#techno's jughead reread

[arotechno]

Jughead (2015), Aromanticism and Representation Part 2: Zdarsky, North, and the Word of God

When I reviewed Zdarsky and North’s arcs in the Jughead (2015) comics, I noted the differences between their portrayals of Jughead’s aromanticism. Namely, Zdarsky’s work is a lot more subtle but ultimately feels like it was written specifically with aromanticism in mind, whereas North’s work is more on-the-nose but is sometimes grating or uncomfortable when it comes to the reactions of other characters. I want to talk a bit more about that here, and then I want to talk about canonization and the value of word-of-god representation.

Firstly, Zdarsky. Chip Zdarsky is credited with canonizing Jughead’s asexuality on the page, and his aromanticism via the word of god. Ryan North stayed true to this portrayal when he picked up the series following the conclusion of Zdarsky’s run.

If you’ll recall, the vast majority of Zdarsky’s run (the first six of eight issues) do not pay much attention to Jughead’s orientation at all, although this section does contain the first (and only) textual use of the word “asexual” in the entire series. This would make most folks inclined to believe that Zdarsky did not consider it at all, but I personally am more than okay with not every story factoring in Jughead’s orientation, and the arc he did write on the topic (issues 7­-8) more than makes up for it in my opinion. This is the arc where Jughead and Archie get lost camping, and the following exchange takes place:

I have written at length about this scene in particular, so I will be brief in noting the following:

(1) Jughead’s hurt is palpable, and beautifully portrayed. Whereas other writers may have played such an exchange for laughs, Zdarsky validates Jughead’s feelings of abandonment, hurt, and isolation in this arc, while managing not to villainize Archie in the process.

(2) Archie not only knows immediately that he fucked up, but very quickly apologizes. His actions are not justified, and his reaction suggests that not only is he aware of Jughead’s orientation, but he respects it and him enough to make amends for hurting his best friend.

(3) Never is Jughead being aroace mentioned explicitly here, but to any reader paying attention, it comes off quite obviously. If you take Jughead being aroace as an implicit truth about his character, which is the way Zdarsky confirmed he was writing him, it becomes abundantly clear that this is what Archie refers to when he uses the phrase “a normal guy,” and that this is the source of their inability to understand each other and the strain it is having on their friendship.

Now, when Ryan North took over, he accepted Zdarsky’s canonization as gospel and ran with it, a fact for which I am quite thankful. His primary arc is the one with Sabrina, in which Jughead accidentally agrees to a date with his newfound friend and has to figure out how he is going to explain the misunderstanding—or, better yet, just keep trying to escape her affections until the problem magically (ha) goes away.

North is much more explicit about Jughead being aromantic, while still not using the word. Jughead uses phrases like “I don’t get crushes” and “I don’t like people that way,” and visibly panics over the realization that he accidentally agreed to a for-real date.

These scenes are really great, and the time that North took to put Jughead in a situation that directly required addressing his aromanticism is incredibly valuable. However, there are aspects of North’s portrayal that bother me. To summarize my previous thoughts on the matter:

(1) North depicts the situation with a lot of nuance, being certain to address the ways in which Jughead is screwing up while also validating his very real feelings. The ultimate resolution is heartwarming and satisfying in that Jughead is finally able to be honest with Sabrina, and Sabrina accepts and supports him wholeheartedly, allowing them to finally be friends.

(2) However, Jughead’s existing friends are woefully unhelpful every step of the way. Of course, this is in many ways realistic; many aros have people in their lives who are quick to dismiss their aromanticism the moment they feel it might no longer be true. With Archie, this borders on a continuity error—but that is the cost of switching writers so frequently. But the issue is that his friends are never prompted by the narrative to apologize. They meddle and push Jughead into going through with the date without ever listening to what he wants—something he comments on—and the only character who gets a resolution on this front is Sabrina, by necessity.

(3) North being clearly unafraid of expressing Jughead’s aromanticism is refreshing, but the lack of accountability on his friends is kind of uncomfortable, and it makes it hard to play those moments for laughs.

Which of these is better? Which has more value? The truth is I think that either arc being removed from the story would be to its detriment, and in a perfect world we’d have gotten the best of both portrayals in one. However, it is worth pointing out the differences between them for the sake of acknowledging that representation can be done in different ways, each with their own costs and benefits. Zdarsky’s portrayal cuts deep and shows a more subtle portrayal of aromanticism as it affects relationships, but that subtlety means that aromanticism is taking more of a backseat focus. Meanwhile, North’s portrayal is much more on-the-nose and is expressed much more obviously, but it leaves something to be desired in terms of how it holds other characters accountable.

