Published 2017 by Archie Comics
★★★
Volume 3! In which Mr. Lodge has had a hissy fit and moved the family away from Riverdale, Veronica has been shipped off to a Swiss boarding school (she's miserable, but honestly, that was my dream as a teenager), and we meet Cheryl Blossom. Cheryl's basically there to be the new Big Bad so that Veronica can be a bit softer—the Veronica of the first couple of volumes wouldn't have thought twice about participating in a mean-girl trick or two, but the Veronica of this volume has developed Morals, and perhaps a Conscience. There's very little of Betty here, except for a moment when Cheryl uses her to learn more about what makes Veronica tick, and we get a minor subplot involving a secondary character who has a crush on Betty...though it remains to be seen whether that plotline goes anywhere.
It's interesting—some things about these comics have been updated. At the end of this one there's a sneak peek into one about Reggie, and in that he raids his father's liquor cabinet, which he'd never have been allowed to do in the squeaky-clean originals; of course the shape of the Betty-Veronica rivalry is a bit different; Kevin (who was introduced to the Archie universe specifically to be The Gay One, because heaven forbid that any of the original characters might come out) is no longer the only queer character. Other things are just the same. They're as over the top as they ever were, with characters who are at times caricatures of the originals...who were themselves already caricatures. That's the point, I suppose! It's the whole genre. But I do wonder what this would look like in a different graphic novel form, with a less slapstick take.
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