Meh.

The funny pages aren’t lacking in the tots, in fact, there were a bunch of little trouble-makers for me to choose from for today’s child-themed post, where we take a look at these greasy, sticky and oftentimes seemingly devil-spawned little bundles of comic-strip joy.

Dennis the Menace, 14/10/09

This comic serves as a reminder of the  constant misery that is Mr Wilson’s suburban existence in that he can’t even go for a leisurely walk around the block without some sort of mishap befalling him owing to that ruthless monster his neighbours have birthed. That shiny lump on his bald liver-spotted head (which appears to be emanating some sort of hate-rays) tickles my curiosity no end. What did Dennis do? Drop an anvil on it from a two-storey window, Wile E. Coyote style? Ambush the poor man from behind a bush and hit him with a baseball bat? Or did he just go old school and jump on  Mr Wilson’s back, pummeling his head with his tiny, tiny fists? I guess we’ll never know.

Curtis, 10/10/09

While I’ve never cared much for Curtis himself (or that disgruntled piece of origami on his head that is meant to resemble a hat of some sort), I do feel for little Barry. Just look at him stomping around in genuine moral dismay, getting all worked up over the possible consequences of another one of Curtis’ stupid schemes slash excuse-to-avoid-doing-as-much-schoolwork-as-possible. And, like its not bad enough Curtis doesn’t put an ounce of effort into being a good role model for the impressionable little guy, he also insists on subjecting him to incomprehensivly bad jokes. If I were Barry, I’d put my head down in resignation too.

Baby Blues, 12/10/09

Today’s instalment of Baby Blues isn’t as funny as it is sad. It paints a somewhat worrisome picture of the McPherson home, with an absent mother and a father with apparent anger issues (as Supernanny  Jo Frost has vouched for many a time) to boot. The poor kids are left to fend for themselves all day, sitting around conjuring up make-believe happy worlds - no doubt to distract themselves from the abusive hell that is reality – worlds with rainbows and farmyard animals and chocolate fountains, worlds where Mommy shows actual, non-drug-induced affection and Daddy doesn’t come plodding home to yell out a string of expletives. Wait, make that thought-ballooning out a string of expletives.

Family Circus, 12/10/09

Speaking of expletives, in Family Circus, Billy has learned a dirty word. I bet you my life’s savings that being the savage little moron that he is, he’ll actually insist on going outside and screaming it at the top of his lungs over and over again, forcing the neighbours to shut their doors and windows and hustling their children inside, all while muttering sympathetically about ”that poor, sick-in-the-head Keane kid.” 

Marvin, 08/10/09

Ew.

Marvin wouldn’t know class if it fell on his head like a two-tonne grand piano. I mean, seriously, ENOUGH with the poo-jokes already! We get it okay?!  And if you think this is distasteful, let me just say, you have NO idea the lows this strip has succumbed to in the hopes of evoking a few chuckles. I hereby boycott Marvin and his heavy-lidded penchant for stinky diapers. I’m done.

The story reads like a long letter to Eddie, moving back and forth in time to include Torres’ memories of him – charting a romantic tale of love at first sight and a happy marriage – contrasted painfully with the tragic circumstances that she finds herself in at present. We watch as she searches for him desperately, looking in hospitals and among burn victims and other survivors. “Everywhere, long lines led to a table with a person holding a list.” (p. 48) Finally on 22 September, Eddie’s body is recovered and Torres has no choice but to accept his death.

A large portion of the book is devoted to detailed descriptions of Torres’ encounters with the various volunteer aid foundations that were set up to help the families of the dead. She talks about the taxing effects of having to recount her painful story over and over again to aid workers in the hopes of getting compensation.  Expressing her frustrations regarding the seemingly impenetrable bureaucratic complexities that appeared to be designed around these agencies to prevent them from providing any actual assistance, Torres soon becomes very cynical of their benevolent front and the extent of people’s sympathy. “With millions in all of those 9/11 charities, we’re this season’s choice recipients. But when the season ends, so will all that goodwill.” (p. 101) She is also outraged at the selfishness of the media, who she believes to be trying to exploit people’s emotional scars for the sake of ratings.

