The Riverdale that Could Have Been

[00:00:04]It is the mid 2000s and you are 8 years old. You're standing in a grocery store checkout line next to a cart full of the essentials with your parents. While they're doing the mental calculations on how much money they're going to have for gas after this, your ADHD riddled brain is desperately hunting for something to fill that seemingly infinite amount of time you have between right now and when you get back to the car. You look to your left and just above your line of sight, you see a rack full of small paper books. They're thicker than the comics you have at home, but they're maybe a quarter of the size. The smiling red head on the cover. He's making a corny joke. One you think you can kind of understand, even if the reference he's making is a bit out of your depth.

[00:00:49]It reminds you of the cartoons you watch at your grandparents, the ones that still have laugh tracks and grainy audio. and you're just interested and just bored enough to reach out, crack open its newsprint pages, and see what's inside. You look at the first page and see in big bold letters, Archie Comics.

[00:01:12]You read on and you chuckle and then you do it again and you don't realize it at the time, but suddenly the weight doesn't really seem that daunting anymore.

[00:01:30]Man, I [ __ ] hate Riverdale.

[00:01:40]Yeah, I know. I know. Okay, >> Panda. Very original take.

[00:01:44]>> But no, you don't get it. I really [ __ ] hate Riverdale. This show's existence makes me violent. I wish the worst for anyone who so much has breathed on one of the scripts. I have had a fight on site rule for Cole Sprouse since 2017 that all of my family and friends know about. I [ __ ] hate Riverdale.

[00:02:05]>> Now, you might be quite reasonably saying, Panda, come on, man. That seems a bit extreme. Why on earth do you, as a 25-year-old man who only ever watched the CW when the show had a DC logo attached, hate a nearly decade old TV show about a comic from the 40s so much?

[00:02:25]Well, because Archie Comics [ __ ] that's why.

[00:02:34]And Archie comic might not have been the first comic I ever owned, but it sure as [ __ ] was the second and probably the third and the fourth. And before long, it was the first comic I ever seriously collected. I bought at least one anytime I would go to the store with my parents.

[00:02:50]I would hunt through antique stores for old Pep comic issues. I used to keep all my Archies in an old connects box that I had in my room until I had enough that I needed to upgrade to a legit long box. I went as Jug Head for Halloween twice.

[00:03:05]The first tattoo I ever designed for myself had a Jug Head crown. The first piece of art of mine that was ever published was in a Jug Head comic for their fan art page. Can you tell that I had a favorite character yet? The point being, >> I [ __ ] love Archie comics. So, back in 2016, when a show around these comics that meant so much to me was announced, I was thrilled. I was a sophomore in high school, the same age as the characters in the show. The show was made on the same network that made Arrow, which I loved at the time cuz I was 16, and hadn't realized that I really just like the fact that it was a Batman show yet. Argue with the goddamn wall, you know I'm right. And the cast, oh, it looked so damn good. I mean, sure, Archie was less adorable small town jock and more jacked as hell underwear model, and my man Jug Head was being played by one half of Zach and Cody, and everybody playing high schoolers looked like they were roughly 28. But hey, that was part for the course, honestly. Beggars and choosers and all that. At the end of the day, I could not wait to watch the characters that I loved so much finally be brought to life. And when the pilot finally aired in 2017, I somehow convinced my extremely uninterested two closest friends at the time to sit and watch the premiere with me. And and Archie Andrews as a character came to be in 1941 in Pep Comics, becoming so popular that only a year later in 1942, he got his own series, Archie Comics.

[00:04:44]Archie as a property has existed as a pillar of American pop culture for so long that I can guarantee pretty much everyone is going to be aware of it in at least some capacity. However, for the uninitiated, Archie Comics is a comedy slice of life anthology comic following the life and hy jinks of bumbling yet popular high school student Archie Andrews and his group of friends set in the fictional small American town of Riverdale. The cast is filled with your basic high school archetypes, the nerd, the jock, the bully, the gay, the girl next door, the snoody rich girl, etc., etc., with Archie filling the role of our adorable all-American everyman. He's on the football team. He plays guitar.

