Lately Archie Comics has been shaking up its straight-laced reputation with issues featuring a same-sex marriage, Archie marrying Betty and Veronica, and even an appearance by hellbent rockers KISS.
Today Archie CEO Jon Goldwater announced that the gang from Riverdale will be teaming up with another teenage crew, those warbling kids from Glee.
“Archie Meets Glee,” set to debut in Archie Comics in late 2012 or early 2013, will be drawn by Dan Parent, who introduced gay character Kevin Keller two years ago. Writing the story is openly gay screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Big Love, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark).
Aguirre-Sacasa, now a staff writer for Glee, has long been a fan of Archie and the gang: Years ago, in DC, we caught a production of his play Archie Loves Nathan, a fictional love story between Riverdale’s teen wonder and child killer Nathan Leopold. “I’ve been wanting to write something for Archie Comics forever and my favorite Archie stories have always been those weird crossovers like ‘Archie meets the Punisher’ and ‘Archie meets KISS,'” he said. “I thought, ‘Archie Meets Glee’ would be a great crossover since they’re both set in high schools, they’re both optimistic, they both involve singing.”
The plot is being kept under wraps of the four-issue story arc in “Archie Comics” is a closely-held secret, but it does involve parallel dimensions, dancing and some serious singing, too.
We’re dying to know if Kevin Keller and Kurt Hummel hit it off. Something tells us they’d instantly hate each other.
DouggSeven
Archie is still that popular to have all these news stories as of late? I remember being bored by them as a kid. Richie Rich comics were the bomb though.
Neo
@DouggSeven: But his run in Simpsons was met with yawns, angry yawns.
Ruddigore
Does Archie do an a cappella performance of “Sugar, Sugar”? Or does he do a cover of the latest Katy Perry song sounding suspiciously like Ron Dante?
skeloric
Archie, from my experience, is for parents who hate ‘comic books’ to feel as if its OK to substitute some Archie comics for REAL comics — as in Comics from DC or Marvel.
Anyone remember those awful horrid ‘Spire Comics’?
Spire Comics were all Biblical and were about as fun as getting being set on fire and then getting urinated on as if such would actually put out the flames.
If you you wanted ‘comic books’ in the 70s and your parents brought home Archie and Spire, you knew they truly HATED and loathed you.
Receiving such was simply about as a clear an evidence as possibly existed that the person hated you.
So having Archie and the gang going very Progressive and Liberal is about as dang funny as it gets.
Parents out there probably STILL haven’t a clue who Kevin Keller might be or that he ISN’T ‘traditional’ in a way they’d probably approve.
The real kicker, Archie’s Riverdale is still almost totally White.
I think there was one ‘token’ non-White character somewhere in there.
So we got: tons of very acceptable white kids whose overall sensibilities and characterization is seemingly still set somewhere in the 1940s from when Archie was first created, then we got one token non-White guy and and one token non-Hetero guy.
I’m underwhelmed.
I’d rather read REAL comic books.