Archie vs. Predator #4

[history79]

8 pages of 24

Comments

[informationgeek]

Well that certainly was a mini-series. Just a whole lot of something... like something Avatar Press would have put out.

I... I just don't get this thing.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

...that is fucked up right there.

[lissa_quon]

WELP.

[owlbrigade1]

Well that was a thing that happened. It cannot be unhappened. It happened and we all have to deal with that.

[janegray]

Speak for yourself, bub.

[halloweenjack]

Kind of surprised at the negative comments, since I seem to remember at least some people being into stuff like Crossed and some of Garth Ennis' more recent and ridiculous stuff. "You simply can't die in department-store clothes. It lowers the tone" actually made me LOL, and the idea of Archie being a secret Yautja is kind of funny, too. YMMV, I guess.

[cainofdreaming]

I dunno if it's the fact that I have no emotional connection to Archie universe, since it was never actually published around here, but I do find the crack hilarious too. I mean, it's so over the top.

[owlbrigade1]

I wouldn't like my comments to be seen as too negative, I did enjoy it but in a totally bemused way. It is just so bizarre that I'm not actually sure what I just read. Even by comics standards it is pushing the boundaries of the surreal. That isn't a bad thing, we all need a dose of the surreal now and again, but it does mean that there is a struggle to find ways to even process it properly; it breaks comic conventions and preconceptions so thoroughly (which I am sure was the intent behind it) that it defies description beyond "this is a thing that happened".

[icon_uk]

Agreed the Veronica's obsession with fashion being amped up when facing death is rather awesome (though I keep hearing it in Rarity's voice from MLP: FIM, and I don't want that to crossover with Predator, even in my head)

[alicemacher]

I also enjoyed this miniseries. It's just so over-the-top it works for me.

Really, Archie vs. the Punisher was a similar concept--the combining of two comics mythoi that were like day and night--and yet my sense is that readers inside and outside s_d really dig it. True, Archie vs. Predator doesn't rein in the death-and-destruction elements as its predecessor did, but to me that just makes it even more ludicrously hilarious and fun.

[super_fly]

Well if that first page is to be believed this story and Archie Vs Punisher are canonically in the same universe, so there's a thing.

[crinos]

what?

WHAT?

FUCKING WHAT?

I don't know what's more horrible. The fact their plan is to plastic surgery a Predator into Archie, or the fact they have a "turn someone into an Archie clone" machine at all.

[terrykun]

Is this any more ethically compromised than Reed Richards turning Skrulls into cows?

[thehood]

Good question, this Predator did want to be with them after all.

[icon_uk]

That aspect of the Predator's personality is not really showcased in these pages though.... why would he want to be with them?

[super_fly]

Facebook status: It's Complicated.

[thehood]

To be fair, it was pretty clear that Betty had lost it by that point.

[quatoria]

Yep. That was sure horrible, all right.

[doodleboy]

I guess when you give Alex De Campi a writing project you can't complain that it turns Grindhouse.

[jetblack927]

I dunno, compared to the cracktastic Transformers vs. GI Joe series, this plays like Shakespeare...I'd love a trade of this...

[reveen]

Honestly, I dislike this more from a Predator perspective. The thing that made the original predator cool was the worthy opponent angle where the victims are all themselves total badasses. It wasn't just some slasher movie where you go to see teenage avatars of your high school angst get cut up.

[locuatico]

Yeah. I think Predator 2 may be my favorite Predator movie, because you get a clear picture of how the Predators operate and what kind of rules they follow. Hell, the ending explicitly shows the Predators do not have anything against humans at all.

[thehood]

Except this wasn't an experienced Yautja, it was a teenager who developed a crush on Betty and Veronica.

[icon_uk]

I was more impressed by the idea of the "parent/child hunting trip" in Batman/Predator III, where the adult goes after Batman, and the youngster on it's first hunt goes after Robin.

[thehood]

Right, but in this case the Yautja youth was by himself.

[locuatico]

We'll... Why was by himself? Was this an adulthood ritual? He escaped? Part of the fun is learning about predator culture, yet we barely learn anything beyond him being in love

[mrstatham]

The films all seem to display varying suggestions as to what the rituals, hunting trips and the like are for Predators; the one from the first movie hunts a squad of heavily armed badass mercenaries; the second has one hunting Danny Glover in what is admittedly Los Angeles in a warzone-style state, but there were almost certainly worse/more dangerous targets it could go after; AVP suggests a ritual is to hunt Xenos, which are almost certainly more dangerous and deadly than a human being.. So why aren't the Predators consistently hunting Xenos; the sequel then has the Predator saving the world... Even though a world filled with PredAliens would surely make for a more challenging hunt. And then Predators has a seemingly rogue group of asshole Predators who abduct people.

Even the approach to their hunting is totally muddled, so I'm not surprised we didn't get a lot more in a throwaway thing like this.

[icon_uk]

Isn't their choice of target more based on the environment, they need the very, very warm (and possibly humid) conditions to be able to operate effectively?

In Predator 2, the Danny Glover thing seems oddly incidental. It's hunting the gangs because they are more of a challenge, in a part of the world it normally could not visit without the heatwave conditions.

I suspect that hunting Xenos would be a high risk target for only the adrenaline junk class of Predator, plus they might be seen as TOO dangerous in case they ever managed to get off world (Xenos seem to be able to be quite smart)

[bradygirl_12]

Betty and Veronica battling the Predator on the cover? How cool is that?

[thehood]

My favorite part was Veronica admitting she thought Betty was the prettiest girl she knew, it was very femslashy.

[thanekos]

Nice soundless " Good lord! *choke* " in the next-to-last panel, Veronica.

[matrix_dragon]

... Okay, Betty has gone bye-bye. Those are crazy-eyes of the finest quality on the last page. Veronica, you might want to get the hell out of there.

[starwolf_oakley]

Do the Archie comics parody themselves this much, even in crossovers?

The comics even worked hard to improve themselves over the decades, trying to keep up as society progressed. While Kevin Keller is the most well known example, another good example would be Moose finding out he's dyxlexlic and not "stupid."

[q99]

The crossovers can get pretty out-there, more than the main stuff, though the main comics didn't have much trouble winking at the reader.

Of course, they did a moderately more serious reboot recently.

[deh_tommy]

Archie's usually wacky, though probably not to the extent of these crossovers - I remember one time, he tried asking for half of Reggie's pizza, who only gave him the outer crust (as in, a perfectly circular ring of the pizza). In the most recent series, Archie somehow managed to light ice cream on fire.

[q99]

And the main book would have what-ifs, and superheros, and stuff.

[nate_abril96]

I feel like I have to point it out since nobody has already, but did anyone else notice that when Archie grabs the Predator's fist it's a reference to the first Predator movie when Arnold and Carl Weathers did their super manly flex shake?

[zechs80]

Yes, I noticed it. I noticed it and squeed when I first read the comic then let that line with instead of Dillion went with Campi and decided I must read more of her work.

[remial]

first the predator has been in a cross over with Archie, and now he is being turned INTO Archie?

hasn't he suffered enough?

This is utterly shark jumping crazy....

[7dialsmystery]

.....I LOVE IT. Bwa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

[hollasa]

I stumbled across the trade of this at the library. What I loved was that it keeps getting mis-shelved at the library - they keep accidentally putting it into the children's section, rather than the teen or adult graphic novel section.