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billcoffin's review
5.0
This is a collective review for Life With Archie: The Married Life, which is collected in six volumes.
I am not an Archie fan. Like most comics readers, I’m familiar with Archie - a brand that has been around for so long that even fi you aren’t a fan, even if you don’t buy the books, somehow, somewhere, you have read enough Archie to be familiar with the basic gist of it all:
Archie Andrews is an all-American teenager from the heartland city of Riverdale, where he runs a gauntlet of harmless misadventures that involve juggling his romances between rivals Veronica Lodge and Betty Cooper (each whom own an equal share of Archie’s attentions), and goofing with his friends, rivals and colleagues - Jughead, Reggie, Moose, Ethel, Midge, Chuck, Nancy, Cheryl, Kevin, Sabrina the Witch, Josie the Pussycats, and more. Along the way, he tangles with the adults in his life - mainly Veronica’s father, Hiram Lodge; Principal Weatherbee and Miss Grundy, who run Riverdale High; and occasionally Pop, who runs the Chocklit Shoppe, the local diner where everyone hangs out.
For the most part, the stories are nothing too dramatic; dealing with asking each other out on dates, pranking each other, riffs on typical high school rites of passage, etc. And for decades, this was Archie; a comic that aside from superficial updates that reflected the times (such as fashion, technology and slang), the comic remained trapped in amber. There was no character progression or meta plot, just a Groundhog’s Day of eternally repeating, low-stakes, harmless hi-jinks that was meant to be mild, fun, and safe. There’s a reason why so many grandparents buy Archie for their grandkids, even if they disapprove of comics.
In this way, Archie has been an extremely conservative comic. Not politically - it goes out of its way to steer clear of divisive issues, but when it does address them, it reflects the rising tide of the audience it serves, and even then it tries to aim for a middle road that offends no one. This is part of the whole trapped-in-amber thing. Archie and his pals, and Riverdale by extension, are meant to be a safe place where “at least somethings never change,” and where such a place is seen as something wholesome and embracing, rather than stifling and restrictive.
But that all did change in 2009, when a new generation rose to run Archie Comics, and after a brutal office battle (chronicled by an excellent 2012 article in the New York Times) resulted in the brand taking bold new changes with its property. New characters would be introduced (like Kevin Keller) who would reflect a more liberal society. The brand would also take the approach that after 75 years or so of pretty much running the same Archie stories forever, it would declare Archie and Riverdale to be a state of mind, and began running stories that were the Archie equivalent of DC’s Elseworlds - non-canonical, but fun takes on established canon. (Though it is worth noting that perhaps the most infamous of these - and maybe the one that established the idea of taking Archie in weird new directions - was 1994’s Archie Meets The Punisher.)
But supreme among these were a novel, and canonical, decision to finally have Archie propose to one of his girlfriends. As he did, there was a notion of him walking down Memory Lane and seeing how his life might play out if he settled down with Veronica or Betty. What resulted was an extended What If…? story in Life With Archie that became The Married Life, later collected in six massive volumes. The end of it all leads us to a plot point that was so surprising to readers that it made global headlines. The sixth volume tells you up front what it is, but I’ll spare you any spoilers so you can see them for yourself.
But in The Married Life, we get two parallel stories, one where Archie, married to Veronica, pursues a corporate life and one where Archie, married to Betty, returns to Riverdale High as a music teacher. Along the way, we get a lot of the same sort of low-stakes storytelling that makes Archie Archie—entire plot lines seem to magically appear out of thin air and are resolved fairly harmlessly not long after, with good results all around. But there are plot lines that have sticking power. We lose one character to terminal illness, and we see another fight bravely against cancer. We a character shot in cold blood during a robbery. We see one struggle with anger issues. We see couples wed, and have kids. We see them growing up and grown up, in a story that for the first time really shows us what life might be like in Riverdale if there really were consequences to one’s actions. (The Archie Wedding: Ten Years Later also tried this, with a look at life 10 years after Archie’s wedding, but it doesn’t come close to the storytelling we get in The Married Life, nor does it share any of The Married Life’s events.)