Both, however, have something very crucial in common. And this is that neither Chip Zdarsky nor Ryan North ever used the word “aromantic” on the page.

Three years ago, I spoke at length about this for the Carnival of Aros, and I expressed distrust that someone like Zdarsky would have ever thought about Jughead’s romantic orientation without having been prompted first. That may be true, but nevertheless on subsequent rereads I’ve softened on that position somewhat. Perhaps we don’t know if either of them would have eventually used the word on the page had they gotten more time, or if later writers (not Waid lol) would have had the series not been discontinued. There is a universe in which we eventually got an on-the-page confirmation with a satisfying emotional journey to boot, but sadly we live in a universe where R*verdale became more popular and Archie Comics stopped producing Jughead comics several years ago, and that is the reality I went into this (already incredibly long) post intending to contend with.

Zdarsky once said via Twitter that he was writing Jughead as, for the purposes of his teen years, aromantic, and that he sees him as probably demiromantic later in life. I still don’t know how I feel about that comment, and I suppose I will let demiromantic people decide that one. In any case, the fact is that Zdarsky never used the word on the page, and North never did either. But my question is, how much does it matter?

The short answer is that of course it matters. On-the-page confirmation with the words explicitly used leaves no room for misinterpretation, increases awareness of the identity, and is super important for communities like ours in particular that have next to nothing in that regard. Using the word on the page would have been huge in 2015 and it would still be huge now. But it was 2015. And for 2015, Zdarsky gave us a pretty good start.

Yes, it matters. But representation being confirmed via the word of god does not necessarily make it bad representation. In fact, I think Jughead is stellar aroace representation, especially for teenagers. To say, in any respect, that such an icon of pop culture is aspec and to then go on to work that into your story, even if the words never make it onto the page, holds a lot of cultural power, and in fact Zdarsky made a lot of people mad with this. If given the hypothetical choice, which would you rather have? A character like Jughead, a main character in his own series that actually has his aromanticism addressed and portrayed with respect but is never written out directly, or a character who is confirmed on-screen as aromantic with the words but is a side character whose aromanticism is never important and only exists for tokenized representation brownie points? Every time someone recommends something with an aro character to me, I’m like, does it matter? Are they important, is their aromanticism important, or are they just an exasperated shipper-on-deck side character who the creators can slap a pride flag edit on? Because the truth is I’d rather have Jughead. Sure, I’d rather have it all, but I can’t. So in the absence of such perfection, I’ll take word-of-god canon with respect and impact and good intentions over tokenism.

To be clear: I am not trying to praise Zdarsky and North outright for what should be the bare minimum in staying true and faithful to decades of pre-existing characterization. In fact, I do still believe that to not use the word aromantic on the page was cowardly, and I wish they had done it, and I wish we’d gotten more Jughead comics to see what else we could have gotten as the years went on. But what we did get, for all its flaws, has value, and I’m probably never going to be done talking about it. Though I am, for now. This essay is long enough already.

#hi to the person who told me to ramble more i hope this is what you meant #techno's jughead reread #aro #aromantic #aro representation #jughead #jughead comics #aro jughead #aroace jughead #jughead 2015 #long post #op

[arotechno]

Jughead (2015), Aromanticism and Representation Part 1: The Mark Waid Fiasco

So, here’s the thing.

I was going to finish my arc-by-arc reread and review of the Jughead reboot. I was! But that was nearly a year ago now, and I kind of got distracted with a busy summer and moving and then a bunch of other stuff got in the way. And so really, I was going to finish. But the truth is, the last volume is either not super interesting for me to talk about or it’s the Mark Waid bit that I just really didn’t want to go through the trouble of getting screencaps and doing analysis for and so on. But I’m also not done talking about Jughead (I never will be) and I said before that I had some more overarching commentary I wanted to eventually put out, so here we are. So let’s talk about representation. Namely, I want to talk about the differences between Zdarsky and North’s portrayals of Jughead’s aromanticism. But in order to do that, we have to address the elephant in the room. We have to talk about Mark Waid.

