Excuse me if the above image makes me miss the simpler stories of my youth: Archie Comics CEO John Goldwater says Riverdale’s everyman Archie Andrew will meet his maker in an upcoming issue of Life With Archie, and judging from the cover, his demise may be disturbingly adult.
Yes, surprisingly Archie won’t killed by Veronica’s cooking or Mr.Weatherbee: Goldwater said in an interview with CNN today that the carrot-top will “die a hero” in the July 16th issue of the series, and that his end will result in an “emotional, impactful and classic story that I know will survive the test of time.”
For the past few years Life With Archie has followed the titular character and his gang in their adult lives. For half of each issue Archie is married to Veronica, while the other half projects what his future would be like if he had settled down with Betty, which seems like a pretty emotionally mature premise for a kid’s comic strip. Archie will die in both of these alternate realities. The following issue of Life With Archie will be the series’ last, and an elegy for the lovable everyman. Goldwater says the commemorative final two issues will
Not only show how Archie’s life ends, but also what he means to the world around him. We want to celebrate his life. After the events of “Life With Archie” #36, fans will leap forward a year to see the aftermath, and how his friends have moved on since his surprising death.
What’s Jughead doing? How are Betty and Veronica dealing with the loss? It’s not about the attention-grab of the death but about telling a great, evocative story that reminds people why this character is important to the fabric of pop culture — and showing how heroic a normal guy like Archie can be, and how important it is to realize that.
Although Archie will meet a permanent and untimely end to his adult life, he will continue to be given new story-lines in his teenage incarnation. But how are the kids of today expected to enjoy reading about pizza parlor dates, Josie and the Pussycat jams, or visits to the chocolate shoppe with the knowledge of Archie’s impending doom hanging over them? Most adult readers aren’t emotionally equipped for that kind of unblinking acceptance of mortality.
It doesn’t matter who he takes to the prom, Veronica. We’re all going to die anyways.
(via Laughing Squid and Jezebel,image via Archie Comics)
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