Well, what do you know...

DC Comics and Archie Comics—and, more precisely, Dan Jurgens, Ron Marz, Tom King, Dan Parent and about eight other creators—got me to set foot inside a comic shop for the first time in...I don't remember how long...? Probably the early days of Sophie Campbell's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run, when I was still struggling to read it monthly, and constantly butting up against the vagaries of direct market and local comic shop ordering and shipping problems. 

How did they manage it? An appeal to nostalgia was certainly a factor, as Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special #1 paired creators and characters from what might be my favorite decade of the publisher's output for an 80-page tie-in to a favorite crossover story from my youth.  

But, more important than even that, I think, is the fact that, in these two instances at least, the publishers decided to publish individual, standalone comic books, rather than miniseries or series that a consumer could be quite confident would eventually end up in trade collections, which has now become my favorite way to consume comics (In part because it's easier and cheaper, and, in even larger part, because I just have way too many damn comic books in way too many damn long boxes, and I need not add any more to the fantastic comic book midden that is now actively factoring into life choices I make.).

In other words, I had to buy these comic books, as they were sold, rather than waiting for trades to buy or borrow from the library, as, in both cases, they did not seem like they would ever be collected (The former is an 80-page giant, and is practically already a trade, with a spine of its own, while the latter is a simple 20-page gag strip, apparently created so the writer, an Archie fan, could add an Archie comic to his bibliography). (Contrast these with two one-shot specials from IDW Publishing I was extremely excited about, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 40th Anniversary Comics Collection and Godzilla's 70th Anniversary, both of which had solicitations for deluxe versions listed on Amazon before the direct market books were even released in comics shops). 

Should comics publishers do this sort of thing more often, then...? I mean, personally, I hope they don't (see that bit about my not wanting to buy any more new comic books to add to my already too-big collection), but I thought it worth observing that one way a publisher could sell more comic books is to focus on publishing comic books rather than chapters for future collections of comics...at least now and then, anyway.

As to what I thought of these comics, I'll have a review of one in my next monthly(-ish) review column on the 6th of the month, and the other will likely appear at Good Comics for Kids in the near-ish future. Can you guess which is which?

More on this week's Archie Crossover Collection

This week Archie Comics released the above trade, Archie Crossover Collection, which includes Archie Meets Ramones and five celebrity appearances from the pages of Archie, Betty and Veronica and Kevin Keller. I reviewed it at Good Comics For Kids, if you would like to read more about it there.

The biggest takeaways are, I think, that 1) Archie Comics has regularly and somewhat accidentally published some the absolute weirdest comics of the decade and that 2) Gisele Lagace is the best and you should probably look at everything she draws.

Here are some further items of note I thought worth mentioning while reading through the trade...

Gisele Lagace

1.) Mr. Weatherbee sure has changed a lot in the course of 40 years. The Archie have been transported to 1976 New York City, via a magical Ramones record given to them by Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. When they reluctantly take the stage, young Archie Andrews finds himself confronted by...Mr. Weatherbee? I do believe that's meant to be Archie's dad right next to the Bee, calling The Archies a bunch of losers (It's not mentioned in the scene, but that guy has the same mustache as Mr. Andrews, and it was previously established he was a Ramones fan).

It's funny, but adding a layer of weirdness to this is, of course, the fact that in "our" 1976, Mr. Weatherbee looked and acted exactly as he does in our 2017, as, like all of the characters, he hasn't aged since the 1940s. It might even be possible that the Mr. Weatherbee in the above image could leave the concert venue, walk to the nearest drug store or newstand and buy an issue of an Archie comic featuring a different version of himself!

Trippy, huh?

Lagace

2.) The Ramones don't even pretend to like The Archies. One of the running gags of the book is that The Archies, who are never referred to by anyone in the scene as anything other than The Starchies, are awful.

Archie gets about one and a half lines into a song in that scene where young Master Weatherbee is hassling them before he gets hit in the egg with a face and they're booed off the stage. Dee Dee Ramones' casual dismissal of them above is actually pretty typical of their response to The Archies/Starchies.

The Ramones take the stage immediately after the Archies are forced from it, and they play "Blitzkreig Bop." They are surprised to see the Archies still hanging around after the show, and when Betty asks, "Why would we leave?" they are ready with several answers.