First, a brief summary of volume three, just for context, since I never got around to it: Ryan North finishes off his run with a relatively lighthearted short arc where due to Jughead fucking up in a video game bet, the gang is forced to treat Reggie like a king for a week and do everything he says. They end up starting a really terrible band, things get out of hand, Jughead accidentally uploads a public video of them that implodes all of their social lives… it’s fun and goofy and can be basically summed up as Jughead Experiences Consequences, Wacky Hijinks Ensue.

The last two issues of the Jughead reboot ever released were written by Mark Waid and Ian Flynn. For the sake of focusing on the source material itself, the final arc consists of Sabrina accidentally casting a spell that makes everyone obsessed with Jughead. The problem is, since Jughead is super aroace and touch averse, this very quickly becomes a very uncomfortable situation. Now, I actually don’t hate these last two issues, and it’s not like Waid and Flynn retconned Jughead’s orientation or anything as drastic as that. The problem was with how the storyline was promoted and sensationalized prior to these issues even being released, and with Waid’s attitude in general.

I can’t find any record of Waid’s tweets about this because he deleted them all. Literally, I’ve searched his profile and all of his tweets from 2017 after January 5 are gone, or else Twitter is glitching like crazy. But there is this one that he wrote in reference to Trump not long before his Jughead run was announced, and uhh…

I don’t know how to explain why this is bad, but it made aspec fans very nervous to see this kind of behavior and then find out that Waid was picking up Jughead, an aroace character.

Further alarm was raised when the synopsis for the new storyline was announced. It originally read as follows:

“Sabrina the Teenage Witch tries to do something nice for Jughead, but it ends up creating a comedy of errors in which he is the most desired bachelor in town! From the new writing team of Mark Waid (Archie) and Ian Flynn (Sonic the Hedgehog).”

This was… concerning, to say the least. A cover art in which Jughead is depicted surrounded by women and grinning was also circulated, which made a lot of aroace fans very uncomfortable (though it should be noted that this was an alternative cover, and not the one drawn by Derek Charm that ended up in the issue):

Once issues 15 and 16 were eventually released, things kind of died down a bit, at least from where I was standing. Like I said, the storyline as it actually appears in the comics is not really all that bad. As a basic plotline, I don’t find it particularly problematic; however, the issue that I still have with it to this day is that it doesn’t feel like it was written or promoted for aspec people to enjoy. It was a storyline about borderline sexual harassment that was played entirely for laughs for a straight audience, right down to the way it was described in the initial synopsis for issue 15. Zdarsky and North, in different ways, both wrote with what I felt was a great deal of care and attention paid to making sure Jughead’s orientation was portrayed respectfully without being his entire character. I don’t know what role Ian Flynn had in all this, because all of the criticism and back-and-forth that eventually got deleted seemed to be focused on Mark Waid—but needless to say, issues 15 and 16, while not bad writing, feel a lot more careless than aspec people deserved.

I don’t think Mark Waid is an awful person and my intention isn’t to restart the discourse or “cancel” Waid by posting this. I think he’s a deeply flawed person and kind of an asshole who wasn’t the right person to write Jughead and treated fans very disrespectfully in response. I think he’s a coward for deleting the evidence, and I’m disappointed that issues 15 and 16 were the last that we ever got, but at the same time I shudder to think what worse damage he may have done in later issues had he been given the chance. This is the exact opposite of how I feel about the Zdarsky and North arcs, and I want to talk about that more in a later post (that one will be more fun!), but for now I felt that I could not get into a deeper commentary on aro representation in the Jughead reboot without addressing Mark Waid first. It felt disingenuous not to.

Anyway, before I go I just want to add that when I went onto Mark Waid’s Twitter, I found out that today, by complete coincidence, happens to be his birthday. So I hope he enjoys this gift of continuing aro rage. <3

And if any of you happen to find those tweets (or anything else pertinent to this discussion that I missed), please let me know!

#techno's jughead reread #aro #aromantic #aro representation #jughead #jughead jones #jughead comics #aro characters #aro jughead #actually aromantic #long post #op

[arotechno]

Jughead (2015), Issues 9-11: Discussion and Commentary

This brings us to the first arc written by Ryan North, who saw that the aroace Jughead train had left the station and simply could not resist tagging along for the ride. If you’ve followed anything about Jughead as a character at all, then you’ve probably seen many screenshots from these three issues before. It’s the Sabrina arc (that’s right, as in the teenage witch)!