Having read many good reviews about American Widow, I had high hopes for what I would find. As much as I hate to say it, I feel a little let down. The book, as touching as it is, felt a little repetitive at times, particularly when it came to Torres’ dealings with the aid agencies, hovering in circles around the same issue instead of progressing like I would’ve liked. Another thing that bothered me was a rift that I perceived between the images and the narrative – which probably comes of having two separate people working on the two aspects – but there were instances when the disjunction became apparent. That is not to say the the book isn’t illustrated beautifully – it did have it moments; I thought the way Eddie’s life was portrayed, including relevant snippets of his childhood in Colombia and his struggle to become a US citizen was especially poignant, and a fitting tribute.

Phantom, 5/10/09

The current Phantom storyline involves an evil scheme surrounding Diana, the Phantom’s significant other, a human rights officer at the UN office in Mawitaan. Mrs Walker has been yearning to shed the crisp white labcoat that appears to be mandatory UN wear and go home to her kids and her Man-in-purple-tights (this might have been a fashion faux pas for years, but I hear purple is big this year, so The Ghost Who Walks is actually in for once). All while Old Man Mozz – that mystical knower of all things – has been walking around in what could either be a trance or a drunken stupor, predicting doom for Diana. Turns out, he was right.

So basically, Chatu aka “Python” (oh, come on!), presumably an old nemesis of the Phantom, has been plotting to get his henchmen to blow up the UN offices being that he is somewhat inconvenienced by his incarceration and cannot do it himself. Its a two-birds-with-one-stone sort of thing for our grim prisoner since he has something of a grudge against the Phantom and the UN, making Diana an easy target. What I don’t understand is all this talk of the “blind prisoner”. From what I can see of Chatu, his vision isn’t the least bit impaired, so who is it? Am I missing something? Oh, whatever. If I seem unworried by the aftermath of the explosion, its because anything awry that occurs in proximity to The Ghost Who Takes No Crap will no doubt be quickly resolved by means of a few quick jabs to the face and swift kicks to the groin. Just wait and see.

Mark Trail, 05/10/09

 Speaking of jabs and kicks, here comes our favourite punching-machine and nature-crusader : Mark Trail. For the past month or so, him and his ward, Rusty have been engaged in a rather dull storyline consisting of camping gear, alligators and poachers. The only thing remotely interesting about it was when Mark was given a concussion by one of the poachers for trying to butt into their business, and was almost killed by a gator. He was, thankfully, saved when one of the poachers took pity on him and rescued him from the jaws of death by simply yelling at the gator to “get”. Easy peasy. Although movies like Rogue would suggest otherwise, clearly this is an effective way to get rid of pesky man-eating reptiles. Also, Mark in his gratitude has become besties with the benevolent poacher, not realizing who he is! Oh, I can hardly wait to see what he’ll do when he finds out!

Apartment 3-G, 03/10/09

Apartment 3-G, on the other hand, has spawned an unlikely protagonist – that most gentlemanly of neighbours, Dr Aristotle Papagoras (I kid you not, that’s really his name). Now Dr Papagoras, despite his somewhat advanced age, has been known to have a way with the ladies, and most women – the three girls from A 3-G aside – have been waylaid by his charms. While fiery-haired Ruby had been the focus of his moustached attentions for a while, now he appears to have found another distraction in the ever-so-frail Miss Bobbie Merrill – the original damsel-in-distress. We’ve witnessed deep, meaningful conversation, the helpful addition of alcohol and an undeniable (albeit inexplicable) attraction between the two – one can only imagine where things will be going next.

I only hope I’m not there to see it.

