Jughead #15

Writer: Mark Waid and Ian Flynn

Artist: Derek Charm

Publisher: Archie Comics

This is a Jughead book, but it felt a great deal like an Archie story at its heart. Although it starts with shared food at Pop’s, and Jug’s bottomless pit of an iron stomach, it also involves carelessly discarded items. a scheme with unintended consequences, and girl trouble. I think a lot of this is down to the change in the creative team on the book. Derek Charm is still drawing it (long may he reign!), but Mark Waid and Ian Flynn have taken writing duties from Ryan North, and it shows. Jughead’s still a goofy, anarchic, food-fueled teenage slacker, but the book has lost North’s snarky running commentary on the story itself at the bottom of every page.

I really enjoyed seeing him and Archie and Toni Topaz hanging out at the Chok’lit Shoppe, trying to eat enough burgers to fill up a complete punchcard and thereby get free tickets to the Josie and the Pussycats show. It was adorable to watch Archie just kind of going along for the ride, but I really do wish that Waid would remember that Kevin Keller exists. As in, Kevin’s first friend in the original Archie books was Jughead, and they bonded over their mutual love of food and desire to escape Veronica for a short time.

Derek Charm’s art continues to be one of the very best parts of this (or, really, any other) Archie book out there these days. I like what Pete Woods is doing in the main Archie book, and the Josie book is great, but it wouldn’t break my heart to see Derek Charm as the originator of a new “house style” for the monthly LCS books that aren’t Dan Parent’s digests. I know it’s not likely to happen, but a girl can dream...

A good deal of why I’m going on and on about Charm’s work here has to do with Sabrina and the parts of the story involving the Pussycats concert itself. I may have laughed the hardest at Moose rocking out while holding Dilton on his shoulders. I love that as much as he digs Midge, Dilton is still his BFF. But the next-to-last page may be one of the best comic art depictions I’ve seen of a really great rock show - the music is literally swirling around the audience and helping to transport them in way that I’m quite sure Sabrina never intended or anticipated!

I’m really looking forward to this next issue, if for no other reason than to see if the creative team follow up on what I think could be some really funny/meta zombie humor regarding the hordes of girls now hot on poor Jughead’s heels.