I have a lot of analysis at the end of this one, so buckle up!

The gang ends up at Pop’s, as usual, where Jughead meets the shop’s new mascot, a talking burger lady. Jughead is, unsurprisingly, thrown off his game by this. After all, burgers are his one true love, but girls? He doesn’t really have an interest in them. It’s a confusing moment for him, and when his friends witness this, well… they assume he’s got a crush on her.

This is an iconic page in the “aro Jughead” canon. Here we have Betty trying really hard to be a good friend and doing what in her mind is the best for him, trying to help him through what she and the others perceive as his first crush. Jughead, meanwhile, is diving headfirst into a spiral of confusion (and later, discomfort) at the idea of having any sort of interest in another person.

I want to give my utmost respect to Ryan North for explicitly having Jughead say that he doesn’t get crushes. It’s not the only time that North does this during this arc, and I think it makes all the difference between making this awkward and relatable rather than making it seem like Jughead is being stripped of or “cured” of being aro.

Betty pushes Jughead to talk to Sabrina (the burger lady—it’s Sabrina), and after a while of running into each other day in and day out as Jughead frequents Pop’s on a regular basis, they strike up a friendship. Jughead has gotten what he wanted—to be friends with the cool burger lady—and he seems genuinely satisfied.

…But unfortunately, things do not go as planned for Jughead. The next time they see each other, Sabrina asks Jughead out. And Jughead, in true stereotypical oblivious aro fashion, agrees, without realizing until it is much, much too late that what he has just agreed to is a date. Like, a real date.

If you think about it, Jughead has probably never been asked on a real date before. And this is something I ABSOLUTELY would have done (and may still do today, if I’m completely honest with myself) as a teenager. Jughead’s immediate regret is so palpable here, and so relatable to me as an aromantic.

In his panic, Jughead turns to his friends for help. They are… not helpful. They’re trying to be helpful, sure, but whereas Jughead doesn’t really seem to want to go through with this at all, his friends are more set on giving him romantic advice (with varying degrees of usefulness). Jughead really has to go out of his way to defend himself and insists on multiple occasions that he thinks the girl in the burger costume is cool and interesting, but that he doesn’t like-like her, he doesn’t even really know her!

Unfortunately for Jughead, he ends up going on the date. And who does he call for help? His only other openly queer friend (I say openly because let’s be real with ourselves, none of those kids are cishet), Kevin Keller.

And okay, this scene with Kevin is genuinely kind of funny. You get the impression that Kevin has had a lot of practice dealing with straight bullshit, and that he’s more than a little disappointed that Jughead’s “big emergency” turned out to be something this totally mundane and not worth his time.

Ultimately, Kevin is also super not helpful, even after Jughead steals his phone in an attempt to get him to come to the table and diffuse the awkward situation Jughead has found himself in. So Jughead resorts to what I can only assume is plan Z, which is to call Archie for backup.

Only semi-related, I really love the way Ryan North writes conversations between these two. It just feels really genuine and believable. And anyway, I don’t know what Jughead was expecting, but resident himbo Archie Andrews is of no help to him, and only ends up making things a hell of a lot worse.

This leads to Sabrina rushing off to the bathroom and casting multiple spells to try to get Jughead to at least play along, if not outright fall in love with her, all of which fail spectacularly and only end up making her far angrier with him. I don’t blame her for being upset—the date was a total disaster, and right at the moment Jughead was about to be honest with her, Archie showed up and made things worse. Sabrina storms out, and vows that she’ll get revenge on Jughead for this, somehow.

All of Sabrina’s subsequent spells on Jughead also backfire. She tries to make him fail his classes, and he passes with flying colors; she tries to make him spend the whole day with resident asshole Reggie, but he ends up befriending him against all odds. She even ends up unleashing a giant eldritch horror by accident, and—well, that’s not important.

In the end, Jughead decides to make things right. He never meant to hurt Sabrina, and she seems to be in a tough spot, having just moved to town, so he brings her some food as a peace offering and explains what really happened. And Sabrina is… surprisingly receptive, in fact more receptive than Jughead’s friends were when he came to them for help, despite the fact that this is something they should already understand about him. Being upset with Jughead wasn’t doing her any favors, so Sabrina already seems to be at peace with what happened and is more than willing to forgive him and be his friend despite all that transpired between them.