Mary Worth, 03/10/09

Finally, we come to Mary Worth. Now it should be noted that the current drug-ring related storyline is possibly one of the most exciting Mary Worth scenarios EVER (not counting Aldomania, of course). It all began with Dr Adrian and officer Scott professing their undying love to each other over dinner – a saccharinely sweet affair over which they held hands and said things like “love is a gamble”, generally appearing to be very pleased with themselves. That itself should’ve been indication enough that something tragic was going to go down very soon because, lets face it, anyone minus a problem IS a problem in the world of Mary Worth. Adrian made the very bad mistake of showing her engagement ring to Mary, and Ms Worth being the uncontested source of all that is evil, immediately summoned the forces of darkness to rob Adrian of her newfound joy and restore the Mary Worth version of equilibrium. As a result, Scott was shot during a drug-bust operation, and remains in a critical condition, while Adrian sits by his hospital bed willing him to live and wondering how she could’ve ever let herself be so happy. Yay!

And how.

Fart Party vol. 1 and vol. 2 are not graphic novels in the truest sense of the term, being that they don’t necessarily follow any choronological or even thematic order, but can be considered instead an anthology of sorts.  Wertz documents bits and pieces of her life as a 20-something artist; her character is rude, delightfully obscene and a true-blooming cynic if there ever was one. Not to mention, drinks like a fish. From the hassles of having to move from one tiny apartment to another and crappy jobs and obsessing over cheese to coping with the end of a relationship and trying to move on, Wertz has the ability to take the mundane, the everyday and to bring out the irony and the humour in things, things that we’ve all been through and can identify with. Like Nicholas Gurewitch of the Perry Bible Fellowship says in the foreword to vol. 2 : “I’m not sure how she does it exactly, but Julia’s on-panel persona pretty much encapsulates the whole of the human condition.”

Wertz’s drawings, by her own admission, are somewhat rough and perhaps not the most technically proficient of pieces, but I find that they are appealing in their rawness. Even her notoriously sketchy stick figure travel diaries – which comprises of hurried scribbles that she makes while traveling – display an imprudence in their disregard for comic-book conventions that is distinctly charming.  The books also come with the Fun Pages section in the back that I absolutely loved, comprising of random city sketches, old comic strips that she’d done in the past and a lot of additional material – in short, a really nice bonus.

The books play to a peculiar wit, and combined with an impeccable sense of comic-timing, make for hilarious reads. If you share my penchant for kooky, offbeat characters with something to say, then you’ll love the Fart Party. Personally, I would eat these books if I could.

Which is to say, they’re very, very good.

One of the most poignant features about Satrapi’s work is her ability to frame the contradictions that form part of Iranian society – primarily those between one’s private and public lives – in a witty and relatable way. For instance, while the religious leaders had ordered that the veil be made obligatory for schoolgirls, these tenets was discarded of once the children got home, where they could act freely – wear whatever they wanted, listen to American music or have boyfriends – all of which would have been frowned on in conservative society.  Satrapi talks about how people devised ways to get around the system, as dominant as it was, trying to live as normally as they possibly could under such an oppressive regime, whether it was by having parties in secret, drinking alcohol or wearing a denim jacket.

Satrapi also describes the jarring effect of a cultural change which occurs when her parents compel to leave for Austria and France when the war in Iran escalates. I thought this was a particularly significant turn in the story where she finds herself lost and unable to cope with the complexities and superficialities of the Western world. “The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by someone else’s rules.” (Satrapi, p.195)

Satrapi’s chosen style for the drawings – a contrasting black-and-white palette – has served to make her images much more captivating and dramatic in their simplicity. Scenes play out either in luminous white settings or pitch-black backgrounds. According to a USA today review: “the simple lines and shapes of Satrapi’s drawings lend poignancy to the story. The fact that she is able to portray such a vast range of emotions with a few simple strokes of a pen is impressive.” The language is a little stiff, but this could be owing to the fact that I was reading the translated English version as opposed to the original French.

