Farewell, adieu, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye….
Creative Staff:
Story: Ryan North
Art and Colors: Derek Charm
Letters: Jack Morelli
What They Say:
When Juggie’s ruined everyone’s lives (BUT BY ACCIDENT, OBVIOUSLY) and also drawn the entire internet’s attention to Riverdale, can he fix it? And how can a man who only wants to eat burgers in peace have caused such problems? All these questions and more are answered in this issue!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Hey-ho, cats and kittens. It’s been a while, I know, but my life gradually became a comedy of errors the last few months, and writing just wasn’t happening. I won’t bore you with all the details, but there were sinus infections, broken legs, and surgery involved. Possibly a car chase, too, but only because test audiences responded very well to the idea of car chases.
Anyway, I’m back and I’m ready and rarin’ to return to what I love the most—writing. Unfortunately, while I’m returning, Jughead appears to be leaving.
Before getting into that, let’s recap: Jughead and the gang played a game that was similar but legally distinct from Mario Kart. Reggie ended up owning them and became King for the entire month. Surprisingly, Reggie used his powers for good and not evil and created a band with his friends. It should come as a shock to no one that he named it “The Reggies.” Thanks to Veronica’s “hunk budget” (don’t ask) the group got together, played a song, and recorded it. They then used Dilton’s video toaster to put it all together so they could post it on YouTube, and that’s where the problems began. Jughead played around with the different filters on the toaster and created version of the video where all the heads were swapped with his and the band logo changed to his name. He accidentally posted it instead of deleting it, and it became an overnight sensation, as often happens.
The Riverdale gang didn’t take too kindly to this mistake and Jughead spent a week alone in the dark in his room, depressed and cut off from social media. Imagine his surprise when Veronica “Gosh-Darned” Lodge barges into his room with a novelty check for a thousand dollars. In typical Veronica fashion, she went to her father for help, and in typical Hyram Lodge fashion, he found a way to monetize it. The Lodges capitalized on the video and made Jughead t-shirts, Jughead bobble heads, Jughead personal deodorant, Jughead anti-tank missiles, the whole magilla. Reggie also benefitted and became the darling of the talk show circuit.
So everything wrapped up in a nice neat bow, right? Well, not so much. Betty failed to share in the joy the rest took in their newfound fame and relative fortune. The “Jugheads” video became associated with her name and drove down the search listing of her personal website to page two (or maybe three or higher). This upset her for a couple of reasons: for one, she doesn’t want to be associated with something so silly, but more importantly she uses her webpage as a platform for the various political, social, and environmental causes she supports, and the “Jugheads” drowns out the message she wants to convey. Now Jughead must find a way to beat the Internet at its own game.
Jughead has always stood apart from the core Archie title in that the humor tends to skew more towards exaggeration. Archie provides a more grounded approach (with shades of absurdity), and it’s this difference that makes Jughead the better fit for Ryan North and Derek Charm. Humor, of course, is notoriously difficult to quantify and qualify, and explaining a joke typically kills it, so it’s difficult to say exactly why North and Charm fit so well here, but I’m going to give it a shot.
Without delving too deep, the one quality that really marks this series since those two took over is a general sweetness. The humor is never mean-spirited. It’s more absurd and meta, and that fits the character well given that Jughead tends to stand apart from others, observing and commenting, a purported loner with one of the best group of friends one could ask for. His temperament and position lend themselves well to metafictive jokes and observations.
Returning to the main point, the humor is also sweet. The comedy comes from misunderstandings and general life—although ramped up a couple of notches, making them cartoony—and the ways in which the characters try to correct their mistakes. No one is truly mean or selfish, not even Reggie, and the great thing about all of it is how that doesn’t affect the comedy. Too often comedy relies on anger and meanness or mere scatology, and Jughead stands as nice reminder that there are other ways, other paths one can take.
Now some might read that and mistake the humor and the stories as being childish, but that’s not the case. This comic is for all-ages, literally. I’m a thirty-seven year old man, and I can read this and enjoy it just as well as a ten-year-old. We might laugh at different things, or laugh for different reasons, but the enjoyment is there for both of us.
North’s stories and humor are deceptively sophisticated. It’s kind of like a duck in that what we see on the surface seems serene, but under the water those little flippers are churnin’ nonstop. The same can be said for Derek Charm’s art and colors. Charm comes from the Matt Groening school of thought in that he uses as few lines as possible for the characters. His character models are neat and uncluttered, which is not the same as being simple. The almost Spartan approach to the line work gives him significant control over the characters to the point where an extra line, or the tilt of a line can convey a solid amount of information.
Charm also does fantastic work with body language and facial expressions. The expressions he gives Jughead alone are worth the price of admission, but he also does some interesting tweaks with the gutters. The comic begins with the standard white gutters, but when Jughead becomes depressed, Charm changes them to black. It’s one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, but it’s very effective regardless of whether you realize it or not. It helps highlight Jughead’s emotional state and it pulls the reader in as well, giving us a little taste of the crowned one’s ennui.
Little details like that in both the art and writing are what make Jughead such a fun comic to read. As big a fan I am of Chip Zdarsky, I must say that the comic became much better once North took over as writer. Part of it is subjective in that North’s humor meshes better with my own tastes, but the comic also seems to have found a stronger footing. Too often Zdarsky’s issues repeated the same formula until it reached a point where formula is all I saw. North didn’t do that, and I’m going to miss him and Charm on this book. Odds are a new creative team will handle the series when it returns, and if that’s the case, they’re going to have some large shoes to fill.
In Summary:
Jughead 14 was another stellar issue from Ryan North and Derek Charm. It was full of humor and wit and more than a little heart. While I’m sad that the series is going on hiatus, I am glad that we’ve had seven solid issues from this team. Hopefully, they’ll work together again, either on another Jughead project or something else. In the meantime, Dr. Josh gives this an….
Oh, and P.S. I still want a print of that cover where Sabrina hovers outside Jughead’s window hint, hint.
Grade: A
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Archie Comics
Release Date: April 5th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
