Before anyone becomes horribly disturbed, this is not a yaoi title. I just gave in to a fit of sentimental whatsit. I’ve been doing that, lately. I also bought People magazine’s tribute to Farrah Fawcett. I loved “Charlie’s Angels” when I was little. I collected pictures of Farrah, and I recognized every one of the ’70s pictures in the magazine. Reading this magazine was a very emotional experience. Cathartic. I’m feeling a little verklempt, just thinking about it.
So, when I was at the comics rack at Borders the other day, desperately pawing through it to try and find something suitable for my young son, I paused dramatically at the Archie titles. Because I loved Archie comics when I was little, too. Even more than Farrah. So, overwhelmed with nostalgia, I picked up Archie’s Double Dip, evidently a Very Special Issue (the 200th, according to the excitable little yellow burst on the cover). I was curious about this, and alarmed. Because apparently, Archie Comics Online and Its Affiliated Companies have decided Archie needs a Dynamic New Look. The classic Dan Decarlo look, degraded as it has become, is apparently just too distinctive. Archie is being mainstreamed.
Woe!
It’s just the cover and the first story. It isn’t a no-going-back kind of thing; I imagine they’ll dump it as a failed experiment if people hate it. Or they’ll usher everything into the Borg collective, if people love it. Hard as that is to contemplate. Because, good grief, look at this. Here’s the second page.
The artist is Norm Breyfogle, and I’m thinking he should have maybe turned down this gig. I’m not intimately familiar with his work, but he’s done a lot of Batman, and let us just say he seems much more comfortable with the pointy ears and the swishy capes. That’s Betty’s dad in the middle panel, apparently having an epileptic seizure. It’s as if drawing the drama of dad stealing some cake is so ordinary we’re maybe overcompensating a little. I love this ad, too.
Betty: “Is this really goodbye forever?”
Archie: “Holy shit, is that a centipede on the ceiling? It’s enormous!”
And, here.
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What the hell happened to Archie’s chin? And Betty looks like a sex doll with the head put on askew. Is this what the kids are into, these days?
I realize it’s a desperate attempt to sell more comics, by any means necessary, and not a dark plot to indoctrinate girls into the ugly that is mainstream comics art. At least, I assume that’s the case. I guess if it is a dark plot, that’s actually kind of cool, although I sort of hope it doesn’t work.
Holy shit, those pages are awful.
All other problems aside, they're in the uncanny valley. It's like walking into your living room and finding that everyone has turned into a lifesize claymation figure.
I think part of the problem is that photoshop dodge-and-burn style shading. Probably in black-and-white (or with flat color) this is a lot less offensive to the eyeballs.
The "new look" Archie stories were started in 2007. Many comics fans reacted in shock, but Archie claims that they sold well to the target audience: children and teens.
This style, somewhere between the "regular" style and manga, is reserved for specific four-part stories, which are then collected into trade paperbacks. (Search BN.com for "Archie New Look")
The bulk of Archie comics published are in the regular style, and the digests contain numerous reprints of classic comics to placate us old fuddy-duddies.
Frankly, I think there will more hue and cry over the upcoming "marriage" in Archie Comics. (People don't realize the marriage of Archie and Veronica will be followed by the marriage of Archie and Betty.) Which is good, as it gets people talking and buying and reading comics.
What is wrong with the mom's crotch? There's some strange style thing going on there.
The colors are scary and the inks are bad and if this is manga-style, then so is mac and cheese. Scary.
Hi, Vom Marlowe! There are issues with Betty's mom's crotch, yes. One of them is that she appears to be wearing a polo shirt with shiny 80s Olivia Newton John lycra pants. Everyone's crotch suffers in those.
I was surprised to learn it was sort of manga-style. I had not picked that up as a visual cue. Eep.
Thanks for the information, Torsten. I hadn't looked at an Archie comic in a very long time, so I guess it's just as well they aren't centering their marketing efforts on me.
Archie will be a polygamist?!!?! Curiouser and curiouser!
You're obviously right, Kris, that the color is wretched. I honestly didn't get far enough in my visual critique to really notice it at first, but I've taken another look and yes, the shading does bring true depth and breadth to the ugliness.
Hi, Tom. It's really striking, isn't it? In a bad way, of course.
And thinking about walking into my living room and finding that everyone has turned into a lifesize claymation figure just made me think of Pee Wee's Playhouse. I liked Pee Wee's Playhouse, though.
I picked the wrong comparison then. Though claymation has always freaked me out, for some reason.
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Tom Crippen says:
… It’s like walking into your living room and finding that everyone has turned into a lifesize claymation figure.
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(!!!!) That’s happened to you, too?