Despite being built on somewhat morbid themes of war and disaster, Persepolis isn’t as bleak as one would imagine. Satrapi injects the story with a subtle, cynical brevity that is heartwarming. This, combined with the unrestricted and candid nature of the narrative is what makes the book so compelling. It certainly has a permanent place on my bookshelf.

Working It Out, 23/09/09

This Working It Out strip sees Mr Jamison in top form as he proceeds to negotiate a no-salary offer with a potential employee. While this is the least of the heinousness  that we’ve known the mustacheod misanthrope to be capable of – including but not limited to asking a pregnant female worker if she’ll now be “working for two” – it does capture in a nutshell his general propensity to be relentless, tyrannical and well, an all-around d***head, if you’ll pardon my language. While its known that the GFC has made jobs scant, I would rather shoot my brains out and eat my own legs before I’m desperate enough to work for this guy.

Dilbert, 25/09/09

Few comics capture the trials and tribulations of the working man the way Dilbert does. Today’s instalment features Pointy-Haired Boss dismissing – yet again for the bazillionth time -  productive input from his subordinates with his characteristic incompetence-disguised-as-authority flair. PHB is easily one of my favorite characters in the strip, so it was natural for me to be overcome with joy when I found out recently that he had been a recipient of that most coveted of accolades, the highest of honours – an entry in the Urban dictionary.

Herman, 25/09/09

While Herman isn’t a specifically office-related strip, it frequently ventures into that realm with panels like this one, for instance. This made me laugh out loud only because its so blatant in a Haw! Its funny because he’s broke! And has no dignity!  sort of way. The look on the guy’s face (he kind of looks like a wax version of Hitler that was left too long in the sun) is strange in that he seems more righteous and outraged than desperate or crazy like one would assume he should be.

Working Daze, 25/09/09

Try as it might Working Daze doesn’t really do it for me. While its nice to get the occasional break from the tech-jokes that the comic is known for, mostly confined to the Nerds Are Unsuited To Reality And Therefore Socially Inept theme, I find that the timing is sort of off in most strips, thereby squashing the effect of the punchlines. Today’s comic for instance, built around how carpooling – albeit conceived as an effort in the direction of saving gas and doing the environment a spot of good – can be counter-productive in some cases, could’ve worked had it been structured differently. Like oh, if they hadn’t GIVEN THE JOKE AWAY in the first panel and tapered off towards a less-funnier end.

Wizard of Id, 22/09/09

Okay, so the Wizard of Id doesn’t technically revolve around an office space,  but it does feature a variety of working subjects doing what they can to get by under the not-so-encouraging rule of a midget king. Kind of like an extensive medieval office, if you will. The King,  despite his dimunitive stature can be quite the tyrant – not unlike Mr Jamison – except of course if an employee messes up in the kingdom of Id, its not his health plan that gets the axe, its his head. Like the poor monk/priest figure here who was stupid enough to think the King – what with an ego the size of Bolivia – would actually appreciate his honesty.

Webcomics are usually based on a variety of specialized themes, designed to appeal to a particular group of people. In limiting their focus to a distinct theme – unlike most syndicated comics that aspire to reach as broad a demographic as possible – webcomics embody the general trend of narrowcasting that has come about in the information age. Not to mention, they have made great use of the level of interactivity that the Internet has to offer – via forums, comments, competitions – all of which have facilitated a closer and more personal contact between artist and reader. In this last instalment of New Frontiers, I give you a brief look at some of the more outspoken webcomics that I’ve come across.

Partially Clips, 02/06/2009

In Partially Clips, Robert T. Balder makes ingenius use of mundane clip art. The images are always repeated in the panels, except for the text, which is instrumental in giving a whole new context to the clips. I find Balder’s work very interesting in this regard, and similar to another of my favorite strips - Married to the Sea - where the meanings and signifiers in otherwise innocent images are changed through the unexpected addition of a snarky, clashing narrative.

