Archie Comics #636

[brerrabbit]

Comments

[huntleyhaverstock]

If you are in any way familiar with Giselle Lagace's webcomics work, it is PROFOUNDLY weird to see her (very enjoyable!) art applied to something as wholesome as Archie.

[deh_tommy]

Her artstyle is very Archie-esque in general, I think it makes sense.

[zachbeacon]

Not that weird. A lot of Archie people end up doing more adult stuff in that style.

Giselle Lagace's art is gorgeous though.

[mastermahan]

Honestly, I'm more used to subversions of Archie than the real deal.

[zachbeacon]

Yeah, you've got stuff from outsiders like Cherry Poptart and High School USA.

Stuff from Archie artists like Die Kitty Die or ... really most everything Dan DeCarlo did outside of Archie.

And official stuff like Riverdale and the horror books.

Still, the fact that its one of the few comics still sold on newsstands gives it a pretty big cultural imprint in the US even today.

[mastermahan]

It says more about my tastes, really. The only actual Archie comics I've sought out were Afterlife, Chilling Adventures, and Mark Waid's Jughead.

And yet before I read any of those, I still knew the characters and their relationships. Archie lends itself very well to interpretation because the creators have hammered out something iconic.

[zachbeacon]

I'll admit the horror books don't do much for me but the Waid reboot was great (as was most of the other stuff spinning out of it) and its a shame Covid killed it.

Though the Life With Archie divergent futures were the thing that grabbed my attention first. Before that they were a they were mostly just something I knew about from cultural osmosis ... and the Sabrina TV show with MJH.

(TGIF Salem would totally do this too)

[thezmage]

Our Boy Taber from Hack/Slash

[zachbeacon]

That one arc of Criminal.
That one arc of US Avengers.
Early Patsy Walker.*

*Everyone was doing romance comics at the time but that REALLY feels like a gender-swapped Archie.

Dang, now I really want Gisele Lagace to draw Hellcat. Between Exorsisters and Eerie Cuties, she really seems to be great at weird magic stuff.

[kamino_neko]

Eh. The Archie influence in Giz's work - especially when working with T or Dave - is pretty blatant. She's worn her Dan DeCarlo influences on her sleeve since early Penny & Aggie, and the Veronica/Archie/Betty dynamic has informed her work a lot (Ma3, particularly).

[tinygaylaura]

Reggie's reaction to being a girl is "Hahaha more pranks"


Not even a little surprised or perturbed

IDK if the writer meant to strongly imply Reggie Mantle is genderfluid but they achieved that

[zachbeacon]

Reggie is really going full Loki.

[tinygaylaura]

That's the best amount of Loki to be!

"Now when I say "Full Loki" I don't refer to the sexual act "The Full Loki" a move of which I am the inventor

The basic nature of the move is...

Ah never mind, I haven't got time to explain it"

[zachbeacon]

Pretty sure a "Loki sex act" is just masturbation.

Or horseplay.

[tinygaylaura]

Well I am into pony girls

[cygnia]

Meanwhile, Al Hartley wakes up in a cold sweat, terrified...

[john_drake1964]

He decides to write a comic about a colonial boy named Yankee Doodle espousing how the American colonists were going to win the Revolutionary War because God is on their side, and the British had no concept of "life, and liberty, or freedom," to calm down his nightmares.

[iamrman]

Wow, Archina is hot.

So genderswapped Reggie is just Veronica, and vice-versa.

[tinygaylaura]

I like to hope this will inspire at least a few gleefully depraved fanfics on AO3

[iamrman]

I read this in some digital collection or other, so this issue has probably been out for a while. More than enough time for somebody to write lewd fics.

[zachbeacon]

Since 2012, apparently. Apparently the cover scanned here is a variant and the real one looks pretty generic.

(Wow, I miss ComicBookDB and Comixolgy making it easy to find where things are collected...though Comixolgy was never great on the Archie front.)

[tinygaylaura]

I shall research this

[tinygaylaura]

Salem is already planning to do this again

[zachbeacon]

Love this (mostly)

Now that I think of it, Archie's whole "walking disaster who inexplicably attracts the opposite gender" vibe seems like a better fit for a female romantic comedy lead

(Pretty sure Ron and Billy are the love interests in every Hallmark movie)

The football scene is kind of disappointing both from a "ha ha girls can't be athletes" standpoint* and because everyone's gender-swapped identity is basically the same ... except "Mouse" shrank somehow.

*So I guess Betty wishes she was on the football team in the regular Riverdale?

[superfangirl1]

I am surprised that the CW tv show Riverdale haven’t use this storyline yet. Lol

[owlbrigade1]

Give it another season, I'm sure.

[cainofdreaming]

I'm sure Mr Inferno could arrange it sooner than that. For a price.