Archie, Vol. 3 (2017)

I still haven’t quite figured out how I feel about Archie.  I enjoy it well enough, and I keep reading it, but it feels like more of a “just all right” comic to me, rather than one that I really love.  Maybe it’s a combination of missing Jughead, loving Riverdale despite its craziness, and feeling nostalgia from the crumbling old comics I read at my grandparents’ house as a kid – maybe it’s those things that keep me reading even though the comic hasn’t grabbed me the way others have (premise spoilers.)

Volume 3 opens on a split focus.  The last volume ended with the Lodges moving out of Riverdale, and so we follow both the gang back home and Veronica at her new boarding school in Switzerland.  Archie and Betty, unable to get a hold of Veronica, are both in a funk, while Veronica grapples with a new rival:  Cheryl Blossom.

I don’t believe the Blossoms appear at all in Jughead, and I don’t recall them from the old comics I’ve read, so this is my first exposure to the comic-book version of Cheryl.  I have to say, having first met the Riverdale version of the character, this one doesn’t really measure up.  Oh sure, she’s a formidable mean girl who gives Veronica a run for her money, but by now, I’m used to Riverdale’s gloriously off-kilter Cheryl with that Victorian-gothic air about her.  For most of the characters in this universe, I like how they are in both the comics and on Riverdale, even if the Riverdale versions don’t often bear a ton of resemblance to their origins.  With Cheryl, though?  Maybe it’s just because the Riverdale version is my first, but if she’s not donning a cape to shoot a bow and arrow, you might as well go home.

Despite that, there’s some good stuff in this volume.  I like a side story about Dilton creating a new app that goes awry – it’s a much better in-universe take on the ramifications of digital mistakes than the one featured in Jughead a while back.  I’m also really fond of a couple issues in which Archie, overwhelmed with teenage heartache and the general stress of being him, decides to model himself on Jughead instead, leaving his best pal to pick up all of Archie’s actual slack.  That sort of “two characters trade their usual behavior” storyline can get a little goofy, and this one certainly fits that at points, but it’s fun to see Jughead struggling to stay on top of things for Archie (as well as seeing what happens when anyone other than Jughead tries to eat as much as he does!)

This feels like a bit of an in-between volume.  Obviously, a lot of that is down to Veronica being separated from the rest of the characters, but it’s more than just that.  It’s a lot of set-up as well as a lot of pauses, a sense of storylines resting while the various parts are moved into place for whatever’s coming next.