"Does this mean we can't play the battle of the bands?" Archie asks. "If it was up to us you'd never play music again," Dee Dee replies, just as cheerfully as his dismissal of them above.

While Alex Segura and Matthew Rosenberg's script is somewhat hagiographic of The Ramones, as one would likely expect it to be, it's consistent in its dismissal of The Archies. They do play some well-received songs eventually, both at CBGBs and in modern-day Riverdale, but these are Ramones covers ("I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement," "Judy is a Punk"), but it was nice to see The Archies being belittled as much as they are throughout the issue...particularly given the stories that follow, which treat both the Archie comics characters as the guest stars so gently.

Jeff Shultz and Jim Amash

3.) Archie Comics had permission to use Lady Gaga's name and likeness for her appearance in Betty and Veronica, but not her lyrics...I guess? I know very, very little about Lady Gaga and her body of work, but one thing I do know is that she has a song called "Poker Face." (I know this because back when that song was in heavy rotation, my nieces told me the following joke: "What's the best way to wake up Lady Gaga when she's asleep? Poke her face.")

But as you can see, in the Archie-verse, it's "Poker Head." I thought that was pretty weird. There are some other bits of lyrics that are slightly changed, or at least appear to be (she doesn't sing about salami in any of her songs, does she?), and these seem like the sorts of changes you would make if you were using a Lady Gaga analogue, like Lady Googoo or something, not if Lady Gaga herself signed off on the project.

The best I can figure is that there is some legal issue I don't understand, like maybe Lady Gaga signed off on what she could, but the rights to her lyrics are tied to another entity, and that entity didn't want to participate, or Archie didn't want to approach them because it wasn't worth it for two or three panels or...what.

Anyway, the most memorable part of this crossover for me was trying to figure out that aspect.

Dan Parent and Amash

4.) The background action is where it's really at in these older, pre-reboot Archie Comics. This is from the Mark Zuckerberg issue (When I told my 14-year-old niece, a huge Riverdale fan, about this book, she asks who Mark Zuckerberg was). The main action is the dialogue between Archie and Dilton Doiley, but man, check out the background! There's a generically pretty girl who could be Betty for all the detail she's drawn with, and she's seemingly ecstatic to catch a glimpse of that hunky Archie Andrews, and then around the corner...Man, what's going on there?

Did that girl cut off the giant, and he's angry? Did she step on his foot, and that's why he's glowering at her? Was he just standing there, fuming about something, and she's walking quickly and gingerly by, terrified?

No offense to Mark Zuckerberg, but I'm really much more interested in what's going on in that hallway than I am with his competition with Dilton.

Parent and Amash

5.) By one measure, this first panel was the funniest part of the book. The Ramones issue and the Michael Strahan issue (Confession: I had to ask a friend who Strahan was) were the two best-written of five stories included in here, and both are full of pretty effective gags. That said, the only time I actually laughed out loud was at Reggie's awesome/dumb diss of Archie in that first panel.

I also kind of love how angry Reggie looks, as he furiously eats that apple. I am tempted to watch Riverdale just to see if the guy who plays Reggie is portrayed like that, and if he always looks like he's pissed-off. I understand that the series has a murder mystery aspect to it, and Reggie's not a major suspect, but man, if anyone killed anyone in Riverdale, I would just kinda assume it must have been Reggie Mantle who pulled the trigger.

Also humorous, but in the accidental way, is the fact that Archie is feeling down because all the girls in his school are suddenly madly in love with Mark Zuckerberg, international sexy symbol.

Parent and Rich Koslowski

6.) I would really like to hear Jughead's report. The plot of the George Takei guest-starring issue of Kevin Keller was that the actor was so impressed with Kevin's essay about him that he decides to visit Kevin's school. The specific assignment was "People Who Inspire Us," and,in the panel above, we see who the other members of the gang chose.

The characters' immortality amused me here, too, as Archie and Reggie were both born before their heroes...although in Archie's case, it was at least close.

You know, Archie Comics could probably have gotten Colonel Sanders to appear. He's been starring in some extremely weird-ass DC Comics crossovers anyway, to hear Chris Sims tell it at the late, great Comics Alliance (I miss you so much, Comics Alliance! And not just the occasional check, but because I don't know where the fuck to go to get comics news anymore! I just have to hope whatever it is turns out to be a big enough deal that Tom Spurgeon covers it, and it usually isn't!).

