ARCHIE DIES A HEROIC DEATH
The death of Archie was accomplished last summer in the three concluding issues of the mini-series Life with Archie, Nos.35-37. As repeatedly predicted and strenuously advertised, Archie dies a hero’s death in No.36: he throws himself in front of Senator Kevin Keller, the target of a gun nut who objects to Keller’s gun control stance. Taking the bullet meant for Kevin, Archie dies in minutes, lying on the ground in front of all his Riverdale friends, including Veronica and Betty, his erstwhile wives in the alternative universe created in the Life with Archie series.
The death lives up to the hype that heralded it, no question; but the manner of its accomplishment is a minor miracle of comic book writing by Paul Kupperberg ably assisted by cartoonists Pat and Tim Kennedy and Fernando Ruiz with bold inks by Jim Amash, Bob Smith and Gary Martin.
The three crucial issues of the series must accomplish three things: 1) the crises in Archie’s separate marriages to Veronica and Betty must be resolved in order to clear the narrative deck for his sacrificial death; 2) the two marital storylines must be melded into the one in which Archie is killed; and 3) Archie’s life and death must be given some meaning. All three are achieved in Kupperberg’s artful manipulation of narrative and medium.
Both marital storylines are combined into one narrative through the blindingly simple device of ignoring that they ever existed as separate stories. A steady strand of purposeful ambiguity threads its way through the issue. It begins with Archie jogging and reflecting on his life, thinking, “There I was, exactly where I needed to be with exactly who I always knew I wanted at my side.” The faces of Veronica and Betty hover over him as he thinks this, but he never tells us who, exactly, it is that he always knew he wanted at his side.
Jogging down Memory Lane, Archie reflects on his family: he has a son and daughter, and when he gets home, we meet them both, but when his wife shows up, we see her from the neck down — her face, her identity, out of our ken. And we don’t see her that evening at a fund-raiser Kevin Keller is sponsoring to get money to help support the survivors of a recent shooting at Southport Mall.
The shooter is still on the loose, so Senator Keller is accompanied by a couple FBI types, but as the issue’s tragic moment approaches, the agent closest to the shooter is distracted by a guy in a hoodie and overlooks the real threat. (An indicting aside to those days in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death when it was believed in some quarters that everyone in a hoodie was suspect.) The confusion of the moment is well-staged by Kupperberg and pencillers Pat and Tim Kennedy, who offer a jumble of panels, pictures mostly without words shifting focus rapidly from one aspect of the developing scene to another.
Apart from the personal tragedies represented in the story of Archie’s death, the episode is a ringing condemnation of gun violence, a surprisingly emphatic point of view for Archie Comics, which has historically avoided political issues and resolutely trod the middle road.
The next and final issue of the series, No.37, takes place, we are told, a year after Archie’s death. The publisher’s political agenda is on full view — gun control, gay and women’s rights, education, and minimum wage. But most of the issue is devoted to vignettes of Archie’s childhood and youth in which it is demonstrated that the eponymous hero — a classic all-American good guy — is “a product of a caring community.”
And then Riverdale High School is renamed Archie Andrews High School.
Archie has become an icon.
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