[00:05:25]He drives a barely running [ __ ] box of a car. He's never met a banana peel that he couldn't slip on and rarely has struggles more intense than, "Oh man, who am I going to ask to the school dance next week?" Most stories revolve around either him or his main group of five, that being him, his two competing love interests, Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge. His best friend, Foresight P. Jones III, aka Jug Head, and Riverdale's resident [ __ ] Reggie Mantel. The art style was a bit more varied and of the times until about the 60s when they adopted a sort of house style and have kept a pretty consistent visual identity ever since, only really changing the characters individual styles to match with the times. Stories in Archie comics are anywhere from half a page to 10 pages long with multiple vignettes filling a single book. Each usually involving some sort of mishap or visual gag. They're filled with corny jokes, oneliner sarcasm, and humor that'll have you positively going.

[00:06:25]Archie is not complex. It's a simple story, a final remnant of the age of pulp magazines. comic where you can almost hear the laugh tracks in the dialogue. It's carefree. It's nostalgic and easy to understand. And because of that, it's one of those pop culture pillars that has expanded so much farther than just comics. Even if you don't know Archie, you [ __ ] know Archie. The Hulkbuster armor in Age of Ultron, it's named Veronica. You know why? It's because Hulk's love interest is Betty Ross. Betty. Veronica. Yeah.

[00:06:56]The Billboard topping song Sugar. Sugar was made by the band the Archies, which is supposed to be made up of the characters from the books, similar to like gorillas.

[00:07:07]>> The Riverdale Carnival presents the Archies.

[00:07:14]>> That's the exact same thing with Josie and the Pussycats. And even Sabrina the Teenage Witch is from Archie.

[00:07:20]>> Take care of the kissing booth while we're singing. Sabrina >> Archie isn't just a slice of life comic.

[00:07:24]It's a cultural touchstone that has lasted for the better part of a century.

[00:07:28]And the formula that made it that way was used for all the comics released under the Archie branding for just over 75 years until in 2015, Archie Comics announced that the Archie series as we knew it would be ending with issue 666.

[00:07:48]After nearly 75 years of ongoing monthly stories, Archie Comics would be ending.

[00:07:56]However, this was not because the book was being cancelled. Far from it, in fact. No. Archie 666 would be paving the way for Archie number one. Archie Comics would be rebooting for the first time in history in an initiative dubbed New Riverdale. Now, not all the comics would be under this new moniker. The digest would continue in the old style. But for the mainline books, Archie, Jug Head, Betty, and Veronica, all of them would be set back to number one. And with this reboot would come new creative teams.

[00:08:30]And for Archie Comics proper, it would be an absolutely stacked one at that.

[00:08:37]The writer for this new Archie would be none other than comics legend Mark Wade.

[00:08:44]my personal favorite comics author, period, who actually got his start at Archie Comics before ever working on superhero books. And it would be drawn by Eisner awardwinning artist Fiona Staples. It's hard to really overstate just how good of a lineup this is to bring a series like Archie into the modern world. So, the question from there is a simple one. Did the duo pull it off?

[00:09:17]Riverdale aired on the CW for seven seasons from 2017 to 2023. It got two spin-off series, Katie Keane and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and had an average viewership of 1.29 million people per episode, peaking in its second season at an average of 2.12 million viewers.

[00:09:41]and it broke my heart. Now, I'm not the type to clutch pearls. I mean, hell, my last video was on how much I love Lobo.

[00:09:50]I got popular on TikTok for making the Robins roast each other. My two favorite characters when the pilot for Riverdale aired were Red Hood and Deadpool. That tattoo with the Jug Head crown I was talking about, it's of Headpool. I am no stranger to dark storylines, to gritty reimaginings, to deconstructions of age-old characters, but man, Riverdale.

[00:10:14]Wow. I could sit and rant about how they have Archie and Miss Grundy sleep together in between his freshman and sophomore year, which means that Archie is roughly 15 at the time. Or how they forgot the characterizations of Reggie and Moose as anything other than Archie's football friends. for how they flattened Kevin Keller from a well-rounded fan- favorite character into little more than Betty's stereotypical gay best friend. But I think that the best encapsulation of what I'm going to deem the Riverdale effect could be with how they massacred my boy.

[00:10:48]>> I don't want his mother to see.

[00:10:52]>> In case you haven't noticed, I'm weird.