The Perry Bible Fellowship, Wise Sensei

For anyone just starting to read online comics, I would implore them to look up The Perry Bible Fellowship as a must-see. Its one of the funniest strips I’ve read. Nicholas Gurewitch has a wicked sense of humor; his strips are surreal, profane and often, morbid. The style of drawing isn’t consistent throughout the comic and tends to change -  going from featureless blob-headed characters to garishly coloured backgrounds - providing a fresh and somewhat twisted perspective on the bizarre complexities of life. Although the site hasn’t been updated in a while, there is enough in to scour through in the archives. I repeat: MUST SEE.

Chopping Block, 12/12/2000

On the other hand, I don’t know how appealing Chopping Block by Lee Adam Herold might be to most people. The strip – based on the life and antics of a serial killer – is darkly funny; there’s a certain gloomy aspect to the drawings and the jokes that could be somewhat offensive or disturbing. The plots usually involve the murderer on his way to or back from having chopped someone to pieces or stabbed them in the face, and while it doesn’t try to elicit any cliched “sympathy for the devil”, it depicts a sort of detachment and coldness that I didn’t like initially. But I have to admit, Butch is kind of growing on me.

Cat and Girl, 03/09/2009

Dorothy Gambrell’s Cat and Girl is a funny and cynical take on, well, just about everything. The giant Cat (who bears resemblance to Dogbert from Dilbert) is the oddball companion to Girl – a visibly-disenchanted, philosophy-spewing, misanthrope of a child. While by no means one of my favorite strips – to be honest, I find it somewhat unremarkable in its already-exhausted Calvin and Hobbes-esque premises – Cat and Girl does have its fair share of laughs.

Eric Monster, Self-Portrait With Water Torture

Finally, we come to Eric “Monster” Millikin, who has compiled a collection of paintings of monsters on his website. The images are vivid, done in wild fluorescent hues and swirling motifs. While my penchant for zombie-imagery is somewhat limited, the site is still interesting in that it isn’t confined to occult figures and includes occasional political commentary as well.

While he isn’t without his dissidents, many of Scott’s predictions have been realized in recent years. Webcomics, which started as an attempt to simulate printed comics in an online space, have now embraced the digital medium to such an extent – that it often becomes impossible to extract them from the Web and re-imagine them in a traditional paper format. This isn’t true of all webcomics, of course, and many have successfully made the transition to books and collections, but I’m talking specifically about those comics that have embedded themselves in an online presence, where a large part of their appeal and popularity stems from a use of technology. As always, since it is beyond my capacities to list the hundreds of such comics that exist at the moment, I will be talking about a few of my personal favourites.

“Bush’s Plan for Iraq”, Natalie Dee, 06-22-04

 Natalie Dee’s character is a dog-loving eccentric who you’ll either love or hate. I, for one, think the strip is hilarious. The images are super-simplistic and rudimentary, something one can imagine whipping up in a matter of minutes on Paintbrush, but there is an underlying wit to the comic that makes it appealing. Dee’s drawings are one-panel bits almost child-like in their crudeness, which, set against the sometimes crass and often downright nonsensical sense of humor that she abides by, makes for a winning combination. What is interesting about Dee’s comics is the fact that the joke either resides in or is completed by the title of the comic. Removing the actual punchline from the panel and giving it a seemingly unassuming position serves to emphasize it even more, and this is a feature specific to an online presence; it would not have the same structure or effect on paper.

xkcd, # 302

What Natalie Dee does with titles, xkcd – the self-titled “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language” – does with a tool tip, another design specific to the Internet. Although xkcd jokes are usually complete without the little hover box that appears when you place your cursor over the comic, the box often adds to the story, giving you additional information or an extra punchline. I admit to being completely ignorant of this feature until a friend of mine alerted me to it a while back and since then, I’ve had to go back and re-read most of the strips. I still have trouble getting the science/math jokes with the graphs and formulas and other-things-I-can’t-name-because-they-scare-me, but there’s certainly enough to love in xkcd besides.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, 21/09/2009

