Archie, Vol. 1: The New Riverdale by Mark Waid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Of course, like a dummy, I read through some other GR reviews before I wrote mine.
“some lgbt and poc characters might be nice…”
Sigh…
Okay, let’s talk about the book first.
It’s really, really fun. I think Mark Waid did a great job of updating the characters and Riverdale, and it’s a much-needed narrative update in addition to the updated look.
I read a bunch of newer Archie comics about a year ago, and while they were actually a lot better than I thought they would be, and pretty interesting because they were publishing issues where there were two different Archie-verses, one where Archie marries Betty and one where he marries Veronica, there was still a clear grasping onto a certain Happy Days vibe, for the most part. It was a book that wanted badly to grow up, but was a bit hampered by its own legacy.
I liked the characterizations in this book. Archie is pretty much the most beloved doofus ever. He’s a good-looking dude who doesn’t know he’s a good-looking dude, and he’s a nice, if bumbling, fella. Waid makes the Betty/Veronica thing work in such a way where you don’t just read and go, “Oh, fuck him. That’s a problem.”
Jughead is food-motivated, but also great. He’s smart, and he cares about his friends.
Betty is a tomboy who is doing that high school thing, being pressured by others to be something else.
Which is where the above critic goes before talking about POC and LGBT stuff.
Now, as I looked through the pages, I saw many, many POC’s. Fiona Staples doesn’t seem to be in the habit of drawing loads of white people exclusively, and Riverdale is like the most multicultural school I’ve ever seen. The prom king was black. Betty’s possible love interest appears to be Middle Eastern and is named Sayid.
However, these characters don’t spend a lot of time exploring their racial identities. That’s true. They’re just kind of like, I don’t know, people who don’t introduce themselves as “Greetings, I am Sayid, the Pakist-man from Pakistan!”
Any Pakistani people are free to use that one. I wish my country of origin had a sweet rhyme like that.
In addition, I saw who I assume to be Kevin Keller, and I can’t imagine that they’ve de-gay’ed him because that would make no sense in a modern reboot. However, his sexuality isn’t really explored in the book, in these first issues anyway.
So I guess that these things could be more explicit, and these characters could be more front and center, but I’ve also lately read a handful of books that turn into lectures about race, sexuality, and identity, and fuck that shit. Not “fuck that shit.” I just don’t need to have everything be so explicit all the time. I don’t like when you can feel, in the text, the transition from story to essay.
Okay, I also want to talk about Betty, the tomboy.
The tomboy is a character type who, more recently, seems to be regarded as an adolescent male fantasy figure. “I’m a girl who just likes to hang with the boys, play video games, drink bourbon, eat pizza, and so on.”
And to some extent, it is totally an adolescent male fantasy. I can’t tell you how many times I wished that my best friend also just so happened to be a hot babe. That we could have the same relationship, but also horrible, weird sex. Not because I want to have horrible, weird sex, but because that’s how it goes when you’re a teen. And in your 20’s. And sometimes, if I ate too many sandwiches or something, in my 30’s. You wanna have weird, terrible sex in your 30’s? Eat sandwiches to the point that standing makes you nauseous, then try to bone down.
The fantasy part is probably less about my bestie transforming, more about the idea that romance in a relationship doesn’t change things. That you can just be friends and then romance each other and this is the exact same thing.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think romance changes things for the worse all the time. But I think it changes things.
There are lots of things you do in a romantic relationship you don’t have to worry about in a friend relationship. Do I have to worry about how I’m going to split holiday time with my family and my best friend’s? No way. With my partner? Yeah. Do I have to attend weddings that my best friend was invited to as a guest? No way. Do I vacuum my best friend’s house? Never have I ever.
There are also a lot of things you do in a romantic relationship that are great and don’t come packaged with a friendship. I’m not going to list those because that’s mushy and boring, but you get the drift. Watch one of those ensemble movies where there’s a thousand famous people and it’s a holiday and there’s love stuff happening and usually someone has to run and catch someone at the airport at the last minute.
This is why I always laugh when someone says “I married my best friend.” I mean, it’s kind of a lame thing to say. But I also wonder what that person’s friendship boundaries are like. Maybe they DID vacuum their friends’ houses.
Also, when they say that at the wedding, I always want to look around for whoever THOUGHT he/she was the best friend. They must be so pissed. And why would you bother to say that? “I’m marrying this person, so we’re together for life, and I just wanted to say, fuck you, former best friend, we were never best friends anyway! Haha! Thanks for the Kitchenaid wedding gift, chump!”
Anyway, I kinda think the tomboy is a male fantasy, but I don’t think it’s more harmful than any fantasy, really.
For one, I don’t really see what the difference is here between a tomboy fantasy and, say, a fireman fantasy. I also think it’s probably healthier to seek out someone you like, engage with that tomboy fantasy, as opposed to engaging in the ol’ fix-em-up fantasy. That never seems to end well.