[00:10:55]I'm a weirdo. I don't fit in and I don't want to fit in. Have you ever seen me without the stupid hat on? That's weird.

[00:11:03]>> Look on a mask with my boy.

[00:11:07]>> Let's talk about Jug Head. Hold on. I have I have a thing for this. I want it stated for the record that this is not a Riverdale Jug Head beanie. This was the beanie sold by Archie Comics roughly around 2017 in its Spirit Halloween Archie Comics launch that was also coming out around the same time as Riverdale. This is a comics jug head beanie. I desperately tried to find the actual Jug Head hat, but nobody could give me the [ __ ] information that I needed that wasn't like $150. So, we're rocking with this foresight. Pendleton Jones III, better known as Jug Head, is Archie's best friend. He's lazy, food obsessed, and is very sarcastic, sometimes to the point of outright condescension.

[00:11:47]>> Archie's hogging all the girls. Where's my date?

[00:11:52]>> Try the City Pound, Wolf Boy. But he's also very caring, wise beyond his years, and deeply devoted to his friends to the point that he will do absolutely anything to help them, even if it means breaking his own slothful nature. He's got a long nose, his eyes are usually drawn as closed, and he's usually depicted in darker or contrasting colors compared to Archie, visually being a sort of yin to Archie's gang, with some depictions even extending that to a full-on semi aesthetic depending on the time. However, he is also almost always seen wearing his iconic crown, originally being a whoopy cap back in the ' 40s, but more often than not, just a gray felt crown in more recent depictions. While admittedly completely uninterested in anything that doesn't involve food and relaxation, he is often shown to be unexplainably good at almost any physical task, being the drummer of the Archies and often outperforming Archie when it comes to sports.

[00:12:46]Contrasting Archie even more, he also shows zero interest in romance, a frequent joke being his complete disinterest in Ethel, a girl from school who is desperately in love with him.

[00:13:00]This went on for so long that in Jug Head's solo series in the new Riverdale lineup, Chip Zedarski, yes, that Chip Zedarski just straight up confirmed that Jug Head is asexual. Now, admittedly, that was kind of walked back in an interview just 2 years after it was confirmed by longtime Archie artist Dan Parent, but to be perfectly honest, the retraction reads a lot less like, "Never mind, he's not Ace anymore." And a lot more like, "We don't really want to put a label on that anymore. He's not ace.

[00:13:31]He just has no interest in dating or romance." And that's totally not the same thing.

[00:13:36]>> Please stop asking. a willfully contradictory take that I'm sure had absolutely nothing to do with his depiction in a certain at the time hit new show. Jug Head meant the world to me. Jugad means the world to me. This is admittedly a lot more personal than I try and get in these videos, and I apologize if that's not why you watch these. Feel free to skip. There's chapters below. But I am someone who didn't really have the chance to discover himself until he was already an adult. With a substantial amount of help from my now wife and almost as much therapy, I have learned a lot about myself in the last few years. Two of the biggest of these discoveries being that I am one deeply ADHD and that explains a whole hell of a lot of my interests. And two, I'm demisexual, meaning I don't find someone romantically or sexually attractive until I have already formed a deep emotional connection with them. A sexuality that is firmly on the asexuality spectrum. Now, like I said, I didn't know any of this until I was already an adult. This took a lot of reflecting. But in that reflecting, looking back in retrospect and seeing all the signs and indicators made something very clear to me. These things, how they manifest in my daily life, as well as the vast amount of other personal things that I won't get into here, gave me a deep sense of personal connection with Jug Head from a very early age. I saw in him a source of representation that was staggeringly hard to find, even if I wasn't aware of the titles for what I was looking for.

[00:15:10]In Jug Head, I've found a comfort character that made all of the things that I felt made me different or wrong or other seem cool, admirable, lovable. Nobody hated Jug Head. Nobody treated him like his feelings were wrong or that his quirks were anything other than just a part of him. I saw in him a mirror and when I didn't need to put on a mask to look into with pride, Jug Head meant means the world to me. All of this to say that Riverdale's jug head is well, he's not that. Riverdale's jug head is the narrator of the show, not Archie's friend anymore at the start of the show, and is depicted as moody, depressed, hotheaded, and an outsider who people generally don't like, which is probably not helped along by the fact that when he's introduced, he's actively writing a novel about a very recent death of a fellow classmate. Oh, right.

