Nerding Day: Archie's Sonshine (Patreon)

Every couple years the internet rediscovers Archie/Punisher, a woefully misunderstood team-up comic that Archie’s publishers pitched to Marvel. But that comic A) whips and B) respects both characters. No, if you’ve finished Riverdale and hunger for weird Archie, you want the time he met a heavenly visitor come down to be a fisher of men.

No no no, the first time: with The LORD, our GOD.

Yes, Archie met Jesus, and it got weird. Trust my credentials on this: I once interviewed Archie Comics’ CEO about Afterlife with Archie (the one where Midge gets an abortion before becoming a zombie) plus a story where future Archie dies of gun violence. The author of Archie Meets KISS was my roommate for years, and the author of Archie vs. Predator crashed on our couch for a few days. Point being: I have the rigorous preparation of an entire nation’s dentist offices for any unorthodox Archie encounters, but even I lack the legacy OS to process his ultra-orthodox one.

Look at that cover. The longer you stare, the more it looks like Hieronymous Bosch took a kids’ gig on a dare. The Riverdale crew is slowly realizing they’re in G-rated Hell. A photographer captured them at the exact moment someone told them all their human wishes will turn to dust in their hands.

Mr. Weatherbee looks genuinely, existentially lost. Moose comforts Midge, but his strength offers no protection. Reggie’s smug grin is locked in place, but his eyes, drained of confidence, dart about for any avenue of escape. He will find none. Betty stares blankly as she thrusts her bosom forward; the future is a void. Archie lunges towards her, but cannot gain peace in her softness. Only he, Jughead, and Veronica—who embrace material vices—are at home here in the pleasures of earthly vanities.

But our real star is ol’ gangly Ethel, the awkward one. She wails in desolation that the kingdom of man will not have her. We’re only on the cover! Who shall save us? Please turn to page 159 in your hymnal and sing “Sugar Sugar [Honey Messiah].”

I bet you think today’s target is awkward Christian attempts to co-opt the Riverdale crew. No! Both the gang and Christianity stay in their lanes. The Archie crossover integrity record remains at perfect score. The real villain, like always, is our modern society. You’ll soon see that this is an innocent comic and you are the deranged artifact. You can only perceive it through jaded 21st century eyes trained to spot scammers and serial killers.

Spire Comics gives us a pretty groovy Christianity here. This was when Evangelical America was less Pat Robertson and more Pat Robertholyspirit. The worst born-again Christian was Billy Graham quietly nodding as Nixon screamed that Jews were evolving smaller horns to blend in with humans.*

*Basically a true story!

This is not that. Writer/artist Al Hartley’s brand of true believer thought Jesus’s return was imminent, so we should all forsake material temptation, be nice to our neighbors, and tidy up the yard in case it wasn’t among the 1/3 of Earth that gets scorched. You know, normal bonkers shit, nothing weirder than Simulation Theory.

So we open with the usual Archie hijinx: beach fun, no narrative condemnation, a simmering sense of existential dread. All very familiar to us today! This is how the marketplace of ideas is meant to work.

Mr. Weatherbee, canonically born in 1919 here, goes to the beach so that he can get angry about these wicked teen temptresses wearing swimsuits that won’t drown them. Everything is normal.

The book doesn’t get flashy about it, but Population Riverdale embodies the seven deadly sins:

The eighth sin’s deadly to the soul, and no, it’s not pride in being that douche-jet Reggie: despair. Enter envious Ethel, stage bereft.

Big Ethel’s forlorn she can’t get a boyfriend, even though she has huge feet—objectively the most attractive feature our barely legal stepsisters can have. Also, the gang made her push the car with Moose in it, and I don’t care who you are, that’s funny. Evangelical humor is normally paltry, but God and I agree on a good sight gag.

Ethel’s tears are justified. The only single men are Reggie, whose face is the cuneiform emoji for does-not-go-down, and Dilton, when the writers remember he exists. Betty’s advice is less than useless: Jesus will be your boyfriend if you’re not cool enough for other teens to tempt you.

Unfortunately, this comic plays by Riverdale Rules, meaning Betty summons…Him.

The Love Van pulls up and out pops The Jesus. He’s a groovy dude in double denim who beckons teens into his vehicle. I’m sorry, but through a 21st century lens the phrase “stacked like cordwood” feels inevitable.

