Welcome to Archieness & Riverdalers Presents: Betty (Vol. 1), Issue #19!

This is the second part of the “Love Showdown” four-part arc! Catch the first part here, Archiephiles. Fuckin’ Archiephiles.

Betty (Vol. 1) , Issue #19 [November, 1994]

”Love Showdown (Part 2)” – Bill Golliher

We last left Betty Cooper in her bedroom, and she still appears to be in there throwing away pictures of her and Veronica. And pictures of just Veronica. Like, Betty has a tremendous amount of pictures of just Veronica. It’s creepy.

Betty’s mom is appalled to see that her livid daughter is doing a bit of redecorating, but Betty doesn’t give a fuck. “Dad, would you mind throwing these out for me?” she asks, pushing onto him a giant garbage bag of photos that probably weighs 90 pounds.

“Stick them in the garage!” Mom suggests. “Maybe this will blow over!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t count on it!” Betty retorts. “I’m not dealing with that brunette barracuda again!”

WILL THESE TWO EVER REKINDLE THEIR FRIENDSHIP?! *farts*

Betty tells her mom all about the mystery love letter to Archie that Veronica (probably) (didn’t) (write) gave him. “That’s all?” Mom asks, dumbfounded. “Hasn’t something like this happened before?”

ABOUT A HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION GODDAMNED TIMES, MOM. It’s getting old.

Hold on. Let me take a giant stinky dump on them first.

Betty prepares an oversized wheelbarrow and fills it with Veronica’s clothes. I like to imagine that Veronica lives on some giant hill seventeen miles away, and Betty strutted angrily the whole way with this wheelbarrow. “Ms. Lodge,” Veronica’s butler calls. “Ms. Cooper is here to see you.”

Veronica’s busy! “Just contribute something from the closet to her charity drive!!” she informs her butler. Betty overhears this and gets STEAMED UP ALL OVER AGAIN!

Listen, this is probably going to go on for the rest of the issue, so you might as well sit back and relax. Maybe grab a giant mug of Kahlúa.

Back at home, Betty watches a TV that’s not turned on and pretends that it’s on while her mom notices that it’s not turned on. Dad’s got something that might cheer her up! Tickets to the Lodge Foundation’s Summer Charity Dance next week! Ha ha! Oh… well, anyway, maybe Archie will go with you? He likes dumb girls!

Betty appreciates the sentiment and accepts the offer. She calls up Archie, who’s been busy trying to fix his car (1970 AMC Gremlin with racing stripes). Well, since Betty is pretty savvy with the wrench, she offers to help smack his engine around tomorrow evening! Oh, alas, Archie won’t be there. Archie will be too busy burning ants with a magnifying glass with his buddy Reggie.

Archie’s got the “shit, I’d better do this before I get yelled at” face.

The phone call ends after Archie agrees to go to the dance. Betty is ecstatic! She’ll impress Archie by pouring sugar in his gas tank, then they’ll both jitterbug all night! “Sounds like Veronica’s got some competition!” Dad jubilates.

Archie didn’t have the heart to tell Betty that he’s going with Veronica to the dance tomorrow. “Maybe they’re having one next week, too…” he frowns. UH OH! Things are going to get even more tangled up in a fucking knot. Someone should just drop an atomic bomb on Riverdale and start fresh.

The next day, Betty is brushing up on her 1,757-page “Mustang Repairs” manual. She’s been reading all about hydro-locked head gaskets and flux capacitor gizmo-trons so that she can fix literally any problem that’s wrong with Archie’s car (roof torn off after driving under a semi-truck). See, she’s much more practical than that whore Veronica!

Betty shows up to Archie’s house with a toolbox (full of jellybeans). Archie is still stumped as a grump about this car problem! Betty figures it out right away: the fuel pump’s got too much pressure near the carburetor. She pulls out a screwdriver while Archie pops a little boner…

…but then Veronica pops in. “I’ve got dibs on him tonight!” she says, startling the both of them. THE FEUD CONTINUES! STAY TUNED FOR MORE or don’t or just kill yourself, I don’t care.

TIME FOR A COMMERCIAL!

Suck a dick, Punchy.

Betty is furious. “So, Archie! Is this who you have plans with tonight?”

AHBALAHBAHAAHBALAHBALHBLAHB. “We have a dance to go to,” Archie replies, tugging on his collar. Veronica is already dressed to the nines, yelling at Archie to get his little red ass into his house to change.

Betty continues working on the car. “So, what dance are you and Archie going to?”

“The Lodge Foundation Summer Fling Charity Bash!” Veronica smiles smugly.

“I got tickets for the one next weekend! Archie’s going with me to that one!”

“Next week? Tonight is a one and only event!”

“But the tickets I got are dated the 25th.”

Veronica looks shocked! Appalled! Oh no! Looks like some of the tickets have the wrong date on them! Tee hee!

Oh well. That’s the reaction. Oh well.

Archie gonna pull a rabbit out of a hat, boyyeeeee!!

Archie comes back out of the house dressed like a reject from the Magician’s Alliance. “I think I’m ready!” he blurts, looking like a clown. Veronica is pleased with his appearance for some reason. Betty bids them farewell and continues working on the car. “Veronica gets Archie… and I get stuck with Archie’s fuel pump!”