[00:16:09]The writing. He's a writer and an investigator now. So, so long, Slovenly Savant. And on top of that, just like every other [ __ ] character in this show, he has a dark, tragic backstory with his being his alcoholic bike gang leader father. Yeah, that S on his shirt, it means Southside now. Jug Head's from the bad side of this quaint little American town. He's biker gang royalty. He becomes the leader of a gang before he's even out of high school.

[00:16:38]What a badass.

[00:16:40]Yeah, lest I forget, he's also dating Betty for the majority of the show.

[00:16:46]Yeah, the girl next door, onethird of the love triangle that makes up the heart of Archie comics. So much so that she's on the [ __ ] logo. Well, we need more steamy teen romance in our steamy teen romance. We have a quota to fill here. So there goes the completely uninterested in romance part two. So to recap, he's not a sloth. He's not a savant. He's not easygoing. He's not Archie's best friend. He's not food obsessed. He's not likable. He's not an outsider. His sarcasm is more often than not just straight up mean. He has a short fuse. He's angry. He's depressed.

[00:17:18]And he's more concerned with being right and finding the truth than being a good guy and a good friend. And he's dating Betty.

[00:17:30]So, is it just a [ __ ] hat in the nose that connects these two? What is this?

[00:17:34]And yes, I am fully aware that none of this is Cole Sprouse's fault. He even reportedly wanted Jug to be ace in the show as it would have been great representation. Hello there, editing Panda here. This is a unscripted little segment that I needed to throw in here because while I was researching and editing this section of the video, I actually found the interview where Cole Sprouse talks about the decision to change Jug Head for the Riverdale show.

[00:17:59]So, I want to show you that clip. I've edited it a lot down to like a minute.

[00:18:04]There's a much longer version. I'll have it linked in the description, but watch this clip and then we're going to talk about it for a sec.

[00:18:11]with pursuing a relationship with Betty.

[00:18:12]We talked about the idea of like asexual jug head from the comics and how it was something you were interested in pursuing but you didn't think the writers were. How do you think that the audience response to that will be?

[00:18:21]>> I think first and foremost this conversation deserves more time than than something that we can quickly do here. But there are two forms of representation Jughead has received over time. In Sedarski's Jug Head, he's asexual. That's the only Jug Head where he is asexual. He's a-romantic in the digest. um which is a different thing but deserves attention as well. But what I found when I was really diving in because once we started putting Jug Head and Betty together, I started doing research to see if that was a narrative that even existed in our digest. And it turns out it is. It's a narrative that's existed for a long time. As much as there is a large community of people that really want to see Jucket as asexual, and I am a huge proponent for that kind of representation, there's also quite a large community of avid Archie fans that want Betty and Jucket to be together, too. These are things we need to juggle when considering what Jug Head is in Riverdale. This is a new universe. This is a new take on Jug Head. And while I think that representation is needed, this Jug Head is not that Jug Head. This jughead is not Sedarski's jughead. And this jughead is not the a-romantic jughead. This jughead is one is a person who's looking for a kind of deeper companionship with a person like Betty.

[00:19:40]>> Okay, tinfoil hat moment. I have nothing to back up anything I'm about to say.

[00:19:44]I'm basing all of this on intuition. All right. So, very similarly to the quote from Dan Parent earlier where they end up walking back Jug Head's asexuality right around the time that this show becomes popular. The vibe I get from this is I'm saying something that I don't really want to say that we kind of need to read between the lines of what's being said. I personally think that Cole Sprouse was on the side of Jug Head being a romantic at the very least because to be perfectly honest, he knows too much about Jug Head personally to justify him not having fought for it. I need everybody to remember that this is 2017. He is a mainline actor in a CW show. There is no reason for him to know what a-romantic is and to know that it is different from asexuality and to know that both of those require different representation. When I hear this interview, I do not hear somebody who genuinely believes what they're saying.

[00:20:42]I hear somebody who had an argument, lost it, and now needs to defend the winning side because every single thing he says is true. Jug Head is only confirmed as asexual in the Chip Sadarski run. Up until that point, he is presumably a-romantic because he shows absolutely no interest in being romantic with anybody. He does have those closer connections. He does have friendships.