The Married Life is almost 2,000 pages, all told, and it is as deep a dive into Archie as one could hope for, slowly pulling you in and involving you in a ton of earned moments that slowly chisel away at your hardened heart, slowly eroding your cynicism so that by the final volume, you’re caring about these characters. You want to see how this all turns out. Notably, the parallel storylines that have run side by side for so long - and remain distinct even though the risk is so high for them to blur into each other - do converge at the end in a way that feels natural and right, offering a kind of resolution to both sides of this twin tale. Whether Archie married Veronica or Betty, the result is ultimately the same. And when this story comes to an end, you appreciate why farewells can be so hard.
There are a lot of folks out there who will never touch an Archie comic because they’re too simple, too square, too hokey. But you know, The Married Life is as earnest an attempt for a comic to reinvent itself not in some cheap ploy to gin up extra sales, but out of an honest effort to radically turn the clock forward on one of the oldest running comics out there so that readers new and old can read something new and relate to it. That’s pretty great. Not a lot of comic publishers have the will to do that, or the integrity to let it be driven by story. And even if The Married Life isn’t for you, it’s something every comic reader should take in, because it represents something that all comics should have, but so often lack: heart.
There are a ton of other Archie Comics to read after these. There is a modern reboot from which the TV show Riverdale was adapted. There are the non-canon riffs, like The Hunger (Jughead is a werewolf) and not one, but two go-rounds of Archie vs. The Predator. If Archie can be anywhere and in anything, well, then I’m here for it. The Married Life certainly disavowed me of the notion that I’m never going to enjoy Archie. And boy, am I glad that it did.
I am not an Archie fan. Like most comics readers, I’m familiar with Archie - a brand that has been around for so long that even fi you aren’t a fan, even if you don’t buy the books, somehow, somewhere, you have read enough Archie to be familiar with the basic gist of it all:
Archie Andrews is an all-American teenager from the heartland city of Riverdale, where he runs a gauntlet of harmless misadventures that involve juggling his romances between rivals Veronica Lodge and Betty Cooper (each whom own an equal share of Archie’s attentions), and goofing with his friends, rivals and colleagues - Jughead, Reggie, Moose, Ethel, Midge, Chuck, Nancy, Cheryl, Kevin, Sabrina the Witch, Josie the Pussycats, and more. Along the way, he tangles with the adults in his life - mainly Veronica’s father, Hiram Lodge; Principal Weatherbee and Miss Grundy, who run Riverdale High; and occasionally Pop, who runs the Chocklit Shoppe, the local diner where everyone hangs out.
For the most part, the stories are nothing too dramatic; dealing with asking each other out on dates, pranking each other, riffs on typical high school rites of passage, etc. And for decades, this was Archie; a comic that aside from superficial updates that reflected the times (such as fashion, technology and slang), the comic remained trapped in amber. There was no character progression or meta plot, just a Groundhog’s Day of eternally repeating, low-stakes, harmless hi-jinks that was meant to be mild, fun, and safe. There’s a reason why so many grandparents buy Archie for their grandkids, even if they disapprove of comics.
In this way, Archie has been an extremely conservative comic. Not politically - it goes out of its way to steer clear of divisive issues, but when it does address them, it reflects the rising tide of the audience it serves, and even then it tries to aim for a middle road that offends no one. This is part of the whole trapped-in-amber thing. Archie and his pals, and Riverdale by extension, are meant to be a safe place where “at least somethings never change,” and where such a place is seen as something wholesome and embracing, rather than stifling and restrictive.
But that all did change in 2009, when a new generation rose to run Archie Comics, and after a brutal office battle (chronicled by an excellent 2012 article in the New York Times) resulted in the brand taking bold new changes with its property. New characters would be introduced (like Kevin Keller) who would reflect a more liberal society. The brand would also take the approach that after 75 years or so of pretty much running the same Archie stories forever, it would declare Archie and Riverdale to be a state of mind, and began running stories that were the Archie equivalent of DC’s Elseworlds - non-canonical, but fun takes on established canon. (Though it is worth noting that perhaps the most infamous of these - and maybe the one that established the idea of taking Archie in weird new directions - was 1994’s Archie Meets The Punisher.)
But supreme among these were a novel, and canonical, decision to finally have Archie propose to one of his girlfriends. As he did, there was a notion of him walking down Memory Lane and seeing how his life might play out if he settled down with Veronica or Betty. What resulted was an extended What If…? story in Life With Archie that became The Married Life, later collected in six massive volumes. The end of it all leads us to a plot point that was so surprising to readers that it made global headlines. The sixth volume tells you up front what it is, but I’ll spare you any spoilers so you can see them for yourself.
