Published October 2019 via Archie Comics
★★★
I read piles of Archie comics growing up, so I occasionally get curious about these updated versions. Not quite nostalgia reads… In Betty & Veronica: Senior Year, B&V have finally (you guessed it) made it out from junior year and into their senior year at Riverdale High. (For context, if you didn’t read quite so many of these as I did growing up—the characters are perennial juniors, old enough to drive and hold the occasional part-time job but not yet worried about things like college and the real world.)
For the sake of this book, Archie is—very intentionally—out of the picture. Whatever fighting over him Betty and Veronica did is in the past; as the book opens, Betty and Reggie have just split up, and Veronica doesn’t seem all that interested in dating. Archie is in the background, but neither Betty nor Veronica is interested in continuing to fight over him. What they are both interested in: college. They dream of going to the same place, the local university (where Betty can get a full ride and Veronica can earn admission without nepotism)…but then they both start to realize that no, this university is not their dream. And neither of them wants to tell the other.
It’s interesting to see this more updated take. In some ways it’s more realistic (e.g., there’s a scene in which one of the girls gets drunk, which would never have happened in the original comics), and in other ways…well, I guess it’s not all that unrealistic for a nepotism-child to have far more responsibility at her father’s company than a teenager should have.
The art is a bit of a departure from the originals, which I don’t always love but also makes a lot of sense—it’s in keeping with the more grown-up feel of the book. Overall, it does make me think that it’s too bad that even in the B&V-focused comics of yore, the emphasis was so often on chasing Archie.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.