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.

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Grass Kings: Volume Three

The finale of the Grass Kings trilogy, and I think it does a great job wrapping things up. That’s not to say that everything gets wrapped up though. I think Matt Kindt put too much into this series and there wasn’t enough room for all of it. He would have been better to just stick with the serial killer story, which is quite well handled, and not brought in all the stuff about the billionaire with his own private army garrisoned on an island in the lake. Then the way the killer was blackmailing the sheriffs in Cargill just got dropped in without a lot of explanation. And I never understood how such a community was viable “off the grid,” or what its legal status was. When Maria here says that she’s in the Kingdom “illegally” I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about.

The art by Tyler Jenkins was firing on all cylinders. I loved the full-page pic of the sheriffs looking down off the dock to the bound body in the water. I was also impressed at how well Jenkins can draw horses and helicopters. You wouldn’t expect him to do both well. And even the faces seem filled out a little more, allowing a greater range of expressions and emotion.

Well, you want to end a series on a high note and I’d say this is the best of the three volumes so mission accomplished there. The whole concept was bigger and stranger than I think it had to be, but they brought it home in a way I thought was satisfactory.

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Contagion

A little disappointing. But I started out with low expectations that were quickly surpassed. I was thinking it would be a kind of Marvel Zombies, which it is, but the story really whips along and throws in what feels like half the Marvel Universe without losing too much focus. The main hero is the ever-lovin’ Thing, who is called into action when zombie-like creatures are found roaming the New York City subway (beneath Yancy Street, even). And yes, C.H.U.D. is referenced, which scored them an extra point.

What’s happened is an ancient evil in the form of a magic fungus (think green mold, not mushrooms) has been raised beneath the ancient city of K’un-Lun. And . . . then it travels to NYC. Don’t ask me how. It has the ability to take people over and absorb their powers, which makes it pretty tough to beat once it’s taken out the rest of the Fantastic Four and then the Avengers. The Thing is immune, as this sort of mold can’t infect his rocky exterior, but he can’t go clobberin’ it either because it just brushes him aside.

But here the story also got pretty hard to follow, since the consciousness of everyone the mold defeats goes into a sort of hive-mind repository within whoever the primary host happens to be. It’s up to Moon Knight to get inside the hive mind and figure out how to beat the mold, but I can’t for the life of me tell you how it’s done.

So it’s a decent idea, and I liked the range of heroes assembled, even if Iron Fist and Luke Cage, one of my favourite teams, had nothing much to do. Generally I felt that things sort of went downhill though, both in terms of the story (written by Ed Brisson) and the art (each of the five issues has a different artist, and I felt they got progressively weaker). The ending, which I’ve said I didn’t understand, was particularly soft, although there’s a nice coda with the Thing back in the ‘hood.

So, it’s a quickie and winds up feeling rushed what with having so many characters involved, but don’t expect too much and you should enjoy it.

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