to shoot out of a wall.

There's the giant column (seen two pictures above) that rolls forward to flatten any intruders.

Finally, there's the giant spiked pit with the rope dangling over it.

HOW DO YOU EVEN APPROVE THIS STUFF IN THE BUDGET?

Veronica finally gets her hands on the idol, and I have to admit I chuckled some at her attempts to bond with an inanimate object.  "Veronica Lodge here.  We had a moment a few hours ago.  You, me, and the box?"   She manages to reverse the wish, the population of Riverdale returns to normal, and Archie and Betty rush in to make sure Veronica's okay.

I love this little moment towards the end when Veronica starts to walk towards them and then remembers the giant spiked pit's still there.  "Could you help me get across?  ...oh, never mind, I'll do it myself."

Um, Veronica, I know the whole point of the episode was to show you just how needy and whiny and selfish you are, but when it comes to dealing with SPIKED PITS you're allowed to ask for help.  Lesson learned, but NOT in the appropriate manner!

Apparently nobody in town remembers "being" Veronica, and Archie wraps up with the standard "be careful what you wish for" lesson, but it ignores the bigger issue here: THERE IS A STATUE IN THE RIVERDALE MUSEUM THAT GRANTS WISHES.

What's to stop some child from (somehow) avoiding all the deathtraps and wishing that there weren't any adults, or that the world was made of chewing gum, or just their step-brother Toby would vanish and never come back?

I just- I don't even- man.  Why not use that statue for good?  "I wish nothing weird would ever happen in Riverdale again.  I wish doom upon the alien potato people.  I wish all vampires were instantly turned to dust."

Then again, maybe I'm just over thinking this.

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Attack Of The Killer Spuds

I think I've made it abundantly clear over time that I have a huge appreciation of all things Riverdale.  In fact, the only reason why I haven't done lengthy reviews about  Afterlife With Archie or Archie vs. Sharknado or Archie vs. Predator (yes, these are all real things) is that if I put all of them into individual posts, well, I'd immediately fill up three things on my Top Eleven list for the end of the year.

But man, the Archie's Weird Mysteries show was something absolutely amazing, and I've been itching to get back into reviewing episodes of it.  So, with a simple 10-pack of episodes on one DVD picked up on the cheap from a small store, I'm ready to go.  We're going to see Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, Dilton, and the rest of the gang face the unknown.

First episode on the list?

Okay, so it's not as immediately grabbing as "Veronica Lodge: Vampire Hunter" but stick with me, folks, it'll be worth it.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part Four

So far on this DVD we've had plenty of vampires, but I wouldn't really call vampires a "haunting."  Unless you go looser on the definition of "haunting" and assume it refers to Medlock sticking around the old farmhouse he was buried under for centuries.  However, that's stretching it, even for me.

Fortunately, this time we actually get at least one genuine ghost, so I'm going to skip the lengthy preamble and simply point out that Archie Comics just announced a new crossover:

Archie Meets The Predator.

This is a real thing that will be happening in 2015.

I can't wait.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part Three

Growing up, I always preferred Betty over Veronica.  Yes, Veronica was rich beyond anybody's wildest dreams (the exception, of course, being her own dreams), and she had gorgeous raven black hair...but I liked Betty.  It wasn't the blond hair, it wasn't the obsessive behavior amount of doting she laid on Archie, and it wasn't the "oh, she's the good girl next door" aspect.

I think what I liked about Betty was just how she seemed to be the polar opposite of Veronica, in that she had many different layers to her character, while Veronica seemed to be all about the money.

However, I realized later on that Veronica Lodge isn't the anti-Betty at all.  She's actually her own, surprisingly well-developed character.  I mean, sure, her key attributes are still the ones listed above, but then I start to think of how she interacts with the group.  She has never once refused to buy something for her friends, lend them the use of her father's enormous estate, or acted the least bit stingy when it comes to using what she has to help people, whether it's her father's company jet for a quick trip around the world or simply having the exact plot device flown in for delivery with "I want it now" speed.  She was always accepting of other people, whether it was their sexual orientation, religion, or lifestyle choices (she was the only person who accepted Jughead during his "hippie" phase in the 70s), but wouldn't hesitate to put down their fashion choices.  But she was never the athlete, the key superhero, or the one you'd expect to get down and dirty.