After fixing the thing by dumping a gallon of coolant onto the driver’s car seat, Betty decides to head over to Pop’s and treat herself to a delicious chocolate shake. But she’s glum when she gets there. Jughead notices her sad-sackiness and sits next to her.

“Archie and Veronica are at her father’s charity dance tonight… and I’m HERE!!” Betty whines.

Jughead scarfs down two burgers and a hot dog. “Personally, I can’t think of a better place to be!”

Betty shows Jughead her tickets with the misprinted dates. “Yeah!” Jughead says as he analyzes them. “I was at the copy center when Veronica got these printed up!”

Ha! Owned, you blonde sack of dog bones. Veronica wins again, honey. It was all a scammy ruse and you’re the sucker. The sucker born every minute.

Jughead urges her to fight back. Oh, she will all right. She’s going to crash the dance and pull a Carrie. Don’t wait up.

STAY TUNED FOR PART THREE, LADIES AND GERMS! IT’LL BE A DOOZY!

“Meow Talk” – George Gladir

“Humans are so difficult to understand! Take my Betty! She always sleeps at night! That’s sleeping away the best part of the day!”

I agree with Betty’s exclamation points cat. Nighttime is the best part of the day. Why, it’s 4:00am right now and I just snorted a handful of crushed amphetamines! Hoooo boy!

Betty only sleeps eight hours. Weird. Higher functioning animals need sixteen hours of sleep. She’s an idiot.

I don’t know what Betty’s cat is named yet, so I’m going to call him Mr. Snickerbottom Meowmix Grumpypants. Or “Cat” for short. Cat starts complaining about the other weird things that Betty does, like buy him toy mice (real ones are more fun) and spray him with kitty cologne (it smelled like fish paste and about three butts). She even brought him a giant chunk of wood to scratch even though he prefers to claw Betty’s dad’s eyes out every night instead.

So would Archie! AWOOOOGAH!!

Cat also complains that Betty can’t understand him. He’ll go “meow meow hiss” while pointing at the refrigerator, and Betty will go “SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED ANOTHER SPRAY OF THAT JANKY FISH COLOGNE!” She tries to have him do tricks, she tries to get him to play fetch, she even invites this redheaded dorky fuck over to hop around like a goose to try to entertain him. Betty sucks, actually. Time to run away from home ASA-fucking-P.

Hey, this story’s no good! Why should I care about a cat’s bitching? What does he want, a lasagna?

lol, the cat sleeps in a bed with “CAT” written on it, so maybe that is his name!

“There is one of her friends I can tolerate,” Cat says, referring to Jughead, who often shares his giant bucket of fried chicken with him. This is weird to me, because I thought Jughead was very protective of his food. Like Joey Tribbiani! “Why does a nice dude like this associate with those disreputable creatures?” Cat thinks as he scarfs down a greasy chicken leg.

Cat does like watching Betty brush her hair in her underwear. Heh heh. Um.

OH YEAH! He also likes TV! TV is great! Who doesn’t like TV?? And did someone say lasagna?

Anyway, in short, “I think Betty is purr-fect” Cat says. Blech. Just kick me in the fucking balls, dude.

”Twin Spin” – Mike Pellowski

What more could Betty possibly offer us today?! Well, how about her adventures in babysitting a couple of pesky young twins? We can inject some fun into this, right?

The Turner twins look like Dennis the Menace and they whine more than me, if you can believe it! Betty has driven them to the forest so she can hang them both from a tree, but they’re fighting and pulling her arms and taking massive dumps on her face. Eddie and Freddie are their names. I would’ve named them Garfield and Nermal.

Betty finally drags them to the main attraction: a brand new playground! It’s enclosed so they can’t escape and steal airplanes and fly them into buildings and cause brand new, more interesting 9/11s. All Betty has to do is wait until they get tired and fall asleep and let the fire ants consume them.

Now’s our chance to run away forever, Little Freddie!

Unfortunately, Eddie had Augustus Gloop’d his way into the tubes and now Betty has to go in there and save him even though she’s four feet taller than him. She enters a tunnel called the “Sewer Rats Airlock #2” and bangs her head over and over again as she traverses the pitch blackness of Hell Itself. “Oooof! This is killing my back!” she says as she progresses further into her own grave.

She exits Airlock #3 and finds Freddie waiting up there already. How? He climbed the ladder! Betty lifts her fist and gets ready to deck him. “LADDER? Why didn’t you tell me there was a ladder?” It’s because he’s a little shit, that’s why.

As it turns out, Eddie was faking being trapped and, as she reaches into the bubble to push him through, Betty slips into the tube and falls down the slide, severing her spinal cord and rendering her a braindead quadriplegic. The kids have disappeared by the time she falls out of the slide and onto the sand. They tie her shoelaces together while she stands up looking around the playground. She trips and gets so fucking angry that she blows fire out of her mouth and incinerates the twins to big crunchy crisps.

After spending the better part of the afternoon torturing Betty to an early death, the two kids are bushed. “Can we go home now and take a nap?” asks one of them. They’re wearing identical clothes like a couple of geeks.

“YAWNS?!! That’s music to my ears, …especially when it’s a twin spin!” Betty exclaims befuddlingly.

Final Thoughts

That Betty is quite a card! And just think, there are about 40,600 more stories out there about her! How can one girl possibly get into so many adventures?

Looking forward to what the next 90-year-old comic book writer is going to do with these vapid characters.