Testing Teen Tragedy In Archie #21

by Vince Brusio

Mark Waid has been at the wheel for Archie long enough to get the lay of the land. Now he’s taken off the seat belt. Time to throw caution to the wind, and head out to that highway through the danger zone. That’s what the hungry crowd always wants. The thrill. The chill. And the unexpected. Which is what gets underway in Archie #21 (APR171312). Yes, there’ a roadblock that was put in place for this comic, and lo and behold, someone didn’t stop in time. Now readers are being invited to the car crash, and Mark Waid teases out some details about the blonde that was in the crosshairs in this PREVIEWSworld Exclusive interview!

**********

Vince Brusio: What’s the fun factor been for writing Archie this far? Have you been holding back, and just testing the waters as the series got its start? Have you had any internal dialogue with yourself, asking if maybe you want to try different things as the title matures?

Mark Waid: It is important to change up your pitch every once in a while, not just for yourself as a writer but in order not to let the audience get bored. I always knew that once we'd fleshed out the cast fully, it was time for some of their mistakes to have real consequences.

Vince Brusio: In speaking the several tongues of characters that populate Riverdale, how comfortable are you with some personalities, as opposed to other voices that make you pay closer attention to how you write?

Mark Waid: The "main" five characters — Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and Reggie — have voices I can lock onto effortlessly. I do pay closer attention to the supporting characters, both because some of them have never had definitive personalities and because we're working very hard to make Riverdale a more inclusive environment that's not so overwhelmingly white-bread.

Vince Brusio: Tell us about this new storyline that begins in issue #21. It appears as though some new ground is being broken. Are we to expect some kind of nuclear fallout?

Mark Waid: Oh, God, yes. That's why we wanted to tell this story — to show how these kids handle themselves under extreme, stressful circumstances. How they're finally confronted with the reality that small, poor decisions sometimes end up having big ramifications. 

Vince Brusio: When you conceived this new storyline, is it something that you’ve been building towards? What lit the fuse? Piles and piles of notes were suddenly condensed into a cohesive legible thought? Or was this something that just dropped out of the sky?

Mark Waid: Approving a story of this magnitude is obviously above my pay grade as a freelancer, but when we all began talking about whose absence would create the most drama, my editors and I honed in on Betty pretty quickly. We didn't have a way to tell it, however, until Archie CEO Jon Goldwater said he wanted to see a drag race story soon, and that told half our story for us.

Vince Brusio: Are you moving forward on this story by yourself, or is there someone else riding shotgun? Someone else who’s playing Dr. Gonzo to your Hunter S. Thompson? Is Mark Waid bouncing any ideas off of an unnamed partner to see how things sound before he commits his fingers to the keyboard?

Mark Waid: Trust me, I don't work well in a vacuum. Both Tom Peyer and up-and-comer Lori Matsumoto are great sounding boards for me, whether it's to talk out "wait, how do I get from A to B in this plot?" to "check me to make sure this dialogue sounds authentic." In my experience, most of the time the best ideas come from bouncing them around between creative people. I'm still the lug that has to do the typing on this story, but their advice and counsel is invaluable.

**********

Vince Brusio writes about comics, and writes comics. He is the long-serving Editor of PREVIEWSworld.com, the creator of PUSSYCATS, and encourages everyone to keep the faith...and keep reading comics.