Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Archie Meets the Punisher

I was never a huge comics fan as a kid and I only ever rarely indulge in reading them nowadays, so I don't talk much about them on this blog. Still, once I found out about the existence of this thing, I could scarcely not make a post about it:


As amusing as the cover is, it's nothing compared to the actual premise of the comic, which involved the Punisher going undercover in Riverdale (as a phys ed teacher at the local high school) to hunt down a drug dealer named "Red", who -- of course! -- looks a lot like Archie. Poking around the Net, I've seen multiple claims that the comic is actually quite fun, simultaneously being a love letter to Archie Comics and a self-aware send-up of "dark" superheroes like Frank Castle. I somehow find that hard to believe, but I suppose anything is possible.

13 comments:

  1. Did you notice the band playing at the dance? It's Josie and the Pussycats, who apparantly also make a cameo in the actual story, as well a few other characters. The sad thing, and I plead insanity as my defense, is that I think I read this book. I worked for many years at a major comic book distributor.

    If you get the chance check out my blog.

    http://havedicewilltravel.blogspot.com/

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  2. Well, the caption at the bottom of the cover kind of indicates that you might be right about the overall tone. :)

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  3. It's fun!

    Archie comics have been dabbling in "events" lately to boost sales and get publicity, this is one of their better ones.

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  4. I couldn't call it "good" but I didn't want a refund of the time I spent reading it so thats something.

    A comic like that could be played straight in the right kind of game, not D&D of course but maybe in Mercenaries Spies and Private Eyes or the Top Secret hack that we used back in the day.

    A band of PC's undercover as teachers at a high school has a lot of potential. The trick of course is playing the kids right. But if you can pull it off, it would make for a different sort of game.

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  5. Um, I own that comic, as well as the Marvel version.

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  6. Richard mentioned that he owned the Marvel version. I think it's worth pointing out that there was "Archie Meets the Punisher" by Archie Comies and the Marvel variant "The Punisher meets Archie" - a pretty neat crossover all things considered....

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  7. Chuck: This comic was published in 1994. Sixteen years isn't really "lately."

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  8. If Jughead would lay off the coke and Reggie the kiddie porn, Punny wouldn't have had to show up in Riverdale.

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  9. I thought it was a brilliant comic, personally. It was absolutely one of my all-time favorites of the crossover era of the late '90s. (Admittedly, that's much like saying "it's my favorite infected boil," but still... I dug it.)

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  10. Wait, a crossover comic from the 90's that didn't include Wolverine?

    Is that legal?

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  11. One of the things that made this comic great was that it wasn't by anyone from Marvel or the Archie stable, but rather Batton Lash, creator of "Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre" (aka Supernatural Law http://www.webcomicsnation.com/supernaturallaw/.) Oh, and Tom: Wolverine doesn't appear, but Professor X does, on the last page -- heralding sequel that never appeared, but surely would have featured Wolverine if it had...

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  12. This was a real comic?

    At first, I thought it was a spoof, like this.

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  13. No need to scorn this one; this really is a great send-up of the crossover culture of the era.

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