Johanna Reads Archies: Jughead Enters Our World

The new story in Jughead & Friends Digest #23 is odd in an historical way. Dilton's figured out a way to store stuff in another dimension with his "infinite closet" invention. For most stories, this would be a fruitful premise in itself... but here, it's just a way to set up the real conflict, when Jughead falls through it and winds up in "our" world. Jughead happens to land in the comic book company that creates his stories. (It's a lovely fantasy, the idea of writers and artists all in one office, working to create comics, although it's never been true in the modern age.)

The writer winds up showing Jughead how a comic story is created. Given this publisher, the process unsurprisingly winds up being editor-heavy and includes a feature panel for the company production artists, although it isn't explained exactly what they do. (Usually, redraw things at the last minute to match editorial dictate or fix errors.)

I called this "historical" because it seems that during a long run, every comic book character winds up meeting his creator, usually when said creator can't think of any other premise for that month. I'd rather have seen the story about Dilton's invention and what it meant for selling real estate, or the one about Jughead wandering through alternate worlds, instead of yet another "how comics are made" essay.

Especially given that hand-waving endings that are typical of such metafiction. After all, when a character meets his creator, the writer can whip up whatever's needed to save the day. I'd give it an Awful, but that would mean caring about it, so it's an Eh.