After 75 years of publication, Archie is being rebooted for a new generation. This rebooted series will strip back the Archie gang to their core and rebuild them with fresh, modern, takes. Behind it all is the superstar creative team of Mark Waid (The Flash, Daredevil) and Fiona Staples (Saga) which makes this even more exciting! Read on to find more about this rebooted series as well as read a four-page preview.
For anyone who’s never read an Archie comic before the concept is pretty simple – it’s essentially about a group of teenagers, set in the fictional town of Riverdale. It’s one of those classic comics that has been around for 75 years in one form or another and has been a lot of fun – even if it’s a little campy. While in recent years it has become rather progressive in many ways, it’s always kept one foot in the past clinging onto many of the things it was in the 1950s.
With a reboot of this kind, there’s no better writer to take on the task that Mark Waid. Waid is a writer who is famous for taking the core of a character(s) and making something new and modern with them, while still paying tribute to what has come before. He did it with the Fantastic Four and more recently with Daredevil to critical and fan acclaim. So I have absolute confidence that he will be able to do the same with Archie and it will be just as great.
What makes the Archie reboot even more exciting is that the fantastic Fiona Staples is on art duties. You might know her from Saga, where she draws all kinds of aliens and strange things, but here she has a more grounded subject matter. It’s a treat to see how she has redesigned these characters. With modern fashions and hairstyles, her Archie characters are to the character’s core but feel more like teenagers in 2015 instead of 1950.
Based on what on the preview below, it appears that that have successfully brought Archie fully into 2015. The characters feel fresh but at the core their still the Archie characters, with their new design and the injection of humour and fun. It will be interesting to see how this rebooted Riverdale will be like once the series into full swing over the coming months.
Archie #1 is available from July 8th in all good comic book stores and digitally.
Take a look at four pages from Archie #1 and a selection of the 20 variant covers from Fiona Staples, Chip Zdarsky, Gerry Ordway and Genevieve F.T.
Have Your Say on Archie #1
What do you think of the rebooted Archie? Will you be reading Archie #1? Let me know in the comments below or via Facebook or Twitter.
This was swell! I can’t wait to read more! Where do I get my first copy?
I’m glad you enjoyed it, Joy! Archie #1 was released eight years ago so it’s probably best to try and track it down in trade paperback or digitally on Kindle.
I want to read this. I haven’t read Archie since I was a kid.