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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.