[00:21:06]He does have people that he is close to.

[00:21:08]He doesn't show any interest in sex and he doesn't show any interest in romance.

[00:21:12]That can be a-romantic or that could be asexual. But with the fact that The Digest never really brought up anything explicitly sexual or brought up sexual orientation in that way, Jug Head is presumably more a-romantic. He does not seek a romantic connection with anybody.

[00:21:28]And on top of that, Cole is right. When Jug Head is paired up with anybody, before the introduction of characters like Ethel, he was paired up with Betty.

[00:21:39]any of the older digests that you find, any of the older Archie comics that you find, Jug Head is going to be paired up with Betty. A bunch of the graphics I've used in this video have him paired up with Betty. Now, usually he's not actively pursuing Betty, but if they're going to be at a dance together or if Betty is going to be flirting with somebody who isn't Archie, usually it's going to be with Jug Head. And sometimes, because these characters have existed since the [ __ ] 40s, Jug Head reciprocates. The vibe that I get off of Cole Sprouse from this interview is not somebody who did their research and decided that actually yes, Jug Head and Betty should be together. I get the vibe of somebody who did a lot of research into an a-romantic character really dedicated to that character and then they changed the idea that they were going for. So now he needs to justify the version that is not going to be as good of representation even though it is something he seemingly cares a lot for.

[00:22:39]Now granted, I've only found this one interview. I have not looked up any other interviews outside of this or after Riverdale premiered, but the information that he does provide reeks of media training to me. It reeks of this is the decision that we went with and I am an actor in this TV show and I have to be positive about it. I can't say that I disagree with the angle we took the character because it is season 1 of a CW show that will seemingly get a bunch of seasons. Admittedly, does this change my fight on site rule?

[00:23:08]Less than I would hope. Listen, acknowledging the fact that Cole Sprouse, very similarly to me, seemingly deeply cares about this character and has really done his research and really gone deep to figure out everything that they could about Jug Head Jones is great. It does completely alleviate the personal [ __ ] hatred I've harbored for like a decade. However, he does still represent the face of the destruction of my comfort character from childhood. So, I'm sorry, man. It's not personal, but put him the [ __ ] up.

[00:23:41]>> Be ready.

[00:23:42]>> All right. I just wanted to throw this in here because I had a completely different joke that didn't make sense if this interview existed. And now that it did exist, I needed to get this off of my chest. Back to your regularly scheduled video. Let me be clear, it's not just Jug Head. Every member of the cast gets a treatment like this. Archie isn't a bumbling yet lovable everyman.

[00:24:01]He's a hot slab of meat for everybody to augle at as he kicks ass. Bettyy's not the kind-hearted girl next door. No, she's the mentally ill daughter of a serial killer and her brother's a [ __ ] psychopath. Veronica's not the spoiled daughter of a rich businessman.

[00:24:16]She is the spoiled daughter of a convicted criminal and is on the run with her mom who's having an affair with Archie's dad. and they're in a [ __ ] crime family. This is the Riverdale effect. It drowns characters built on corny nostalgic optimism in grit and edge until they barely resemble the characters that came before. And that's not even touching all the whack [ __ ] that happens in the later seasons. Why is Cheryl Blossom a witch? Now, I know the go-to defense for this. I've had this conversation a lot. Of course, they changed it. It's an adaptation of a 10page Max comic from the 40s. They were never going to stay the same, which could be a somewhat worthwhile defense.

[00:25:00]However, Archie 2015 is the best goddamn reboot of a comic continuity I have ever [ __ ] seen. Wade and Staples are able to take one of the largest named casts in comics history and update pretty much all of its characters seamlessly for the modern day. The characters are not flanderized or exaggerated or changed too far from who they are. They are simply streamlined, made into their platonic ideals, just tweaked enough to fit into the modern day. You can tell who they are, what they're like, and where they came from, whether you've been reading since the pep comic days or if you've never heard of Archie before in your life. And the reason why is so simple. It isn't embarrassed of its roots. It acts like a reboot short, slowly reintroducing familiar characters and relationships and story lines for new readers, but it doesn't try and act like it's better than the story it's reintroducing. There's an obvious reverence for the story that came before. Every issue has callbacks or references or elements that link directly back to the comic's origins.