This is a really great scene. There’s a nuance to it—the way Jughead acted on their date was unfair, both to Sabrina and to himself. He needed to be honest from the beginning, but instead, he just kept trying to escape. At the same time, Sabrina gets it, and it wasn’t very cool of her to try to use magic to get what she wanted, either (not that Jughead knows she did that).

Jughead helps Sabrina re-enroll in her old school and quit her job at Pop’s to move back in with her aunts, so that she can live out the rest of her teenage years the way she’s supposed to. Afterwards, Sabrina and Jughead both seem really happy, and thus volume two ends on a positive, quiet note.

I really like this arc, for the reasons I’ve already stated and more. It’s funny and awkward and endearing (I say that a lot about this series, don’t I?), and it portrays a realistic and relatable aromantic problem without it being aboutaromanticism. It’s more about Jughead being honest about his feelings and making a new friend than about Jughead being aro, even though that contextualizes the situation. A great deal of the series is about that—Jughead being honest with himself and others. In the first arc, it’s Jughead shaking off a persona of apathy. In the second, it’s Jughead being honest with Archie about their friendship and the way Archie’s behavior has been making him feel. Here, it’s about Jughead being honest about who he is at his core, and accepting it about himself—and Sabrina accepts it, too, no questions asked. Even if he never says “I’m aromantic,” the sentiment is there plain as day, and it’s a refreshing beat for the story to land on.

That said, I do have a bone to pick with this arc. There’s a line in the sand here between Zdarsky and North. In the last arc, we saw Zdarsky portray that really subtle but meaningful interaction between Archie and Jughead, in which Archie seems not only keenly aware of Jughead being aromantic—even without the word—but also tacitly supportive of him, such that he knows immediately when he’s crossed a line. Here, we see Ryan North take a bit of a step back from that, such that Archie may be aware of Jughead’s orientation but seems way too quick to assume all that’s changed the moment there’s even a sliver of possibility that Jughead has a crush. That’s the reality of having different writers stepping in to interpret the same characters in loosely connected stories like this, but it still bothers me. I prefer Zdarsky’s style of storytelling in general, but in particular I also prefer his portrayal of Archie, as much as Ryan North’s on-the-nose aro moments and undying love for Reggie make me very happy. As a whole, nobody ever stops to ask Jughead what he wants, they only tell him what they think Sabrina wants. Jughead says so himself:

I suppose one could make the argument that Jughead’s friends, or even Jughead himself, are only really aware of the asexual bit (if at all—for all we know Veronica and Reggie have no idea, for example) and that’s why they don’t only never mention aromanticism but also sometimes seem ignorant of it. It’s possible that the aro side of Jughead’s orientation is still something he doesn’t have the words for, despite it being a truth he knows about himself, and in fact I think that would have been an interesting angle to take, had this series continued beyond 15 issues. But what I have an issue with isn’t so much the fact that Jughead’s friends are unhelpful (because let’s be real, sadly a lot of us have been there), but the fact that never are they asked to apologize for pushing him to do something he so clearly didn’t want to do. Whether he or they know he’s aromantic or not, he was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of going on this date—and not just due to a lack of experience. I would have liked it had Archie, or Betty, or Kevin apologized, or even once asked him what he really wanted. Betty comes the closest, by talking it out with him in the first place, but even she still earnestly pushes him to go through with the date anyway.

Anyway, there are two arcs left for me to discuss, and frankly I’m not as enthused by either of them as I was for these past three, for a variety of reasons. The Ryan North train continues for one more arc, and then it’s on to Mark Waid and Ian Flynn’s big finish. Those two updates might come a little slower. Until then, I was going to include a compilation of Jughead looking uncomfortable, but I've only got one image slot left thanks to tumblr, so instead I leave you with this:

Same, Jughead. Huge same.

#mr. north i promise i respect you #techno's jughead reread #aro #aromantic #aro jughead #ace jughead #aroace jughead #jughead #jughead jones #jughead comics #op #long post

[arotechno]

Jughead (2015), Issues 7-8: Discussion and Commentary

Boy oh boy am I excited to talk about this arc!! These two issues hold a very special place in my cold little aro heart.

(By the way, do you see that? I managed to get a digital copy from my library via Hoopla, which means you are spared from my shitty phone grabs. I’ll fix the previous post, don’t worry. Try clicking on the screenshots if tumblr blurs them. And try Hoopla, if you’ve got a library card and have been looking to read these.)