Parent and Koslowski

7.) I confess that I love generic cosplay. So scenes at comics conventions can be pretty damn awesome, as any sort of real-world convention would of course have tons of copy-righted characters from many different media walking around, but when said convention is a fictional one, appearing in a comic book or cartoon or movie or TV show, the makers of that particular scene have to improvise, and they generally come up with some pretty bizarre analogues.

There was that one Harley Quinn issue where she visited San Diego Comic Con and, conveniently enough, everyone there seemed to be dressed like a DC Comics character, or a generic one. There's a pretty fun direct-to-DVD Scooby-Doo movie Mask of The Blue Falcon where the gang solve a mystery at a convention, and all the characters and pop culture detritus is associated with Hanna-Barbera superheroes of old, many of whom ended up appearing Future Quest (I'm still waiting for a Blue Falcon Hanna-Barbereboot comic, by the way... maybe drawn by John McCrea?).

Here artist Dan Parent just went with all-analogue route, save for Jughead and Ethel both dressing as Spock (on the next page, she embraces Jughead and says they can be "Spocks in love," which I am pretty sure is a ship somewhere on the Internet). I'm a little surprised he didn't go the route of the Scooby-Doo movie, and dress the characters as, like, Red Circle heroes or something. Of course, if he did, he wouldn't get to see Veronica's Wonder Woman costume, which sounds like she might have made it based on someone who has never seen Wonder Woman relaying what he remembered someone else saying the character looked like.

At the con, there's some pretty insane cosplaying going on, some of it close-ish to actual characters, like a guy wearing an orange Green Lantern shirt (not with the Orange Lantern symbol, mind you; it's an orange t shirt with a white GL symbol in the middle of it) or a Spider-Man with big blue pupils in his white eyes and a visible frowny face and so on. I'm 90% sure there was a toddler dressed like Mr. Weatherbee too...

Parent and Koslowski

8.) "Broad Impact"....? Kevin will just not shut up about George Takei. After Takei has visited their school and given a short speech, Kevin and a friend he reconnected with at the Smithville Comic-Con are going to the movies together, and Kevin's still talking about Takei. But forget that, what are they going to see...?

Something romantic, like the poster Kevin's friend's head is partially obscuring...Love and Rockets? Love and Ghosts? Love and Bigfoots?

Or are they going to see what I can only assume is a pretty awesome female-lead action movie, Broad Impact...? I don't know what a film with that title could be about, but I hope it stars Ronda Rousey or Gina Carano or Zoe Bell going back in time to the 1930s or 1940s and beating up everyone calling them broad, bird, frail and so on.

Parent and Koslowski

9.) I love the look on this lady's face. This panel immediately follows the one with the Broad Impact poster. What is going on in that lady's head?

I suppose Dan Parent was just drawing a bored face. But perhaps she's rolling her eyes and frowning at Kevin sounding so sanctimonious, and she's sick of hearing him talk about this, even though it's only been for a few panels?

Perhaps she's there as an example of the fact that "There's always more work to be done," and she's thinking something like, "Look at these two gays, out on a gay date, gaily. Back in my day, this would have never happened."

Perhaps she's looking at Brian's banana yellow safari shirt, and she can't believe he's actually wearing it out in public.

Or perhaps this is her first day at work at a brand-new movie theater that has just been built, and she's just now realizing that when they were building the ticket window, they neglected to leave any sort of space or opening through which customers could hand her money or cards and she could hand them tickets to the movies?

10.) But will there be a volume two...? I was a little surprised that the above issue, the first half of a two-parter involving then-President of the United States Barack Obama and then-ex-Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, was not included herein. It was certainly from around the same time as many of these non-Ramones comics.

The Zuckerberg issue was Archie #624, and the Strahan issue was #626. Just scrolling through the covers between the Obama/Palin story and the book's cancellation with 2015's Archie #666 , there are covers featuring X Factor Vs. American Idol ("Simon Vs. J.Lo!" the cover reads), Archie Meets KISS and Archie Meets Glee. It's possible they're saving Obama/Palin for a future volume 2 of this collection.

Or it's just as possible that they didn't include it because no one remembers who Sarah Palin is anymore...?

