Review: Archie Vol. 4

Quick Summary

Pros: The series is still funny and has a number of humorous moments. Romance returns in this volume. The aftermath of the incident is great and is probably the best part of the book.

Cons: The big incident in this volume doesn’t receive as much set up as an incident this massive should have.

Overall: While not the best volume on its own, this is a comic that is sure to be memorable in how it shakes up the status quo and provides a prelude to future Archie Comics. Fun frivolity and silly shenanigans are still present but are more secondary this time around. Instead the incident is the main event, creating a series of aftershocks that develop into the best portion of the book. This is a volume for those invested in the series already and who want to see how the next chapter will begin.

Story

Though not the strongest installation in the Archie series, Archie Vol. 4 by Mark Waid has a number of classically entertaining stories and contains the set up for a future story arc that has a lot of promise. The first half of the book is classic Archie adventures, with the redheaded youth comically stumbling through relationships, friendships, and life in general. The second half kicks things up a notch as it contains a high stakes moment of action with serious repercussions. The problem is that the event itself comes from nowhere, though this negative is mollified slightly by how well the aftermath is handled. Overall, while mostly just alright on its own, there is a lot of potential bubbling up in this volume and I left it more excited to read Archie than ever before.

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With Veronica’s return at the end of Archie Vol. 3 (Review), the series’ main couple is back together and ready to deal with their relationship once more. The beginning of this volume sees them hit a rough patch in getting their romance back to where it once was but has it recover thanks to some unexpected help from Jughead. It has all the cute jokes and high school drama that makes this series charming and is a nice return to form after Veronica’s absence in the last volume.

The main arc in this story revolves around a drag race between Archie and Reggie. Reggie blackmails Archie into racing him and the two go head to head on Serpent Road. Unfortunately, right as the race begins, Betty is heading toward them on the same stretch of road. The result is a crash that sends Betty to the hospital in a near death state.

This is a huge moment and one that is guaranteed to have a huge impact on this series as a whole, so it is surprising how little set up it is given. The entire situation is created and executed in only one comic issue. Archie’s new car and Reggie’s initial blackmail come out of nowhere and help make the entire situation feel inorganic. Though the stakes are high, it doesn’t feel earned and thus the impact is somewhat undercut. If more than one issue was spent dedicated to this situation, it could have carried far more weight than it did.

While the accident itself wasn’t handled as well as it could have been, the aftermath is beautiful. It starts out by flashing through various scenes in the life of Riverdale residents right before hearing the news. These short stories allow some minor characters to have a moment in the spotlight and some main characters to have a quick adventure. Among these stories, the Veronica one takes the cake as it shows that Veronica has the capacity to be highly intelligent and depicts her father in a role outside of being a traditional villain. These short stories also help the reader understand how much the community as a whole cared about Betty, as the whole town instantly drops whatever they are doing in order to run to the hospital and check on her; Jughead even leaves a partially eaten burger in doing so.

The aftermath continues by flashing back to some of Betty’s past interactions with various characters. Here we see her friendship and morals at their pinnacle and continue to see how she touches the lives of everyone around her. The book ends with Betty waking up but discovering she cannot feel her legs. Mark Waid promised lasting consequences from the events in this arc but I would imagine few expected this. Although tragic, it is an incredibly interesting shakeup of the status quo and something that has the potential to lead to an even better story in the next volume.

(spoilers end here)

Art

Pete Woods takes over the artwork in this volume and creates a few slight changes when doing so. The changes are not necessarily in the quality of the work, as the collection as a whole does not look radically different from how it did in Archie Vol. 3 (Review).  Instead, the success of the Riverdale television show seems to be having an effect on how things look. Certain characters, like Cheryl and Jughead, have minor tweaks in their appearance in order to more closely resemble their Riverdale counterparts. With the existence of a Riverdale comic, making the Archie series more like the television show seems superfluous and somewhat annoying. These changes are not a large factor in the enjoyment of this book but will hopefully not continue in the next volume.

Continuity

Archie Vol. 4 is the fourth of a newly relaunched Archie Comics world. This means that reading the first three volumes of this series will tell you everything you need to know about this comic. Reading earlier Archie Comics will give you a little better perspective on the characters and how they interact but will not give you any additional information about their history in this new continuity.

The stories started in this volume continue on in Archie Vol. 5.