Tell me you see this any other way. A behotpantsed Van Guy beckons a lonely girl over for some life lessons: are you hearing klaxons or Jericho’s trumpet? What happened to trust in our society?

It’s not like the comic doesn’t frontload that this is Jesus. You can tell He’s the Son of God because He’s not drawn in traditional Archie style. He is the way, the truth, and the slightly more photorealistic. Can God make a dimension so cartoony even He can’t compress himself into it? I leave that question to a Dan DeCarlo pinup of Good Girl St. Thomas Aquinas.

Hey, do you think Jesus’s chariot runs on diesel or leaded? Weird of Him to pollute our planet, but I guess landlords aren’t beholden to tenants’ rules.

Teen appetites naturally flock to this Pied Piper, who teaches that food is love. That’s my ethos too, but it’s hard to see how that message gets you killed by the Italians, of all people.

Things get weird fast! These are two sequential panels:

Two Cokes and five sandwiches isn’t enough for Jughead. It’s not even enough for a gag about Jughead’s light snack between crucifixions. This panel only exists to let the reader know that truly this Van Drifter was the Son of God.

Jesus immediately cures Jughead’s eating disorder between frames. He’s been here for two pages and already sunk the kid’s raison d’etre in the gutter. God’s ultimate-reality imposition field even flattens other Archie characters. There are no Jughead jokes to tell in a world where asexuality is a beatific virtue. Luckily for Al Hartley, the page count’s too tight to marry Jug off to a Quiverful bride and court the outrage brigade on whatever 1974’s version of Twitter was. (Suspect fanzines.)

Meanwhile, in the in- side of this –cel situation:

Ethel lunges in to “Actually…” the Lord Most High. Ugh, this is why you’re single, you dingbat. Nobody wants to go steady with a partner who heckles God after He bought you lunch.

Two minutes after pulling up, Jesus has speedrun the Sermon on the Mount. All the nameless teens are now drawn in a more realistic style. He’s warping this entire world, and I don’t think Riverdale can take the strain of reality. This peaceful town was never meant to ask existential questions. Still: quality answers!

Great, the one time Jesus wears oxfords instead of sandals and it’s to the beach. I’m starting to think one of the first drafts of the Messiah escaped the test facility. It would explain why He has no belly button.

Everything He says is unimpeachable: take the high road, be kind and steadfast, value people over things, get a load of Liberace—all truths good people believe. Wait.

Muah-ha-ha! You were so distracted by The Second Coming you didn’t realize this Gospel crossover is also a Liberace team-up!

Is this happening, or is Jesus showing Riverdale a vision of Heaven? Is Liberace the Holy Spirit? Who owns the original art for this page now? Hot Doggers, I HAVE SO MANY URGENT QUESTIONS.

Why can’t this fire-and-ice pair get their own digest-sized series? Jesus and Liberace: Teen Whisperers. Or film a syndicated pilot called Denim & Dazzle, I don’t care, just get this buddy cop plot going. You’re starving the goose that lays rhinestone eggs.

Betty, ever sensible, gazes potently through the fourth wall to ask us if we’re hearing this shit. You were always too smart for this town, Betty. Your college artsy phase is going to be amazing. Next chapter!

Oh good, Jesus is going to cure Reggie like he did Jughead. Reggie’s flaw is he’s a fucking asshole. Here he is ten minutes after meeting The Savior of Mankind.

Jesus’s message is simple and straight from the Bible: watch your mouth, Reggie.

To clarify: your tongue can say good things or bad things, therefore it’s many metaphors that can only do good, except for the examples that don’t. Can a spring mingle pure water with stagnant? Yes, but shut up. Can a tree produce concord grapes, but also mealy red delicious apples? Not in Archie’s America. It’s the America of malt shops and only one Black friend. Western chauvinists call it Baby Boomer Riverdale. Jesus—who is white—calls it next stop on the Love Van Express. Police have no leads.

If you’re confused, pity poor Reggie, who has never considered anyone else’s opinion in his life, then starts with God’s. It’s the redemptive version of Hannibal Lecter talking that dude into eating his own face. It’s trying drugs for the first time with a DMT/LSD double header while skydiving, and your jump instructor waits till you step out of the plane to ask if you’ve heard the good news. The next 90 seconds will be the longest month of Reggie’s life.

Or so 1974 would have us believe. A half century later, we all recognize Reggie as the kind of Christian who calls the cops to report a Middle Eastern man is feeding people.