(Seriously, I do wonder if the higher-ups at Archie now regard that issue as a mistake. It seemed weird, even that the time, that the President of the United States of America was paired not with, say, Senator John McCain or a real political rival, but the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket he defeated a little over two years prior to that comic's release. If I'm remembering my recent political history right--and I may not be!--this was well after Palin resigned as Alaskan governor mid-term and when there was still semi-serious speculation that she might run for president in 2012.)

If there is a second volume, rather than Obama, Palin, Simon, J.Lo, the cast of characters from Glee and that Sharknadow one-shot (which I've already bought and read), I would prefer to see something--anything!--collecting Archie Meets The Punisher.

Reggie Mantle is a gosh-darn sexual Tyrannosaur.

That's right, Alex de Campi and Fernando Ruiz's Archie Vs. Predator not only pits Archie and his friends against a Predator, it also has several unexpected references to the original film, like the one above. I reviewed the first issue for Robot 6 today, if you'd like to go read about it now.

Meanwhile...

I have two articles posted in places that aren't here this week, that you're welcome to go read if you like. First, at Good Comics For Kids, I reviewed the Afterlife With Archie: Escape From Riverdale, which collects the first five issues of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Franco Francavilla's Afterlife With Archie and all of its one million variant covers.

And then today at Robot 6 I wrote at some length about Batman Eternal #11 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time #1, two comics elevated from good to awesome by some unusually, unexpectedly incredible art (especially on Batman Eternal; I expected the TMNT comic to look pretty great, as it was Ross Campbell-drawn, but man, that Batman Eternal comic sure caught me off-guard).

Guess which one of those three comics the above image came from.

Meanwhile...

There's plenty of new Caleb-writing-about-comics content on the Internet today, just not here at Every Day Is Like Wednesday.

I have a review of Craig Yoe's awesome anthology Comics About Cartoonists at Las Vegas Weekly. It's just what it sounds like: A collection of comics covers, strips and gag-panels from a who's who of the greatest cartoonists in comics history, the subject of each being the cartoonists themselves (Some are autobiographical, some simply feature cartoonists as their protagonists, as in a Jack Kirby-drawn romance comic).

Speaking of Yoe, I have a review of The Art of Betty and Veronica, which he co-edited with Victor Gorelick, at ComicsAlliance. (Do click on that link, even if you don't want to read all my words about the book; it's well worth skimming just to see all that great art from the likes of Bruce Timm, Norm Breyfogle, Dan DeCarlo and others).

And, finally, at Robot 6, I wrote about Incredible Hulk By Jason Aaron Vol. 1, which is where the above image is taken from (I'd tell you who drew it, but I have absolutely no idea who drew it; there were something like 19 credited artists contributing to the comics it contained).

I don't know that the above sequence is the best part of the entire Hulk book, which has a lot of cool stuff in it, but I was pretty excited when that one character pulled out an adamantium chainsaw. Why doesn't the adamantium chainsaw guest-star in more books, or even have its own book at Marvel yet? They could call it Adamantium Chainsaw. If there is a more bad-ass title for a Marvel comic book than Adamantium Chainsaw, I'd sure like to hear it.

Gross Cover Image of the Day #1:

My God in heaven, what is wrong with Betty and Veronica?!

Take a few moments to examine the cover. You'll get the gag right away— "Ha ha, Archie's out in the snow and these hot ladies are inside where it's nice and warm." Whatever.

But look, look, look at their bodies. Veronica looks like she's stitched together from three different people, her head, her body from the ribs up and her body from the ribs down are all three entirely different sizes. Betty looks a lot better, the benefit, perhaps, of being in the background, and her anatomy being a little more concealed by her seated position, but even she looks...off. Her hips are smaller than her head.

The image is by Dan Parent, whose artwork is generally fairly strong, in the abstracted, detail-light, Dan DeCarlo-inspired house style of Archie Comics. He's not a bad artist at all, but this is a pretty bad image of his.

A more dastardly crack I've never heard...

How utterly bizarre is the inclusion of Archie's line of dialog in this panel from Archie #616, given that it's the issue of the comic with this cover? That can't be a coincidence, can it? Certainly they teach other mathematical subjects taught in high school, don't they? Ones that don't share names with Sarah Palin's children?