Everything’s Archie (5 of 5)

Somebody introduce these kids to the concept of polycules, please.

. . .

Let’s start with the obvious:  Archie is a wish fulfilment character for male writers and artists.  He’s not that smart, while he plays sports he’s as often a klutz as a hero, he’s constantly screwing up…

Yet he pursues and connects* with virtually every other female character in the Archieverse, including crossover from Josie And The Pussycats.

The two constants – and in my mind they’re related – is that he’s a pretty good musician, leading his own band and successfully getting them gigs, and teen females all seem to go ga-ga over him…usually.

There are stories where he strikes out trying to date some newcomer, but regular characters are all willing to connect with him.

Why is that?  Archie isn’t exceptionally empathetic, he frequently forgets important dates such as birthdays and anniversaries, he creates havoc that leave his companions battered and disheveled, he’s always short of cash, but lordie, he gets plenty of action.

How much action, you ask?  He gets so much action that Jughead occasionally benefits from it, that’s how much action he gets.

So what’s his secret?  As Sherlock Holmes would say, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains -- however improbable -- must be the truth.

It’s gotta be the music.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breasts, as the bard famously observed, and there are lots of breasts Archie can soothe.  No one thinks Archie will ever big a big star, but clearly something in his performance** arouses intensely romantic feelings in the majority of teen females in Riverdale.

. . .

The Archiverse vacillates between Archie playing the field and Archie going steady with Veronica.

Veronica Lodge is the daughter of a relatively wealthy man (if you have a big house, a swimming pool, and a butler in comics, you are de facto wealthy).

So why isn’t Veronica is some exclusive boarding school?

To my way of thinking, for all her haughty demeanor, Veronica is a bit of an emotional basket case.  She has abandonment issues – it’s well established her mother travels a lot for a variety of reasons and is rarely home, her father is semi-retired but awfully self-involved and fully capable of just splitting for a week or two to check on an investment.

Small wonder she attempts to assert dominance at Riverdale High, in particular nabbing Archie as her main squeeze (she plays the field, too, but not nearly to the degree Archie does and she is never made to feel guilty for doing so).

Female Archieverse characters are so much more complex than female characters in superhero books. Despite her smug aloofness, Ronnie is consumed with abandonment issues which explains why she’s besties with her worst rival; she knows Betty will never abandon her no matter what conflicts they have.

Her relationship with Betty is that of frenemies (in fact, Betty may have actually coined the term).  Their rivalry over Archie wages in degrees of intensity from bush league border incidents to all out nuclear war, but among the myriad other characteristic Betty possesses, empathy is one and deep down she recognizes Veronica’s fear of abandonment and will never give up on her, no matter how intense their competition.

Veronica recognizes this in turn and would never drive Betty away, no matter how intense their competition.

. . .

And Betty? Sweet, demure girl-next-door?  Not by a long shot. 

Betty is the most sex-crazed of all the characters in the Archieverse. 

it's canon that Betty has twice tied Archie up and ravaged him on camera to antagonize Veronica, attempted to murder him twice and came close enough to hospitalize him both times, and disguised herself as a male to SA other female students at Riverdale High. 

In addition to all that, she’s suffered repeated head trauma, amnesia on numerous occasions, is known to pop pills no matter what Al Hartley says, and has gone so far as to make a deal with the diabolical to get her hands (and presumably other body parts) on Archie.

Betty Cooper is just FnCkInG iNsAnE with a canonical list of felonies that in real life would earn her decades in a supermax prison.  Mr. Inferno had no idea who he was dealing with.

. . .

Finally, we do not approve of slut shaming here at Casa Dixon.  While certain behaviors may not appeal to us nor would we recommend them, we adhere to the live-and-let-live principle of keeping our nose out of other people’s business so long as they willfully and competently consent to those behaviors.

That being said, we gotta ask:  Who’s freakier, Archie or Midge?

Yeah, all the attention gets drawn to Betty and Veronica, with Big Ethel and Sabrina batting clean-up and Josie & The Pussycats making special crossover appearances but holy cow, Midge bangs like a screen door in a hurricane.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it!!!

Midge is as much of a player as Archie.  While Moose is her main squeeze, she likes playing the field.  She and Moose have a co-dependent relationship; she gets off on cheating on him then watching him punish the guys she lures in, he gets off on her cuckolding him and providing an excuse for him to brutalize someone.

Follow Archie comics long enough and you realize Midge’s libido rivals that of Archie, the titular horndog.  Ostensibly Moose’s steady girl, she’s constantly luring Reggie into compromising situations that result in Moose beating the unholy crap out of him.

We’ve already commented on the inherent cruelty in the Archies’ treatment of Moose over the decades, the never-ending insults and condescension towards him.  Midge frequently displays frustration at Moose’s intellectual shortcomings, but it’s canon she finds him physically exciting.

To his credit -- and that of the Archie writers who script him -- Moose never displays physical hostility to any female characters and treats Midge with nothing but kindness and gentleness and respect bordering on awe.

Problem is, while Midge is addicted to the big Moose, she craves variety as well.  In a normal, healthy relationship, she would either tell Moose to lay off on beating her other boyfriends or break off the relationship with him.

Instead, she’s constantly flirting with other guys, dating them, clearly enjoying the physicality of such relationships, then when she’s bored watches with feigned dismay as Moose pounds the crap out of them.

The only question is does she then play out the script by apologizing to Moose for her two-timing and make it up to him, or does Moose apologize to her for pulverizing her date and crawls back to her begging forgiveness?

No matter how you slice it, a sick relationship.

And it only gets sicker when one figures Reggie into the equation as her most frequent boytoy / chew rag for Moose.

As the group Worm Quartet famously observed in their masterpiece “A Great Idea For A Song”, lab rats don't push levers after taking an electric shock or two, so why would Reggie keep returning like a moth to a flame unless he gets off on it?

It sounds like the ideal relationship for this triad would be cuck-humiliation, with Reggie constantly tormented to his secret delight by Moose and Midge literally rubbing his nose in their sexual shenanigans.

Considering how crappy the Archies treat Moose, it sounds like fair play for a change.

Y’know, Midge and Moose have a pretty toxic co-dependent relationship. Reggie’s sus, too, since he’s always falling for it.

…so there ya go, good, clean,
wholesome comics for kids.

© Buzz Dixon

* That’s the euphemism we’ll go with.

** Read into that what you will, you sick little monkeys.