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| Oct 2017 Part 1 of 6 Writers: Paul Dini and Marc Andreyko Artist: Laura Braga |
What's the Story?
When Poison Ivy enlists her bestie, Harley, to kidnap both Veronica Lodge, daughter of Riverdale’s most important citizen, and her friend Betty, she’s counting on some assistance-and the mayhem that ensues will probably work as well!
DC Comics and Archie are proud to present the adventure of a lifetime for all these best pals. Their hijinks are brought to you by the real-life team-up of Paul Dini (HARLEY QUINN) and Marc Andreyko (WONDER WOMAN ’77), with art by Laura Braga (DC BOMBSHELLS)!
What the Heck?
I'll be honest, when this solicitation was announced I was confused and pretty sure I wasn't going to actually review it because.. well, why?
Some of these recent cross overs just seem like complete balderdash, anything with Harley in it just seems to be a blatant cash grab and I don't know jack about the whole Archies thing.
All I know is that there are two girls named Betty and Veronica - one's blonde and one's dark haired. They hang out and fight over a ginger named Archie. There was an awesome 'sugar sugar' song that came out of it ...... and that's all I know. Some other knowledge is vaguely tied in there too like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats being tied up in this lark.
Apparently this whole Archies thing is an American rite of passage where everyone knows about it even if they weren't born in the 60's.
Well... I'm a young British born Australian. A new audience for you. Market to me!
Let's do this!
So the original cover is actually nice and reminds me why Amanda Connor got popular in the first place. There's clearly a lot more effort here than her usual covers though. The girl's hair looks really well done, the vinyl seat is rendered really nice, the table reflecting the scene above is a good idea..
It's a bit disappointing that the girls have stick figure arms and it's still weird seeing Connor/Palmiotti's lobotomised love interest of Poison Ivy doing cutesy things.... I do have to wonder what it is they're actually drinking because it looks oddly mouldy on one side of the milkshake. Hardly's eyes are bugging out something fierce. Archie gets little to no attention and may not even have arms but that's apparently fine because he's a dude and no one cares what he looks like.
Now the variant cover is by Adam Hughes and...
Okay does anyone else think that he's purely phoned this one in?
Harley's face looks to be in his style but the rest of her body looks like.. shit we're running out of time just draw anything out of proportion, it doesn't matter is she has no internal organs or a waist or a butt or anything...
To the right is an example of his work with Harley Quinn.
Notice anything different?
The rest of the girls in the line up look fine, they look human and well rounded enough to look healthy and right for their body types but damn, look at Harley's elbow and compare it to her stomach. It's almost as big. You know, I know there are plenty of jokes about Adam Hugh's detailed work making him run out of schedule but if that's the case.. ask him to do one for the first issue and use it in the second issue so it will be on time! Buuuut they won't because they want his star power.
The only other issue I have with the cover is that someone has clearly taken inspiration from Rihanna for whatever Poison Ivy's got going on. Naturally, I can't find the exact picture I'm thinking that I've already saw of RiRi that was like this but it's kinda like if these two photo's mated and then grew a severe attitude.
With that off my chest, let's have a look at the actual comic.
Page one is a quick run down or an introduction to most of the Archie characters which seem to now include Colonel Sanders.
It still assumes that you know of the characters well enough to get what they're about in general. Although my experience of Sabrina the Teenage Witch was her sitcom TV show that was full of pep and dad jokes so I'm not clear on why she seems to be mean-spiritedly zapping a science project that is a little too close to her own bad self for common sense to allow.
Oh wait, Colonel Sanders is actually Mr. Lodge, father of Veronica. He hates swamps. He televised himself walking around a swamp, scaring off frogs and turtles and shit to explain how much better a free school would be where you just pay a nominal fee for internet access....
Hmm. Is anyone else thinking this how the future actually will shape itself?
Ignoring how stupid building on a swamp is (it can be done but it's the last option for obvious reasons) it's overboard and expositioney feel is obviously only there to piss Poison Ivy off.
They even use the same logo from the original Harley and Ivy series which featured a similar gag as a ruse to get in control of Hollywood.
Guess this is the year of revival for classic Harley Quinn rip offs.
Anyway, here's new Harley Quinn doing aerial acrobatics in a greenhouse lounge room for some reason while wearing a roller derby outfit and thigh highs. Poison Ivy looks like she just escaped from her role as Peggy Bundy on Married....with children and she is doing her darnedest to ruin both the TV and to waste water.. because that's what environmentalists do!
The good thing about Dini writing these two though is that we get back to the 'Red' nickname instead of what ever alliterated nonsense or long winded pet name like "dandelioness" we get from the solo comics.
Secondly, he writes Harley a lot more like her classic self where's she's a bit more rational and uses her freakin' brain. As in, as much as I'd love to crusade for you Ivy but now might not be a good time with the law enforcement and so on after us.
The bad thing is that he seems to have taken the speech patterns the new writers have given her, so Harley's main dialogue on this page is a jumbled mess of th', ya's, a's, fer's an' other words she fergets to say right.
The art is okay.. Harley is a bit more muscular than what she is on the cover but does not appear to have enough room in her panties for her vagina to be comfortable. Or exist.
Oh yeah, and so far Harley and Ivy have the exact same faces.
Back to Riverdale!
This page was just blah. A lot of older people imagining what high school kids think about which turns out to be a generic 'maths is hard!' bitching.
Then we have Veronica talking like.. an out of touch politician? Seriously, does anyone talk like she does?
'Come on you underprivileged bastards! Let me show you how awesome my life is so you may hate your own more!'
I get that there's supposed to be a rivalry between Betty and Veronica but damn, get impartial comic!
