Welcome to Archieness & Riverdalers Presents: Archie at Riverdale High (Vol. 1), Issue #66!

Archie at Riverdale High (Vol. 1), Issue #66 [September, 1979]

”With Flying Colors”

Archie has a story to tell! It all started when he and Chuck had really been getting into shape for the Big Competition. Or whatever!

“I feel in tip-top shape!” says Chuck. “How about you?”

“Great!” yells Archie. He goes for one more pole vault and then opts to rest and relax. Like a swan. Like a gazelle. Like a majestic mongoose. Archie vaults over the bar.

“Boys, even if you don’t take first place, at least beat Westside High,” says Coach Kleats. Coach Kleats is fat and washed-up. “Their crumbum coach, Mike Torgen, will never let me forget it if we don’t!”

Oh man, we can’t let a guy named “Mike Torgen” make a fool out of Riverdale High! Archie is on board with whatever it takes to skunk the Torgen. Meanwhile, two spies from Westside High (YOU CAN TELL BECAUSE THEY WEAR SHIRTS WITH LARGE “W’s” ON THEM) are getting nervous. Riverdale sure looks athletic and sweaty and glistening and succulent. They report their findings to Coach MIKE TORGEN, who has an Inspector Clouseau hat and mustache, and he looks angry. The fifty-yard dash and the pole vault. Nuh-uh, Riverdale. Those are Westside’s events! They need ‘em badly like they need a fine lady with large titties! Grrrr! Archie and Chuck are fucking everything up!

Well, these two Westdale punks will do anything to appease Coach Torgen. But they have no ideas, so they decide to take Dad’s boat out to the water. Good environment to rack the ol’ brains.

Wait a minute, then why did we drive six hours to the ocean?! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

As “luck” would have it, Archie and Chuck had the same idea to head to the ocean to do a little boating themselves. Rowboating, that is! With canoes and oars and shit. And they dangerously stray far from shore. “Yeah, but it’s nice and cool out here!” says Brain-Genius Archibald Andrews.

Little do our heroes know that the two douchebags from Westside High – let’s call them Geronimo and Jormpus – notice them rowboatin’ without a care in the world. “Y’know, if they was stranded on a dune island without a boat!” Jormpus thinks. And Geronimo finishes the thought: “They’d miss the meet!”

Ha! This is just what Coach Michael R. R. Torgen needs! Their grand plan is to plow right into the canoe, killing Archie and Chuck instantly. In fact, they hit the canoe so hard that Archie and Chuck go flying forty feet! “Those screwballs!” Archie says. Screwballs! You can tell Archie is upset when he uses such foul language!

“That was deliberate!” Archie yells. “They’re washing our canoe away from the island!”

And indeed, Jormpus and Geronimo have successfully stranded Archie and Chuck on an island and away from the meet! Success! HA HA HA!! Fuck ‘em.

Boy, boys, put the knives away!

As the meet proceeds, Kleats gets hella nervous! The rest of the 900 boys aren’t meeting expectations! “Without Chuck and Archie we’ll lose their events and we’ll be sunk!”

Too bad Chuck and Archie decided to play Canoe Boys instead of just hanging around at home drinking their protein shakes and icing their glutes. If they swam to shore, they would be too tired to pole vault! And if they stayed on the island, they’d miss the meet! And if they filled their pockets with rocks and walked into the water, they’ll die! All the options are bunk!

However, in the most immense of plot holes, the duo see a kid hang gliding and remember that “Steve Mosburg teaches hang gliding out on the island.” And Steve Mosburg is a stand-up guy! He’ll teach them hang gliding in about fourteen seconds and then they can hang glide right to the fucking meet! Brain Genius!

Steve Mosburg looks like a goddamn nerd. He lets them take a couple of gliders and pretty soon Archie and Chuck are flying their way back to dry land. It’s really stupid and it’s making me hate comics forever.

“If the air currents are kind to us, we can still make it, Chuck!”

“Right on, Arch!”

These dorks deserve to nosedive right into a fucking rock, but they instead land right on the field gracefully without incident.

Spread your legs, ladies! We’re home!

“Well, it was a happy Coach Kleats who watched Chuck take his events!” Archie narrates. “And a sad Coach Torgen who saw me top his best vaulter by six inches! Well, we won the meet by a narrow margin, and everybody gave us credit!”

And by “everyone”, Archie means Dilton, Veronica, and Betty. They call them “heroes”. No Jughead, though, he’s hunched in a corner somewhere scarfing a hamburger.

“Hey, sure, boys! I’m glad you won!” says Coach Kleats. “But next time – do me a favor, will you?”

“A favor, coach?”

“Skip the dramatic entrance? Walk through the gate like everybody else!”

HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!! HA HA HA HA HA!!

”Big Brother”

Veronica almost gets hit by a tree branch! This is, perhaps, supposed to create some suspense for the reader to want to keep reading. It doesn’t work for me, but I’m trying to write a blog here, so I’ll keep reading so that you don’t have to.

“It all started one summer morning as Ronnie and I were picking up some supplies for our school day camp!” Archie starts his story boringly. They witness a little kid banging on the locked gate with a rock. Always the goody-goody, Archie yells at him and tells him that this is school property and how dare you! He holds the kid by the scruff and demands an answer as to why he was trying to break into the school grounds.

Right on, kid! Cow tipping? Fire crackers in the cat’s anus? There’s only so much of that you can do!

“I turned on a fire hydrant on Sand Street to cool off, and a policeman chased me away!” the kid says after bitching about how boring Riverdale is. The kid is named Butch Morgan and he lives in the fuckin’ projects, right in between two stash houses! Veronica calls him a troublemaker and urges Archie to grab him by the ear and drag him back home to his heroin-addicted parents!

Archie has an idea: “Say, if you have nothing to do how would you like to be my guest at our camp today?” Are you fucking kidding me, geek? Butch is going to light firecrackers in your anus just for even suggesting such a dorky goddamned–

“What’s that?” Butch asks, intrigued.

“A day camp that has all kinds of activities you can have fun doing!” Archie responds jubilantly! Butch has angry eyebrows but agrees to allow Archie to drag his ass to Homo Camp (his words, not mine, I promise, lol).

Veronica is suspicious… “I think you’re crazy, Archie,” she says with an obvious air of snootiness. Archie is optimistic that THIS RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW will dissuade Butch away from a life of vandalism and debauchery. Butch hops in Archie’s ugly car and gets kidnapped and murdered.

Mr. Weatherbee stands outside the Day Camp office dressed like a circus tent. He introduces Butch to him, and Weatherbee couldn’t be more delighted to let this young ruffian run rampant around the camp creating havoc and destruction.

“Bringing him here was a nice gesture on your part, Archie!” says Weatherbee.

“I think he’s basically a nice kid!” responds Archie with the naivety of a five-year-old girl.

Oh god, the balloon was filled with horse piss!

Butch drops a water balloon on Veronica, and she starts chasing him around promising a spankin’. This is illegal in most states, but what year is this again? 1979? Yeah, never mind, child abuse was very much legal. Even encouraged! Anyway, as a token of apology, Butch offers a stick of gum. Veronica hungrily accepts it like a complete idiot – never accept gum from a ruffian! Who knows what nefarious additives are within?!

“WATER! SOMEBODY PLEASE GIVE ME WATER! IT WAS FULL OF HOT PEPPER!” Veronica runs around like a loon while Archie stands there unhelpfully in his short khaki pants. Veronica sucks down a hose. Betty calls the kid “weird”.

A barrage of pranks continues. A tripwire here, and hornet’s nest in the face there. “Archie Andrews!” yells Veronica. “I know that little creep was bad news! I tried to tell you not to bring him here, he doesn’t belong!”

Butch hides behind a tree, crestfallen. He most certainly has learned his lesson, right ladies and gentlemen? He runs away sniffing and crying like a little wuss shithead, leaving Archie to go find him and make all kinds of amends. “Come on,” Archie urges the gang. “We have to find him before he gets lost in these woods!” Personally, let the little kid get lost forever and turn into a pile of skeleton bones. See if I give HOOT!

Jughead decides to climb a mountain a hold onto a large branch to, you know, improve the lookout. It’s a dumb idea. Jughead is full of dumb ideas. The branch breaks and almost falls on Veronica, but Butch pushes her out of the way just in time! And now we’re at the beginning of the story! Thanks for reading!

You love me? Then let me squeeze dem titties.

“I was only trying to get everyone to laugh so they would like me!” Butch says falsely. Throwing a hornet’s nest isn’t funny, son. You know why? Because it didn’t hit Archie! That would’ve been preferable.

Archie tells Butch that the secret is just being himself, which, as far as I’m concerned, he totally was anyway. And it was shitty! So none of these teenagers should be giving this kid the time of day.

“Come on, I’m going to reward you with ice cream!” Veronica says, grabbing the kid’s greasy hand. “You may be his big brother, Archie, but he turned out to be mine!”

Then Butch lit an M-80 and killed Veronica. The end.

Final Thoughts

”Dear Archie, I too am a juvenile delinquent! Do you have any tips for fucking up my neighbors’ shit?”

”Dear Juvenile Delinquent, you can try smashing their mailboxes with baseball bats! That’s a classic! Thanks for writing!”