Welcome to Archieness & Riverdalers Presents: Betty and Veronica (Vol. 2), Issue #82!

This is the third part of the “Love Showdown” four-part arc! Catch the first part here. Catch the second part here Catch the third part here. Oh wait, you’re already here.

Betty and Veronica (Vol. 2), Issue #82 [November, 1994]

”Love Showdown (Part 3)” – Dan Parent

In my headcanon, after only reading two issues of any Archie comic book so far, Archie is completely oblivious that either girl actually likes him. He’s got this “Aw shucks, a flower for me? That’s a great thing for a friend to do!” attitude. He has no fucking clue that he could be getting his dick sucked by both of them at the same time any day he wanted it. Does he not know this shit?

Archie and Veronica are jitterbuggin’ at the Lodge Family Fundraiser for Helping the Diseased Children Matt Gaetz Has Fucked, but Archie feels bad for leaving Betty behind to fix his car. It’s like, yeah, you should feel bad. Did you hear yourself saying it out loud? It doesn’t sound good, sir.

A few boys turn their attention toward the door where a new patron has entered.

“I-It’s Betty!” stammers Archie.

“I don’t believe it!” stammers Veronica, not believing it.

“Hi guys! I thought I’d pop in!” Betty jubilates.

“Well, pop out!” yells Veronica. “You don’t have tickets for tonight!”

Betty doesn’t care. She’ll crash any Matt Gaetz-related fundraiser she wants. Since she’s a friend of the family, Veronica’s dad let her in! Let’s boogie, kids!

Veronica throws shade about Betty’s dress (which used to be hers) and motions to Archie to come on over and throw some of his own shade. Archie, instead, drools and starts stroking his dang ol’ ding dong. He and every other teenage boy in the room. Betty soaks up the attention. Veronica has had it.

I JUST DID A KEY BUMP, BOYS! THE NIGHT IS YOUNG!

Veronica rips Archie’s arm out of his socket dragging him to the other side of the room, away from Betty and her lousy pheromones. The boys all take turns dancing with Betty. Archie can’t stop staring like a lovesick baboon, and, finally, it’s his turn to get freaky with the girl next door. “HERE I COME!” he hollers, running at her like she’s a steak while Veronica smacks her head all like “D’oh!”

Archie and Betty “tear up the dance floor”, so to speak while Veronica fumes and shits herself with anger. “This is my worst nightmare, Betty getting more attention than me, especially from Archie!”

Now, maybe I’m just blind to Archie’s alleged charms, but this kid has no fucking charisma. What’s to like about this nerd? Does he have a 45-inch dick or something? 45-inch balls?

Veronica decides to jump right between Betty and Archie and leap around like a crazed leopard. “Paula Abdul, eat your heart out!” she exclaims (lol) while Betty looks livid and Archie looks somewhat scared. Time for a good old fashioned competition!

I knew it! Ronnie’s a squirter!

Betty starts doing splits and cartwheels, which Veronica can’t stand seeing without trying some of her own moves. It culminates in her splashing her vagina right in the punchbowl, ruining the evening (or enhancing it) for everyone. “I meant to do that!” she smiles, dripping wet, ass soaking up all the punch.

“Archie! Are you going to help me, or what?” Veronica reaches out of Archie’s hand, but he’s with Betty roughly 340 feet away.

“Oh, sure! I was just lining up my next dance with Betty!”

Well, fuck this shit. Veronica is fucking out of here. As she takes a pensive walk down the street, she realizes that she needs to fight fire with fire. “Maybe I need to take some new steps in keeping Archie!” she says.

Veronica’s going to bash Betty’s head in with a rock, calling it now.

The next day, Veronica has burned a batch of muffins to a crisp. This will surely impress Archie! He loves eating charcoal! “Betty’s homing in on my glamorous territory,” Veronica tells her alarmed father as smoke fills the kitchen, suffocating everyone, “so I’ve decided to pick up some of her Archie-grabbing domestic traits!!”

Easy on the fucking exclamation points, Ronnie. You don’t want to bust a vocal chord.

Veronica made a huge mess in the kitchen, but that’s ok! Their grossly underpaid servants can clean it up for her. Veronica then throws all the muffins in a sack and carries them over to where Archie and Betty are hanging out: some nondescript area near the street. She offers Archie a horrible muffin, which he politely takes even though he knows it’s going to kill him. “HMM! UGH! GRUNT!” he bawls while trying to even sink his teeth into the rock hard lump of petrified carbon.

Delicious, Veronica. It tastes like if dirt was covered in dirt.

“My tooth! I broke my tooth!” whines Archie. Betty’s gonna take him to the dentist because why not? Archie doesn’t have parents with insurance or anything. Veronica dumps her muffins in the garbage angrily as Jughead approaches and makes fun of them for looking like they’re hard as rocks. “Get out of my life forever, creep,” she says, throwing a muffin right at his dome.

Now Reggie shows up to give Veronica some shit. Betty’s competing with Veronica and winning Archie because she’s trying to be Veronica! This is something that Reggie, who I thought was very, very dumb, points out to her.