So the fact that these episodes have had this kind of a spotlight on Veronica, taking the same shallow character we expect and adding a responsibility to things that are almost literally "out of her world," it's added yet another layer of growth onto an already complex character.

Let's jump in to the third episode of the "Scarlet Saga" as I (and only I) am calling it.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part Two

Archie Comics has never been afraid of making things a little "intense" when they needed to.  Even if we're just now getting our first real "horror" books by the company featuring characters that have been around for decades, there used to be plenty of drama surrounding the characters.  Whether it was the teenage Archie, his childhood self "Lil' Archie," or even his superhero self, the books weren't afraid to add some pretty high drama.

So with Archie's Weird Mysteries delving into tales of horror reminiscent of things like Christine, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and even Little Shop of Horrors, it's...really not that much of a surprise.

Let's dig into the second episode of The Haunting of Riverdale and see what happens next.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part One

People who have read this blog might have realized that I have a really twisted bizarre fascination with the adventures of Archie Andrews and his friends.  It might be because Archie is a comic book character that probably has just as much name brand recognition as Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man,  Anybody who likes comics who says they never read any of his when they were young is most likely lying through their teeth (or just absent-minded), but considering the comics put out featuring America's favorite red-headed teen have been coming out since 1941 and are stronger and more socially relevant today than ever before, well...

I think it's a safe bet whoever is in charge there knows what they're doing.

But that doesn't mean that every thing's sunshine and roses, though.  Besides the recently printed (and mind-bogglingly dark) Afterlife With Archie, it wasn't unusual for titles to put Archie into other situations involving the bizarre, the macabre, and the occult.

I mean, for Pete's sake, he's on a first name basis with a teenage witch.

Admit it, you all wished you were, too, when that show was on the air.  ...and you were the same age I was.

So it's probably not surprising to know that at one point Archie had his own cartoon series called Archie's Weird Mysteries, stories featuring Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and the others dealing with massive amounts of weirdness and creepiness that invaded Riverdale.

And they managed to cram some episodes with a particular theme onto a single DVD called The Haunting Of Riverdale.  We're going to go through each one of these episodes and figure out just how you can manage to make (or not make) a story scary when you've got the FCC watching you carefully.

Ask Erik: Episode 70

To Erik: What do you think of Archie Andrews being killed off?

Immediate clarification:  See, they didn't actually kill off Archie.  There's a separate book titled Life With Archie that- ...okay, look, this is going to take a while.  Start reading below.

Let's Talk: Race and Riverdale

Every now and again, I see people refer to comics as "out of date."  Flipping through pages of a rich guy dressed like a flying rodent beating up poor people with mental problems apparently doesn't hold up as much now as it did back in the day, in their opinion.  They treat all comics as "silly stories," with nothing to draw people to them other than "POW BIFF WHAM!" and people in spandex with ridiculous body shapes.

This isn't exactly true.  You have stories such as Pedro & Me, where Judd Winick recounts his experience on The Real World with a roommate who was HIV positive.  You have Persepolis, a true story of a young woman's life growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution.  There are plenty of comics that keep their finger on the pulse of the world and present it through words and imagery.

And then you have Archie comics.  For the most part, Archie and his crew have remained the same for years, just with updates in technology, slang, and occasionally an obscure or out of date look at what's going on in the world.

They'd try to touch on current "hot topics" such as giving Archie an "emo" look in one issue, or having Veronica travel the world to learn about new cultures (though I'll point out that Veronica didn't get her own book until the late 80s), but these were mixed in with issues of things like "Oh, yeah, it turns out Jughead's hat actually allows him to travel through time and he has a girlfriend in the 29th century which is why he doesn't care about any of the women in Riverdale.  Oh yeah, and he's a time cop."