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (hidden panel), 21/09/2009

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner, on the other hand, offers you the “red button” to activate a hidden panel for each comic. The button has been placed in an inconspicuous position on the page and there are no hints or signs indicating its presence, which means the only way readers will come across the gimmick is by accident. Like xkcd, smbc comics are funny on their own and don’t particularly rely on the extra panel; it is a mere appendage that drives the joke home, and one that is unique to the internet medium.

The Discovery of Spoons, 2005

The Discovery of Spoons by Alexander Danner and John Barber is a unique flash comic, where the reader clicks on the screen to move on to the next panel. The story – short as it is – is a touching account of a man’s attempt to disseminate his poetry while maintaining anonymity. The comic consists of a carefully choreographaphed play of  images that appear and fade slowly, and this dissolving effect adds to the drama, resulting in a beautiful semi-animated piece. This is an excellent example of how comic artists are able to use the Internet and the various technologies that it offers to their advantage.

When I Am King, sequence 1

Another instance of webcomics that have styled themselves to fit the conventions of the digital medium is When I Am King, a scrolling wordless comic by Demian5. The strip has a very mechanical, almost video-gamish appearance, and the screens move up and down at will. The bizarre plot follows an Egyptian king on his travels through a desert after he loses his pants to a fire-breathing, child-eating camel who consequently falls in love with the king and saves him from a gang of riotous children. As strange as the synopsis might sound, When I Am King – crafted in a hefty 63 sequences and abounding in penis-related imagery - is actually quite engaging, particularly with the occasional animated segments to break the monotony.  

Fun Home – A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is an evocative graphic memoir based on the author’s life and family. The novel consists of a charming blend of images and text, where the narrative serves as a running commentary on the illustrations. The style is compelling in its balance of mediums - by allowing the words to introduce and punctuate the images, the author has enabled the book to become an illustrated diary of sorts, documenting events and emotions. The artwork in itself is stunning – Bechdel’s choice of a limited color palette gives the images a  somber appearance which is in keeping with the story’s somewhat melancholy content. The details in the sketching is what draws one in the most in Fun Home – whether it be in the depiction of the gothic revival house she grew up in, or the journals that she kept for years – Bechdel has gone to great pains to portray her memories as accurately as possible. Having long been a comic strip artist, if Bechdel had any reservations about whether her work would transition well into the graphic-novel form, Fun Home dismisses them. In an interview with Powell’s Books, she talked about the experience: “The comic strip is a very constrained format. I have ten panels, and I have to get a whole story into them every other week. I don’t have room to spread out at all. I can’t use different size panels or shapes even. It’s very rigid, so this was a treat. The open space totally panicked me, but I got to really draw.“

The story revolves around Bechdel’s tumultous relationship with her father, who was hit by a truck and killed at the age of 44. The author’s earliest impressions of him constitute a man who is stern and emotionally-unresponsive to his children - one entirely too concerned with constructing an ideal image. In calling him an “old artificer“, Bechdel demonstrates how her father’s public persona contradicted his personal one, and how masterful he was in embelleshing and obscuring the facts. ” He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not.” (p. 16) She is also suspicious of the cause of his death and says there is a chance it might have been suicide, believing her father’s dismay in those last days of his life might have pushed him over the edge. “His death was quite possibly his consummate artifice, his masterstroke.” (p. 27)

The plot essentially is fixated on one particular incident, to be resumed and reassessed time and again as the book progresses. This specific moment was when the protagonist decides to reveal to her parents that she is in fact a lesbian and found out, through her mother, that her father was a homosexual as well, and this had such a significant impact on the author’s psyche that it has been chosen to be the point where all her narrative ventures begin and end. By going back and forth in time, Bechdel shows us the consequences of that revelation on the relationship between the father and daughter, and the various clues in her childhood that would no doubt have been indications of this situation.

