The Archie Wedding: Will You Marry Me by Michael E. UslanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Archie walks up Memory Lane and experiences two possible futures, one where he marries Veronica and one where he marries Betty.
The Betty vs. Veronica debate has been raging since Archie debuted in the 1940s, even though it's obvious Betty is the superior choice. Anyway, I wasn't reading Archie comics when this came out but Archie was having a massive 55% off sale so I snapped it up.
Rooted in Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, Archie's on the cusp of graduating high school when he goes for a stroll up Memory Lane and into possible futures with Betty and Veronica. There's no Uatu The Watcher or the Ghost of Christmas Past but the flavor is the same.
The timelines are both interesting enough. The Veronica timeline sees Archie working for Hiram Lodge and fathering twins with Veronica. The Betty timeline sees Archie and Betty becoming teacher at Riverdale High and having twins. Jughead marries Midge in that timeline, which I found odd but interesting. Was it a sign of the time this was written that people getting laid off was a feature of both timelines? Archie must be carrying the twin gene to father twins in both timelines.
The writing was okay, I guess. It's an Archie book so there's only so much you can do. Uslan worked some references to other comics, like The Fly, The Shield, and the infamous introduction of MJ in Spider-Man. Stan Goldberg did the art but I thought the characters looked off model at times and his versions of Betty and Veronica seemed off. It may be because I'm Dan DeCarlo fan when it comes to classic Archie, though.
The Archie Wedding was an interesting tale in the vein of What If or Elseworlds starring America's favorite bunch of immortal teenagers. Three out of five stars.
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