“Archie getting that love note has left you shaken,” Reggie tells her.

“It’s a last ditch attempt!” she says, thinking about being Betty and going the nice route. Good tactic. Maybe she can try making Archie some muffins!

Nope, Reggie’s got a plan. He’s mean and conniving and dastardly and he’s going to make a real man out of Veronica! Just you wait!

But next time. This story is over for now! One last installment to go! I “can’t wait”.

”The Doorstop” – Frank Doyle

Archie and Jughead are rollerblading like it’s 1994! Betty and Veronica make fun of these dorks with lines like “Where are Grumpy, Sneezy, and Dopey?” and “Far as I’m concerned they’re both Dopey!” Settle down, girls. You’re going to go to Hell if you keep up this rudeness.

Betty fawns over the boys as they zip away. “They are pretty good on those blades, though.”

Veronica wants a pair of her very own! So she sends in 450 cereal box tops and waits eight weeks for them to arrive at her door. Betty visits and finds Veronica zipping around the indoor pool area perimeter with her blades and two-piece bathing suit, one slip away from drowning forever! “I’m going to beat the pants off those egotistical roadrunners,” Veronica says of Archface and Jugface. Betty thinks that’s swell and keen, but why the FUCK is she practicing in the pool area? Because it’s private! And why does that matter? Because she wants to go public only when she’s really, really, really, really good. Keep up.

“Watch this!” Veronica says, doing triple lutzes on the poolside, one poor move away from splitting her head open forever! But no, she’s a real natural; flipping and twirling and doing backflips and indie nosebones and 900 shoveits and all sorts of other cool, dope moves.

“I think you’ve mastered the sport, girl! You’re going to blow them away!”

“That’s my fondest wish!”

Time to take this to the streets! Betty opens the front door so that Veronica can make a grand exit, but it works as well as a screen door on a butthole. A draft blows through the house and… well… you know.

Veronica died on the way back to her home planet.

The whole town talks about Veronica’s black eye. The end.

”Game Plan” – Frank Doyle

“Betty! It’s Mr. Lodge! He sounds very agitated! What would Veronica’s father want with you?”

Betty’s nearly-identical mother can’t fathom that maybe Veronica’s father wants to fuck her daughter’s young, teenage friend and lose everything he has in a divorce and a lawsuit.

Mr. Lodge looks like a Sharknado just tore through his lower intestine. “Betty! Please! Get over here as soon as you can! We’ve got trouble!”

Trouble only Betty Cooper can fix?? SHE’LL BE RIGHT THERE, YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT! YOU KNOW, SHE WAS JUST IN THE MIDDLE OF HOMEWORK, BUT, YEAH, THIS SEEMS MORE IMPORTANT! CERTAINLY SOMETHING RONNIE’S FATHER CAN’T DO HIMSELF, I’M SURE!

Betty shows up to find a happy Veronica clicking around her computer. Mr. Lodge looks concerned. “ZELKO!!” he shrieks like a mental patient. “She’s hooked on it!”

OK, sir, clearly you need to take your medicine and lie down.

Zelko is the hottest new game in town, and Veronica is addicted. And when she gets the high school, she feels a rush of adrenaline! Then she wants to beat that high score? Can you believe it?? Sounds like Betty needs to perform, at the very least, a lobotomy-exorcism.

Veronica hops around ecstatically. “Soon I’ll be the absolute Zelko master!!” she cries, doing the Snoopy dance. The record is 900 bricks, and she just scored 750.

Betty has hatched a plan. “Madame Duswank’s sportswear shop is having a fabulous sale at the mall!” Betty says, motioning toward the front door. Veronica doesn’t care; there’s fuckin’ Zelko to play.

“S-She passed up a chance to shop!” Betty tells Mr. Lodge. Things are definitely serious. Pretty soon she’ll throw Archie into a jet engine just to get a score of 825.

Veronica has the face of a serial killer as she cheers herself on during the next game. “Pack those bricks in nice and snug,” she tells herself, which is what she’ll be doing to Archie’s rectum just to get a score of 840.

“Time to haul out the big guns!!” Betty exclaims. She tells her that Archie wants to go to the movies. “You go with Archie while I try to beat this game!” Veronica replies hungrily.

Mr. Lodge is hopping and hooting and hollering! “Giving up Archie? That tears it!”

So what does Mr. Lodge do? He fucking rips the computer out of the wall in the middle of the night and, with the help of Smithers, packs into the car. Smithers is to drive into the lake and, if possible, not die. But don’t feel like you have to live, Smithers. This computer needs to go at any cost. “I’ll lose it, sir,” says Smithers. “But I suggest you replace it with something to take her mind off her loss!”

So Mr. Lodge buys Veronica a car. And the conniving little pistol was playing the long con!

Looks like a poor person’s idea of a rich person’s car, lady.

Final Thoughts

Zelko sounds fun. Rollerblading is fun, too. Hanging out with Archie? Not so much.