It’s day 4 of 7 days of Jughead, and Jughead v2 #29 from 1992 is a big one. The thrust of the main story is the adage don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Major Spoiler Alert: Grandma Jones is friends with some skate punks who buy groceries for her and in return she lets them have band practice in her garage. Meanwhile Jughead is completely out of the loop. Spend some time with your Grandma Jughead, you never know how those punks will take advantage of her kindness… but it turns out the punks are tired of being misunderstood. They give (!) Jughead an extra skateboard, and Grandma Jones’ guitar teacher (wild!) encourages Jughead to be his own person, so Jughead reinvents himself as a skate punk! It turns out this short-lived character transformation was not well received by the Archie community… Yes, there is an Archie community. In any case, there’s a lot to unpack in my favorite episode of Freaks and Geeks… errr… uhm, Jughead.
That cover is pretty striking, even if it’s just a one color version of the corner box art they debuted in v2 #28. I don’t know about you but my eyballs sure did bug out as promised. I thought Grandma Jones looked really youthful in some of the frames but it turns out I wasn’t paying attention because it was actually Big Ethyl. The main story is titled “To See or Not To See.” The title is written in cool graffiti style, and as per the norm, the skateboard styles are a little behind the times, definitely an 80’s vibe compared to the already dominant popsicle stick style of the early 90’s. Still, that may be the closest they came to being with the times, only missing by a few years instead a decade.
I have to interrupt the gallery to highlight what may be the best panel ever in a Jughead. “Don’t look now, (Jeffery is blind actually) but there’s some weird-looking Punks and Skateboarder kids coming towards us. This is what passes for “weird” in Archie comic books, circa 1992.
No, they weren’t going to rough you up, and no, they don’t wanton be made fun of. Turns out they know Grandma Jones too! Everyone looks like best friends now.
Back to our story, where we eventually learn the skate punks are named Slug, Stinky, Smog, and Smug! Will we ever see them again? I hope so…
Speaking of the glorious new Jughead, not everyone loved him. Witness 8 Reasons Why Jughead’s Skate Punk Makeover Was a Huge Mistake where author Chris Cummins dissects the Jughead reboot in much the same way Skate and Annoy comments on skateboarding in popular culture. If you care about Archie comics, he makes a lot of good points, even though I would disagree that anything under that imprint ever had “smart humor.”
Here’s a couple panels from another story in #29, Shirt of my Dreams. These are the only panels with a skateboard.
There’s one more story that’s kind out there. In Genius or Guinea Pig, Dilton creates an army of animated killer custard pies to get revenge on Jughead. I’m not sure why he wants revenge on Jughead, possibly because he thinks Jughead and Anita are an item, as Anita was spotted wearing Jughead’s hat when she was first introduced to the gang in issue #28. Man, this is complicated. Somehow Jughead doesn’t end up eating the pies, and instead recognizes them as belong to Dilton, so he brings them to Dilton’s parents. The pies explode and Dilton gets in trouble. In the world of Archie, giving life to inanimate objects is no big deal.
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