I think the key thing here is, when we fantasize about a type of person as opposed to a person, we remove their personhood. When we seek a type, like a tomboy, we are looking for that type more than we were looking for the individual who filled that type.
Which seems shallow, but eh, look at Tinder sometime. You could do a lot worse.
I also feel like there’s this negative thing where women who are tomboy-ish are accused of being so in order to please men. That they know this is a thing, and they play into it. Basically, they they’re tomboys against their own will.
Of course, that’s terrible. I don’t think anyone’s ever really gotten anywhere by trying to be someone to please an object of desire. Except rich people. People who got rich to impress potential lovers, they get somewhere. They get to rich!
Maybe to give some insight, the tomboy, girl next door fantasy isn’t about a woman submerging her self and the way she wants to be, swallowing all of her hopes and dreams to play Gears of War with me until 3 AM when she would really rather be doing something else. It’s about someone who wants the same things in the same amounts at the same time. Which is why this is a fantasy.
Are there some traditionally male qualities I would love to have in a partner? Absolutely.
Would I love it if my partner also liked sleeping in sub-zero temperatures year-round? Yes.
Would I love it if my partner and I liked decorating our apartments the same way? Totally.
Let me give you an example here.
I moved in with my partner, and we decided to throw a Halloween party. Which was exciting because I love Halloween, and she does too. When it came time to start decorating, however, it became clear that we love Halloween differently.
Her: Crafty, balloon and crepe paper spider hung on the cabinets
Me: “Can we fill the bath tub with blood?”
Her: Themed plates and napkins
Me: Skull beer bong where you pour beer in the top and drink from the spine
Her: Can we go to Party City?
Me: Can we just buy like $5,000 worth of these electronic, motion-sensing ghouls and zombies and shit from the Halloween store?
Cute Halloween/Horrific Halloween that puts us into massive debt.
Okay, okay. Here’s where the real truth comes in.
It’s a fantasy to have a partner who thinks like you most of the time. Who wants to do the same shit the same way. That seems like great fun. And it probably would be.
But then you get older, and what you figure out is that it doesn’t matter if you and your partner like the same shit. You like different music? Fine. You like different movies? Also fine. It really doesn’t matter.
When you get older, you start to have more of an identity that’s not based on a series of Yes/No switches, switches flipped depending on whether or not you like a certain sports squadron or type of pizza or whether you prefer pens or pencils.
Okay, that’s too far. Adults who write with pencils are maniacs.
The most important qualities in a partner become things like, “When something is wrong, she just tells me and I don’t have to ask.” Or, “She’s independent. She really likes being with me, but not in that uncomfortable, vampiric NEED way where I feel responsible for her.”
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something really appealing about the tomboy fantasy, still, even as an older dude. Imagine never being in an apparel store that’s an assault on the senses. My god.
But on the other hand, I sure as shit don’t want to watch football with my tomboy girlfriend either.
ALSO, I think there’s an interesting thing at play here, which is a social theory of mine. I think men have a MUCH narrower IDEA what makes an ideal partner. If you put 100 cards with pictures of women on them, and listed below the pictures were there top 5 favorite things to do, and if you asked 100 men to put those cards in order, rank them by attractiveness, I think the rankings would be remarkably similar. I expect that the women’s version of that experiment would provide more varied results.
This is a good thing, by the way. I think what I’m saying, basically, is that women seem to be less shallow. Or , maybe more accurately, seem to be shallow, but in different ways, where as mens’ shallowness is pretty similar from man to man.
And I know this is a lot of generalizing. Sue me.
I mean, the other day I was asking my partner what her top 5 qualities she looks for in a person are, and she said something like, “Kindness, sense of humor, good listener…” And then I interrupted her before she could finish because I wanted to tell MY list:
1. Butt (as viewed from behind)
2. Butt (as viewed from left side)
3. Butt (as viewed from right side)
4. Breast (larger of the two)
5. Face
I could be dating a morally-bankrupt demon lady as long as she passed the Booty360, one of America’s most difficult standardized tests.
Anyway, this is the longest theory ever regarding why I think Betty is depicted as a hot tomboy whereas it seems more difficult to create a male character that’s universally appealing. And why I wonder if the problem is really in the hot tomboy archetype or if it’s the fact that there isn’t a male equivalent of that archetype.
Because, really, what’s the universally attractive man? Or the one who’s attractive to 90%?
But hey, I probably shouldn’t talk about this anyway. I was always a Midge guy. She had sassy haircuts, plus her last name was Klump. I could make endless The Klumps/Nutty Professor Jokes. And THAT’S how a grownup MAN picks a partner. Who will tolerate him making the most stupid jokes about her last name.