Bechdel’s timing is impeccable; the story runs at a comfortable pace, delivered piece by piece via an engaging and poetic narrative. The book is ultimately forgiving; towards the end; one can see that Bechdel has, to a certain extent, purged her father of his misdeeds, choosing instead to take a more benign approach in remembering him and the various unexpected ways in which their two lives and stories had come to coincide over time. In doing so, Bechdel is able to reveal the bond between them in all its inescapable and enigmatic glory.

“What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were dad’s thought about my thoughts about him, and his thoughts about my thoughts about his thoughts about me?” (p. 212)

Archie Marries Veronica part 1, Issue #600, cover

While my response wasn’t as bad as a certain Mr. Dave Luebke’s, the news did baffle me a bit. I have a personal history with Archie comics, as I’m sure a lot of people do with particular books. I remember the first copy my mum bought for me when I was five, telling me how much she’d enjoyed them herself. This was when I’d just barely started reading, so Archie, in essence, was my very first “literary” venture (soon to be followed by Enid Blyton books). I kept reading it over the years – while I grew out of other phases (like my Nancy Drew obsession), Archie comics remained a staple – they still stack my shelves. In fact, when I was about 8 or so the guy at the bookstore (bless him), seeing how often I came to him with my [measly] allowance in hand, felt sorry for me and decided he would let me read and return the comics for free – as long as I didn’t wear them out too much or spill something on them.

I was loyal to the series for a long time, even after my initial appreciation had begun to be tainted by a growing cynicism for its characteristic sugar-coated and somewhat mild version of humor. When people accused it of being too politically-correct and too safe to be funny, I defended it like any long-abiding reader would, although its repetitiveness and comparative lack of  fresh story-lines was kind of becoming apparent to me too. I suppose dedication to something like Archie comics arises more out of a familiarity with characters and premises than an expectation of progressive story-lines; this is true particularly if you’ve started reading the series from a young age and begin to identify and love the various personalities on the pages, whether its Jughead and his never-ending appetite or Miss Grundy with her classroom woes.

Archie Marries Veronica part 2, Issue # 601, cover

Part of the appeal of Archie comics, in my opinion, lies in its ability to wipe the slate clean after every story, maintaining what the FayObserver calls “equilibrium” in an article. Individual plot lines don’t affect the basic narrative: Dilton Doiley could invent a potion that makes him irresistible to the ladies in one episode, but he’ll still go back to his bespectacled, geeky self once the story closes. Mr Lodge might feel a fatherly affection for Archie at one point, but rest assured Archie will continue to be escorted not-so-politely out the door the next time he visits the mansion. And if bad boy Reggie Mantle displays compassion at any time, we shouldn’t expect it to carry over to the next story. There is a distinct comfort in this sort of arrangement; one, it allows you to pick up an issue and read it without any requisite prior knowledge and secondly, the world of Archie comics exists in a disembodied bubble of sorts where time doesn’t appear to exist – the idea that things don’t ever have to change, that aging can be momentarily stalled is an encouraging thought in itself.

This is precisely the reason why the recent decision to get Archie and Veronica saying their “I do”s confuses me. While I understand the creators’ need to push the series ahead, bring about some sort of chronological progression, have they considered the consequences of this? The Archie-Betty-Veronica tug-o-war that has fueled countless stories over the years – what happens now that it’s concluded? Will kids still want to read previous issues when they know how its going to end? And will the new, more mature narrative be a good enough replacement for what has been steady fodder for all these years? Is this, as Scott Johnson has conjectured, a response to the financial crisis that has Archie choosing the rich girl over the poor one? Or is this a publicity ploy that will soon fizzle out in a quick annulment, reinstating the love triangle and putting things back in their original pre-proposal place?