[00:26:08]One of my favorites of which being the times that they frame story beats in the comic like the one-page strips from the original digest style books. The characters are just who they've always been, just made more three-dimensional and complex. Archie is a well-meaning yet dangerously clumsy jock who struggles with his attraction between the two women in his life. Jug Head is a wise beyond his years slacker with nothing to prove. Betty is the gearhead girl next door. Veronica is a snoody rich girl in a town where nobody gives a [ __ ] about that. And Reggie is a bully and a creep that nobody likes. Archie 2015 is fully aware that it bears the responsibility of updating and reintroducing this age-old cast of characters to a new age and to an audience that might not have ever heard of them before while also trying to make the story more mature and aimed at an audience closer in age to its readers than its source material was. and it goes about it in a way that pays respect to its foundations, incorporates them into itself, and then marches on changes and all. One of the biggest of these changes is something that I never would have thought could work in an Archie story. They made Archie and only Archie aware of the audience. He can and does break the fourth wall constantly. The first issue literally opens with Archie looking dead at the camera and saying, "Hi, I'm Archie Andrews. Welcome to Riverdale." Okay, I should clarify. This is done less in a Deadpool I know I'm in a comic. Life is pain and suffering for entertainment sort of way and more in a Ferris Buer's Day Off Malcolm in the Middle kind of way.

[00:27:54]>> Incredible. One of the worst performances of my career and they never doubted it for a second. Archie opens every issue by talking directly to the audience to get them caught up and situated with what's happened in between issues and sometimes talks to us when there's just nobody else to talk to. But it's never acknowledged. This isn't flea or she-hole. People don't go, "Who are you talking to, Archie?" Because it's just for us. Just like the original comics, it's nostalgic in a way. It hearkens back to a storytelling device that we don't normally see used without explanation or justification nowadays.

[00:28:27]And I'll be damned if it doesn't work perfectly in a story like this. We get a peek inside Archie's head, a look at who he is when he's not trying to be the nicest guy in Riverdale to everybody.

[00:28:38]And it makes us fully believe in his earnest, well-meaning boy scout personality. When I sat down to reread this for a second time, okay, when I sat down to reread this for the hundth time, I read the collected varsity editions, which have extra pages in the back showing off some of the development of the books. One of which being the general thoughts slash roundt discussion points from the very first pitch meeting for the book. And I think there are two sections from that that show exactly why this interpretation of Archie nails the landing as well as it does. First, do no harm. There's nothing wrong with the Archie characters. All I'd say, and we discussed this in our phone conversation, is that over the last 75 years, they all had the edges sanded off of them, and we shouldn't be afraid to undo some of that. If we feel like the well has run dry on some of them, then let's just dig deeper. So long as at the end of the day, they remain characters that our readers find entertaining and would actually like to hang out with, we can make our cast members quite a bit less perfect than they are now. This just means that it's okay to have actual conflict between our characters so that there's real consequences to their interactions and choices. The stories, high school comedy laced with credible high school drama. Nothing weird, no time machines, no vampires, no South Seas adventures, the world outside every 21st century high school kids window.

[00:30:04]Right now, I'm thinking booklength stories with subplot threads that carry soap opera style from issue to issue.

[00:30:10]But depending on the needs of our artists, we can be plenty flexible about that. There is nothing wrong with Archie characters. If we feel like we've run dry, let's just dig deeper. That that right there is why this works so well.

[00:30:28]And here's the thing. I know I'm a biased source here. I've loved what Archie has been from the jump. So, of course, if they're just doing the same thing again, I'd like it. But they don't. These stories aren't just optimistic, nostalgic, milktoast, power of friendship BS. Part of modernizing the Archie formula was adding in stakes and storytelling with consequences that matter. New relationships are formed and broken. People get hurt. People are put in real danger. People get traumatized, things go wrong, and all those actions affect more than just the immediate story. I mean, spoiler alert, but there's a car accident involving three main characters that leaves one of them paralyzed late in the story. Reggie goes to jail for a bit. There's an honest to god armed hostage situation in Riverdale High. At one point, things aren't just resolved in 30 pages. Bad things happen and the characters need to deal with that. Characters in this story are allowed to make decisions, understandable, justified decisions that directly hurt others. Not just inconvenience, hurt. It's bold, especially for the mainline series, but it works. It doesn't feel hamfisted. It feels real, like the document said, like the high school life right outside your window. RJ 2015 is nearly perfect in every way it possibly could be.