Jughead is the only interesting person and breath of fresh air around.
For some reason Midge and Betty used the same piece of fabric to make two different shirts. They question Veronica 'Ronnie' Lodge as to why she's yelling weird shit across a mostly vacant yard. Midge and Betty bitch about Veronica's rich family but get shoehorned into helping because they need the extra credit for their, like, super hard maths class.
I feel like this is a super convenient plot contrivance - this can't happen all the time in fictional America, can it? I know sports prodigies get credits for grades but for decorating a damn hall?
Next, we jump to Harley and Ivy being blown up by a bunch of... lamprey henchmen? That's not how lampreys work. Turns out the women were sitting in a taxi watching some plant decoys get blown up, but you wouldn't know they were in a taxi until Ivy pays a driver (instead of pheromone-ing about it hahahaha) and you never see how close they were to the street. Meanwhile, people are still getting attacked on this street by said lampreys but Harley and Ivy do not care about this.
They are much too busy teleporting to meet the Lodges disguised as.. Dr. Green? Aww, ffs. Wait, their butler is called Smithers? Ugh. Harley is clearly wearing a red blouse for this board meeting but then it turns into a crop top because an albino with clown hair isn't drawing enough attention as it is. At least Ivy acts like she's supposed to, telling an oblivious Harley to shut the hell up until they're outside.
We jump back to Riverdale again where... I think they're actually about to set up for the party? There are a lot of people there with balloons and they're setting up a fog machine? What sort of gala is this?
Oh, that's convenient - it's a themed one about heroes and villains. Look, as well as being contrived, that's just not enough time to go and get a decent costume! It's tomorrow! Finals are due.. AND THE BABY'S COMING!
Oh that's cute.. these two can't get into a party without the butler's help? What happened?
Now the tweens are at what's clearly a normal clothes store but they keep calling it a costume shop. Whenever I go to a costume store, or even the corner of a bigger store that sells costumes on the side, it's full of masks and accessories and things.. this is more like a department store.
Veronica has to have help from the plebs to find a costume because the world is just, like, conspiring against her. If only her designer had not mistook the rich girl's request for a Coco Chanel costume for a cuckoo outfit. I'm personally not sure if she wanted to dress up AS Coco or if the designer has actually branched out into party favours.
This page could have been more funny but the stiff figures of both Betty and Veronica sort of ruin it for me.
That and both Sabrina and Kevin are clearly just copied and pasted with little variation - just comes across as cheap or lazy.
I personally disagree that Sabrina feels that the previous costumes did not bring out a part of the girl's personalities because she said it while they were wearing Spy vs. Spy costumes. Yes, they are no where near Spy vs. Spy levels of awesomeness, but the way they keep sniping and swiping at each other would have made these costumes perfect.
But are they sexy or contrived enough? No, apparently not.
Because then we wouldn't get this contrived set up!
Oh yeah, girls hate to be seen wearing the same thing as someone else at a party!
Which is true enough... but it doesn't work if the costumes are completely different!
It makes all the shocked faces and the 'To Be Continued' just seem ridiculous... like.. is this actually meant to be a cliff hanger?
The Short End of the Jester Schtick
Hands down.. this wasn't very interesting. It wasn't painful to read - which I credit to Paul Dini. The interior art wasn't bad but at times the expressions are very... hmm. Blank? That and the poses don't feel natural. I get Harley and Ivy but they're grown women and super villains. The high schoolers should be drawn like high schoolers... I feel like I'm watching models fight on a catwalk whenever I look at Betty and Veronica.
Which leads me to the costume drama. Did Betty seriously dye herself white, change her hair colour and wear hot-pants to a gala? Everyone else is wearing period costumes, clown outfits, Marilyn Monroe dresses, (Oh sorry, MERLIN Monroe.. because *that's* not on the nose Sabrina!) detective outfits, medieval costumes, pirate outfits and there's an elf in there too. Or a Tinkerbell. Not sure, but several folks are NOT wearing shoes. Gross. Plus Jughead appears to have dyed the clearly orange cuckoo costume a sky blue thinking we wouldn't notice. Points for being opportunistic but is this cuckoo a hero or a villain in any way?
So.. a small town with this much costume 'variety' somehow has the most recent Harley Quinn outfit? Shyeah right.
And in anyway do the two Harley Quinn outfits look in any way alike? Poison Ivy you can understand but not the Harley's. It's like when people put a picture of classic Harley next to New52 Harley and said if they hadn't been told it was supposed to be Harley Quinn that they'd have no idea it was the same character.
At least Betty didn't do the stupid one red one blue eye-gougingly dumb make-up.
Real Harley looks like she's wearing tarantula legs for mascara though. Eee-yuck.
Meanwhile, a group containing a detective, a monk, an elf and a Captain Hook are literally copied and pasted from a balcony scene to inside the hall as if they haven't moved at all. Check out the last page... Captain Hook has literally been pasted somewhere else in the background and coloured purple.
And.. there's five more issues of this because...?
This comic is probably better for die hard Archie fans who are desensitised to random cross-overs.
Wotta Comedian!
Harley: What's a matter, Red? Ya lose th' remote again?
Jughead: I'm the Beetlejuice of junk food!
Harley: Whoa! Awesome kidnap metaphor, Red!
Ivy: Stop talking until we're outside.
Betty: "In Paris." In-sufferable is more like it.
Jughead: Y'know what's even more fun at parties and doesn't blow up? Shaved ice makers. Popcorn poppers. Pizza ovens.
Smithers: Now see here, ladies -- Mr. Lodge said he'd give you an answer in due course. Which is billionaire for "get lost!"
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