I have never really been an "Archie" fan. I have the odd issue of "Pep" that I have picked up in Golden Age collections, and like everyone else I read the cheap digests when I was a kid, but I "grew out" of Archie and his Riverdale gang long, long ago.
Or so I thought. It turns out I have a lot more nostalgia for the character than I had imagined. And that "Archie Marries..." is actually a great comic.
When the "Archie Marries..." story first hit the press, I was both intrigued and annoyed. I have seen this kind of last gasp publicity stunt too many times (Anyone remember "Popeye marries Olive Oyl?") Whenever a major character gets killed off, or two long-time sweethearts get married, it is a clear signal that the writer is out of ideas and the franchise has run its course.
But! "Archie Marries..." was written by Michael Uslan (writer and the executive producer of the recent Batman films) and based off of Robert Frost's classic
The Road Not Taken poem. That had potential. That meant that instead of a publicity stunt, "Archie Marries..." was created for that most potent of reasons. Someone had a story to tell.
The story begins immediately after high school graduation at Riverdale High. Archie is feeling pensive, and takes a walk to say goodbye to his beloved town. He comes on the street Memory Lane, and realizes that while he has walked down Memory Lane many times, he has never walked up it. This path takes him to a yellow wood, where two roads diverged. Keeping one path for another day, he takes "the road less traveled" and winds up married to...Veronica Lodge.
After a whirlwind marriage and honeymoon, Archie finds himself swept up into a world of wealth and its responsibilities. Mr. Lodge gets his new son-in-law a job, and suddenly Archie must manage sales and losses, be responsible for workers and jobs, and yet still finds time to create a center of love and family with his wife. Then one snowy day, Archie returns to that yellow wood and tries the other, more comfortable path. This leads him to a married life with Betty Cooper, a simpler life fraught with different worries, with mortgages and bills piling up, yet with more freedom to be with his old friends and pursue his own interests.
I loved how Michael Uslan gave us happy endings for both Veronica and Betty. It would have been too easy to say that "wealth and glamour leads to unhappiness, while true love is found at home" or some other such easily-digested parable. But he didn't. Both Life with Veronica and Life with Betty have their ups and downs, their unique pleasures and pains. Life, says Uslan, is less about the choice itself and more about what we do with the choices we have made. There is amazing depth here, and much I could relate to.
The art is, of course, pure Archie. Artist Stan Goldberg has done little but draw Archie for the past four decades, and he is very, very good at it. There is no attempt to modernize or update the house-style, and while Uslan draws you in with his complex story Goldberg soothes you with pure nostalgia.
This hardcover collection by Abrams ComicArts is the way to go for the "Archie Marries..." series. Not only does it collect the whole series on nice paper with bright colors, but there is an interesting series of interviews with Michael Uslan, Victor Gorelick (Archie CEO), Stan Goldberg, Jack Morelli (Letterer) and Bob Smith (Inker). I love how Uslan talks about the decision to have Archie marry Veronica first. If Archie had chosen Betty, everyone would just say "Awww...isn't that sweet? He chose the faithful poor girl over the snotty rich girl" and then move on without really caring. But by having him choose Veronica first, it shocked people into realizing there might be a story there. It worked for me!
This hardcover collection also includes a reproduction comic with some classic Archie stories from "Archie," "Pep Comics," and "Betty and Veronica." That was a nice little reminder for folks like me who hadn't cracked open an issue of "Archie" for decades.