[00:31:56]Nearly. I absolutely love this series, but if I was forced to criticize something about it, it would unfortunately be the incredibly inconsistent art quality. Hear me out, okay? Fiona Staples pencils the first three issues and was part of the initial development of the series. So those issues look great, but she was also actively still making Saga at the time and did not return after her contract was up. And her contract was just those first three issues. So replacing her was Annie Woo for issue 4, Veronica Fish for issues 5- 10, Thomas Fatilian, Ryan Jolie for issues 11- 12, Joe Sema for issues 13- 17, Pete Woods for issue 18- 22, and Audrey Mock for issues 2332.

[00:32:40]That is a lot of [ __ ] artists for a 32 issue run and man does the style shift as a result. I grew up in an artfocused household. I went to school to be an artist professionally. I usually don't even read a book if I don't like the art regardless of the story quality. And damn, thank god I read this in a trade first cuz I would have not made it past issue 11. No hate to either Patil or Jolie. They're both incredibly talented artists who have put out incredible work, but dude, what the hell is this? I know that the book had a somewhat sketchy style from the start, but the book also started out looking like this.

[00:33:22]What are we doing here? The art quality throughout the series is a bit of a downwards bell curve, starting out good, dipping harshly around halfway, then crawling its way back up to good, and even sometimes great near the end. I can't say it's all good. It's not. But if you're able to power through it, the story is overall worth it. And it does even out pretty well by about issue 13.

[00:33:43]Problem being, the worst of the art is at the exact end of Varsity Edition number one. And Varsity Edition number two is when the art starts picking back up again. So if you read the end of Varsity issue one and you just don't like the art, trust me, read the second one. It does get better. Well, I've talked about how great and impactful this story is. So what actually happens?

[00:34:05]What's the plot? Well, I'll be honest with you guys.

[00:34:08]It doesn't really matter. Like, sure.

[00:34:10]Okay. Here's the major story arcs. Okay.

[00:34:11]Ark one. After Betty and Archie have a massive breakup, the lodges move into town and Archie starts seeing Veronica.

[00:34:17]Ark two. Due to Reggie's meddling, Veronica's dad hates Archie now, and he does everything to keep him and Veronica apart. Ark three, Mr. Lodge runs for mayor and loses. The lodges leave Riverdale for a bit. And okay, you see what I mean? The plot itself isn't the important part of Archie. It's the characters and their interactions with each other. Just like the discussion document said, booklength stories with subplot threads that carry soap opera style. And that right there leads me to the point of all of this.

[00:34:50]Riverdale was not originally pitched as a TV show. Back in 2013, the eventual showrunner of Riverdale, Roberto Agger Sakasa, pitched a coming of age movie that focused on the Archie cast to Warner Bros. in the style of a John Hughes project. A Ferris Buer's day off style Archie project, you say?

[00:35:10]Huh?

[00:35:11]If only uh if only somebody took that idea and ran with it in a another story line. Anyway, after an executive tried to turn that project into a high concept time travel movie starring Louis CK as a grizzled old Archie. Jesus [ __ ] Christ. Yeah, that actually did happen.

[00:35:28]That project fell apart. It was made into a TV show and eventually made its way to the CW where the project morphed into what we ended up getting. Two years after that initial 2013 pitch in 2015, Wade and Staples Archie, a modern coming of age slice of life dramdy comic series hit the shelves to near universal acclaim. Two years after that, the Riverdale that we all know premiered and introduced their version of the modern Archie mythos to a significantly larger audience.

[00:36:02]And within a year, the new Riverdale initiative was dead. Mark Wade's run in Archie ended in September 2018 with issue 32. And in fact, issue 32 is the last of the new Riverdale line. The numbering is then reset to the legacy numbering with the next issue being number 700 written by Nick Spencer.

[00:36:25]Spencer's run technically continues on from WDE's run, but you can instantly feel Riverdale's fingerprints all over this series.