I’m not sure why any of this is episodic. It’s a 32-page comic set entirely at one religious weirdo’s kidnap van. Do you know how many drifters have tried to convince cops they were the Second Coming? More than two!

If true, are we to believe these teens had their view of the universe quaked by God Himself before noon, and went ahead with the rest of the day’s plans, which were building false idols of their high school principal?

That’s right, Jesus is still hanging out, popping up like the Towelie of parables. Remember His early work? Guy was famous for an epic exit.

What about their heathen adversaries? Those children may be going to hell, but NO NO is still a marvel of engineering. And you have to admire the teenage defiance of building a sandcastle to spite God when He’s standing right there.

I don’t know why I’m mocking “Avoid self-harm and listen to a guy who said to love your neighbor” except to prove that we, the 21st century society, are the villains of this story. Sarcasm strangled Sincerity somewhere in the comments of a 2010 Gawker article.

Oh, we’re back to pretending this isn’t You, Lord? Jesus, drop the act, Jesus. Everyone knows this is the Messiah and probably not also young Tom Skerritt. A wink’s the same as a nod to a man whose eyes You haven’t rubbed mud in yet.

The choice is yours, teens. Be a slave to your own free will, or be liberated in God’s rules? Otherwise, your divorce will be plastered on the front page of The Daily Bloodbath. You’ll be too ashamed to show your face at the giant DO YOUR OWN THING child sacrifice bonfire tonight.

Don’t give me that look, Ethel. That’s the smirk of a collaborator who believes she scored a perfect in The Milgram Experiment.

“Clear a path!” hollers Ethel, “I’ve got to tell my peers how wrong they are for having fun!”

This she-galoot doesn’t realize she’s the cast-off lovechild of Olive Oyl and Bluto, but thinks she’s solved the questions of everyone else’s existence. Archie tries to stop her, but Jesus’s expression says let’s see where this goes. It’s the same look you give your partner when the attractive couple at the end of the pew sends you a chalice of His Holy Blood. “My helpmeet thinks you look…deeply spiritual,” says the husband, who is also Jerry Falwell Jr. Dammit! I’m corrupting this again. Nothing pure can exist in 2023.

There she goes, off and running down the beach, only one set of giant, sexy lady footprints in the sand. Jesus does not walk beside her, so that story was a lie.

The very first person Ethel encounters is a nameless 5 [Ethel 10]. He’s built like an Americomi dork bishonen, and is way too Christian for Ethel to learn balance. Before she can alienate him, he witnesses to her in a much less obnoxious way. She pops an orgasm right there on his towel. Ethel’s rapid series of ga-ga sees her come a torrent normally reserved for Irish creation myth.

I’m not being crass for comedy: Ethel loses her mind and it can’t find its way home. She’s been born again for three minutes, and her personal Jesus has already gifted her a wholesome boyfriend who’s so ready for you to ask him about the Jack Chick reference on his t-shirt.

That’s it! Ethel got her miracle and it was more than we could have hoped for. The story’s over! Liberace has gone home. Time to pac—wait, Jesus is back.

Having completed Jesus’s teachings, Hartley adds a modern one of his own.

The muscle between Big Moose’s ears tells him it’s a good idea to haul a fridge to the beach. But God is the electricity in the refrigerator of our souls, the freon of our hearts’ compressor, the greenhouse gases around our stewarded earth. How can we incubate foods of the spirit without His power?

I can’t prove Betty’s mocking him here, I just know she’s got a better head on her shoulders than Veronica. It’s impossible to read this comic without projecting Taylorian Secularity onto it, and I’m not some kind of Dennard Dayle who can define that.

There goes our Beach Bum Savior, driving away with a cargo of children’s torsos and a promise of joy nightcapped by a vague threat. This has been a pleasant day at the beach. We multiplied more food than we wasted, Reggie met Jesus but still hates everything—

—and Ethel used her one Jesus-wish to score a Sherman. He’ll ask her to forego college so they can get married and lay Christian pipe for the glory of God. I think the whole crew learned some great lessons about loving our enemies and having faith in higher virtues. The worldly pleasures of Liberace can’t tempt these teens.

Except for Midge. Midge has always been a feminist, and fucks whenever she wants. Where’s her Midge’s Moonlight goddess rebuttal comic?

Mr. McGinley waives promotional consideration this month to recommend Auralnauts’ Infomercial Wars.

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