Jughead: The Hunger Volume One

This title is part of a series published under the Archie Horror imprint, coming after Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and just before Vampironica. The basic idea is that Jughead is one of a long line of Jones family werewolves, with Betty being the latest werewolf hunter of the Cooper clan.

Volume One contains the one-shot comic that launched the series and then issues 1-3, along with some supplemental material and a teaser for Vampironica. The art is in a more realistic style than the usual Archie stuff, so things like Jughead’s needle nose are played down, though he still has his stupid hat and Archie is easily identified by his cross-hatching at the temples and dusting of freckles. Veronica and Reggie I found unrecognizable: Ronnie for being so skinny (a marker of her affluence?) and Reggie for just looking generic without any of the slick smugness of what I was used to. But otherwise the story leans into the characters as we all know them. Betty as werewolf hunter is the tough and practical girl next door; basically Buffy with bullets, a belly shirt, and torn jeans. Jughead is a reluctant monster, slave to his appetites. Reggie is the consummate schemer. Veronica is corruptible. Archie is the Everyman caught between all these different forces. Victims include the old (Ms. Grundy), the fat (Pop Tate), and the nerdy (Dilton Doiley).

This consistency in character underlines a point made by Archie writer Matthew Rosenberg in his introduction: that horror like this doesn’t subvert Archie’s vision of Americana so much as extend it. Horror is as American as apple pie and Norman Rockwell and the rest of the Riverdale gang anyway.

So everything seems to actually follow quite naturally, and I thought it made for a pretty good story. The only point where I had to complain was when the one werewolf gets shot up by the police and then later heals himself by squeezing all the bullets out of his flesh. Only these clearly aren’t bullets but bullet casings, which are discharged by the gun when the bullet is fired. There’s no way they would have been in the werewolf. I was kind of surprised somebody didn’t catch that, as even for someone who doesn’t work with guns a lot it’s a howler of a mistake.

Graphicalex