[00:36:37]Characters look and act so much closer to their TV show versions. Drama from WDE's run is either completely forgotten or just moved past. Everybody is hiding some sort of secret to feel closer to the mystery vibe of the show. It is a blatant attempt at brand synergy, combining Wade's world with elements that would be familiar to the new audience from the show, and it instantly drops the comics quality. Now, Spencer is not a bad writer, and the art by Margarite Savage and Sandy Jerel is incredibly interesting to look at. Their run is not bad, per se, but you can physically feel the mandate to ride the line between the two reboots. And they are just so fundamentally different that the soul of both is lost in the process.

[00:37:24]I don't want it misconstrued. I don't hate Riverdale because it made Archie dark. I hate Riverdale because it fundamentally seems to hate its source material. Archie has gotten dark or edgy a thousand times before and it's been fine. Afterlife with Archie, Jug Head the Hunger, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Archie meets the Predator, Archie meets the Punisher. All of these are stories that are dark or subversive or edgy or magical or make fun of the Archie world or any of the other things that you could say about Riverdale. The difference is that those stories introduce those elements while still understanding Archie as an idea and don't abandon the core concepts behind the characters and their many adaptations. And honestly, I think that's where this hurts the most.

[00:38:08]Riverdale was a modern TV adaptation of a nearly 75year-old IP. And the way they chose to update said IP was by throwing out everything that wasn't nailed down and making a traditional CW drama in the vein of Teen Wolf or Gossip Girl with what was left. And just 2 years before that, we saw what could have been a comic that just so happened to look and read exactly like what Riverdale was originally pitched as with a story bible that starts with the sentence, "There is nothing wrong with the Archie characters." And it worked. It worked so well. Archie always had a TV show style quality to it. But while the original read like a Hannah Barbara cartoon, Archie 2015 reads like a modern the mockumentary style sitcom. I can only imagine if we got a Riverdale based on its example instead. Like imagine an Abbott Elementary or Malcolm in the Middle style sitcom with Archie and the gang. That's Archie 2015. The blueprint is there.

[00:39:10]But unfortunately, an indie comic was never going to perform as well as a TV drama premiering on the same network as Supernatural. So that's not what we got.

[00:39:20]Instead, we got Riverdale, a show embarrassed of its roots that conforms to every trope its brokeass studio is derided for. A disaster mix of Twin Peaks and euphoria that would rather be loud and obvious and unique than possibly being seen as a little derivative yet complex and interesting.

[00:39:37]And because of that, those are now the most pop culturally relevant interpretations of these characters. And until we, by some miracle, get a popular and widespread adaptation of the Archie universe proper, the name Archie Andrews will forever be tied to the epic highs and lows of high school football. Doug Head will be a straight emo detective rocking a [ __ ] beanie. Cuz I'm weird.

[00:40:00]>> I'm a weirdo.

[00:40:01]>> The Lodges will be gangsters. The Coopers will be psychos. and Reggie will also be there, I guess.

[00:40:10]Man, I [ __ ] hate Riverdale.

[00:40:17]But man, I also love Archie. The world of Archie is one where anything can be done, where zombies and witches and the Predator and werewolves and superheroes fit perfectly right alongside high school slice of life stories. A comic that is a pioneer in inclusivity and diversity in spite of its nearly 85 years of history. One of the only comics smart enough to still sell in grocery stores. A comic that can be picked up at any point and understood that can make you feel like you're part of the fun. Whether you saw Archie's first appearance or if you're just looking to pass the time while your parents get groceries. A comic that is truly for everyone. Do yourself a favor and go read Mark Wade and Fiona Staples.

[00:41:03]Archie, if you're like me, maybe it'll make it all feel a little less daunting.

[00:41:10]Thank you all for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like, subscribe, turn on notifications, check out all my other socials, all those fun things. If you want some extras with every video, be sure to check out my Patreon as I make exclusive content over there that comes out with every video.

[00:41:24]This time being a breakdown of Chip Sedarski and Erica Henderson's Jug Head series that came out around the same time as Wadeen Staples Archie. So, be sure to go check that out. But with all that said, once again, thank you all for watching and I will see you guys next time.

[00:42:11]Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

[00:42:22]Hey, hey, hey.