We're going to save the discussion about the fact that his canon-established girlfriend is a descendant of Archie for another time (way too much subtext there) and move on.

My point is that the late 80s and early 90s were weird.

Wait, no, that's not my point.  My point is that for the longest time things didn't really change dramatically in Archie comics.  Especially not when it came to race.  You had characters who weren't white, but they tended to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend of their own race to become the "token ethnic couple."  Chuck Clayton has Nancy Woods, for example.

However, in the past few years, Archie Comics have really started to shake things up.  They introduced their first gay character, Kevin Keller, and let him get married to another man.  Oh, and after his husband was shot (seriously) he ran for office and became Senator Kevin Keller and tackled gun control.  Cheryl Blossom had to deal with the risk of breast cancer.  Miss Grundy, the long-suffering teacher of Archie and his friends, actually died of cancer.  Another storyline that's coming out now involves Archie Andrews and the zombie apocalypse.  No, seriously.

With a unique art style that doesn't match anything that's happened before, the living dead are unleashed upon Riverdale when Jughead's dog Hot Dog gets hit by a car (!) and dies (!!).

That's Sabrina the teenage witch, who uses her magic to bring Hot Dog back to life...but anyone who's seen Pet Sematary knows that it's never a good idea to do that, and soon Hot Dog bites Jughead, turning him into a zombie, and then Zombie Jughead gets unleashed upon the Riverdale High School Halloween Dance.

It's pretty awesome, and it's only two issues in.

But I'm also not here to talk about that, I'm here to talk about race, something that Archie has been dragging its feet over for a long, long time.  In 1992, Archie Comics decided to do a total revamp of the book Betty And Me to make it focus more on Betty.  It was decided she'd get a job as a reporter, have an insufferable boss, and (*gasp*) have a new friend who she'd feel romantically drawn to who also happened to be a co-worker (a college freshman who was working as a cameraman).  It was to give Betty the same romantic triangle business that fueled Archie for years. His name would be Dexter Howard.

Oh, and he'd be black.

I wasn't there, so I'm just going to quote Dwayne McDuffie here.  Remember, the name of the higher-up has been changed to Dr. Doom.

Darryl called Matt with the bad news.  Dr. Doom had literally thrown the issue at him.  He hated the stuff, wanting to know why Dexter was so much more accomplished than Archie.  "What is he, super-Negro?"

Dwayne goes on to point out that he isn't sure that's what was actually said.  He thinks his co-workers were trying to soften the blow by not repeating what was actually said.

Again, this was 1992.

Dexter was recolored to be white (not fooling anybody) and the writer was canned after two issues.

This isn't the last time something like that happened.  In 2008 (Two Thousand And Eight) a storyline was introduced where Cheryl Blossom dated a series of new male characters in a contest and readers could vote on who would become her new steady boyfriend.  One of them was Brandon, who in solicitations was clearly a black character.  However, in the book itself?

Um, his skin wasn't that light before...

Oh dear.

So where does that leave us?

Well, in 2010, Archie Comics broke a milestone:

That's Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats, a long-established character in Archie history.  And she's kissing Archie.  I haven't seen every Archie comics cover, but last I checked Archie had never kissed a black girl on the cover of a comic book.

Again, this is 2010.

It seems Archie comics were in a real hurry to make up for lost time, because not long after Archie's relationship with Valerie started they wound up publishing a "what if Archie married Valerie" that involved them having kids and growing old together, facing adult problems.  This was much in the vein of the previously done "what if Archie married Betty" and "what if Archie married Veronica" books.

But still, for this company to do something like that...well, it doesn't make up for Dexter, but it's a good start.  I think what surprises me is that it took his long to handle something like that.  The same year you have a long established character die and introduce your first in-canon gay character is the first time you spotlight an interracial kiss?

While I respect Archie Comics for being willing to take on such adult issues, I just regret it's taken this long for the All-American Guy to realize that the America he represented in his books was no longer the America everyone else lived in.

Maybe someday we'll get that truly momentous comic that will blow everybody's mind:

(Thanks to comicsalliance.com for that final image)