But in The Married Life, we get two parallel stories, one where Archie, married to Veronica, pursues a corporate life and one where Archie, married to Betty, returns to Riverdale High as a music teacher. Along the way, we get a lot of the same sort of low-stakes storytelling that makes Archie Archie—entire plot lines seem to magically appear out of thin air and are resolved fairly harmlessly not long after, with good results all around. But there are plot lines that have sticking power. We lose one character to terminal illness, and we see another fight bravely against cancer. We a character shot in cold blood during a robbery. We see one struggle with anger issues. We see couples wed, and have kids. We see them growing up and grown up, in a story that for the first time really shows us what life might be like in Riverdale if there really were consequences to one’s actions. (The Archie Wedding: Ten Years Later also tried this, with a look at life 10 years after Archie’s wedding, but it doesn’t come close to the storytelling we get in The Married Life, nor does it share any of The Married Life’s events.)
The Married Life is almost 2,000 pages, all told, and it is as deep a dive into Archie as one could hope for, slowly pulling you in and involving you in a ton of earned moments that slowly chisel away at your hardened heart, slowly eroding your cynicism so that by the final volume, you’re caring about these characters. You want to see how this all turns out. Notably, the parallel storylines that have run side by side for so long - and remain distinct even though the risk is so high for them to blur into each other - do converge at the end in a way that feels natural and right, offering a kind of resolution to both sides of this twin tale. Whether Archie married Veronica or Betty, the result is ultimately the same. And when this story comes to an end, you appreciate why farewells can be so hard.
There are a lot of folks out there who will never touch an Archie comic because they’re too simple, too square, too hokey. But you know, The Married Life is as earnest an attempt for a comic to reinvent itself not in some cheap ploy to gin up extra sales, but out of an honest effort to radically turn the clock forward on one of the oldest running comics out there so that readers new and old can read something new and relate to it. That’s pretty great. Not a lot of comic publishers have the will to do that, or the integrity to let it be driven by story. And even if The Married Life isn’t for you, it’s something every comic reader should take in, because it represents something that all comics should have, but so often lack: heart.
There are a ton of other Archie Comics to read after these. There is a modern reboot from which the TV show Riverdale was adapted. There are the non-canon riffs, like The Hunger (Jughead is a werewolf) and not one, but two go-rounds of Archie vs. The Predator. If Archie can be anywhere and in anything, well, then I’m here for it. The Married Life certainly disavowed me of the notion that I’m never going to enjoy Archie. And boy, am I glad that it did.
whatrosiereads's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
saidtheraina's review
3.0
Just like the previous two volumes, getting more Lost-ie, and honestly, the gay wedding seemed pretty tacked on and tokenish. I mean, I appreciate the thought, but it didn't play into the plot at all, except as a setting for other stuff. I also don't appreciate that all of the gay and lesbian (and yes, those are the only other gender and sexuality spectrum choices portrayed) characters are new - and none of the heternormative sexuality of the core characters are questioned.
I also get a little annoyed at all of the "bests" flouted all over the cover. Archie has some things going for it - a lot of nostalgia for me personally, for one - but it's definitely not the BEST thing in comics. Archie himself is a vacuum of a character with no personality I can see (and as I said in my review of the other two volumes, I have read a LOT of books about him). And the drawing is not always consistent. I put this down for a night, and when I got back to it, I didn't recognize Reggie - I had to remember context to figure out that's who I was looking at.
So yeah, eh, but not enough to lose a star.
I also get a little annoyed at all of the "bests" flouted all over the cover. Archie has some things going for it - a lot of nostalgia for me personally, for one - but it's definitely not the BEST thing in comics. Archie himself is a vacuum of a character with no personality I can see (and as I said in my review of the other two volumes, I have read a LOT of books about him). And the drawing is not always consistent. I put this down for a night, and when I got back to it, I didn't recognize Reggie - I had to remember context to figure out that's who I was looking at.
So yeah, eh, but not enough to lose a star.
tschmitty's review
2.0
More of the same with added confusion of the two Archies meeting one another in Riverdale's answer to the Twilight Zone.