Fed up with him sitting around the house playing video games all summer, Mr. Jones forces Jughead to get out of the house and do something outside. Jughead finds Archie at the pool where he’s working as a lifeguard, and convinces him to take time off to go camping in the woods with him at their friend Dilton’s cottage.

They take Archie’s car out to the woods, only to find that the lake is overrun with Reggie’s over-the-top relatives at the Mantle family reunion. Horrified, Jughead and Archie go out on a hike to get away. This is where things go downhill—literally.

Jughead calls Archie out for his growing fixation with Veronica Lodge, whose father is the one trying to clear out Fox Forest. Archie immediately goes on the defensive, but Jughead, understandably, really doesn’t get it. And here’s where we see that this is a divide that has been brewing between them for quite some time, even if Archie seemingly had no idea it was happening.

The boys end up getting lost, which only serves to fuel their frustrations. It occurs to Jughead, some time later, that the lake they’re camping at is not that far from Camp Lucey, an all-girls summer camp. Shocked and hurt, he accuses Archie of only agreeing to go on the trip to pick up girls, and not to hang out with him. He tackles Archie and they tumble down a hill into the woods below.

This is a really interesting story, from an aro’s perspective. Jughead can’t relate to Archie’s teenage obsession with girls, and it isn’t something they can bond over like other friends may have been able to do. On a simple level, all Jughead really wants to do is hang out with his best friend, just the two of them, just like old times—back when they were younger, before Archie’s interest in girls seemed to take over his every waking moment. Importantly, Jughead never objects to Archie’s romantic pursuits on principle (he does have an issue with Veronica, but that has to do more with her father’s actions than her). It isn’t that he wants to stand in the way of Archie’s happiness—he just feels left behind, and that’s something I think a lot of aromantic people, teenagers especially, can resonate with.

Eventually, Archie and Jughead run into Mr. Weatherbee of all people, who begrudgingly offers to help lead them back to camp. It’s at this point that we get one of my favorite moments in the entire series, one that I have waxed poetic about on this blog before and probably will again.

Archie insists that he is in fact here to hang out with Jughead, and that he’s just being dramatic. Jughead, on the other hand, insists that Archie’s the one being dramatic with his love triangle problems, to which Archie replies:

“Look, I’m not going to apologize for being a normal guy, I—”

And Jughead’s reaction to those words has stuck with me since the first time I read this. He’s shocked, hurt, and clearly a little angry that Archie would say something like that. And it’s a subtle moment, one that you might not even feel the gravity of if you didn’t know that Jughead was aro. What’s most important here, though, isn’t Jughead’s reaction, but the fact that Archie is clearly in the wrong, and he knows it. He tries to backtrack immediately (“Jughead! I didn’t mean it like that! Wait!”), but Jughead ignores him, as Mr. Bee has already gotten them lost again.

This singular page is, to me, a deeper and more nuanced portrayal than many works with “on-the-page” canon aromantic characters. This arc isn’t about Jughead being aro (in fact, none of the comics particularly are). But this is a meaningful incorporation of Jughead’s orientation into his daily life and his relationships with other people—namely, with his best friend. Although Jughead is being somewhat harsh with Archie, never does the narrative place him in the wrong for feeling abandoned, hurt, or angry because of Archie’s words and actions. Even Archie, his best friend, is capable of saying things that hurt him, and his words in this scene are never excused or justified by the narrative.

It also means a lot to me that Archie apologizes the second he gets the chance to, and that Jughead is quick to forgive him and explain that he just misses the time before Archie was so obsessed with girls. I wouldn’t want the story to just turn into a feud between them. You know when you’re on a trip with your friends and you get lost and you’re tired and frustrated you just end up airing your grievances and coming out of it with a new understanding of your friendship while trying to solve the mess you’re in? That’s what this arc is.

Anyway, after a run-in with Reggie’s relative and Mr. Weatherbee’s old high school bully Ted Mantle, the trio manage to make it out of the woods—after several hours of walking until the sun has come up. There, they find that Camp Lucey has actually been renamed, and is now a camp for elementary school girls, where Betty happens to be working. So after all of that, Archie just ends up making a fool of himself, like usual. Mr. Bee’s wife drives over to rescue them and brings the boys back to Dilton’s cottage, where she remarks that she’s heard a lot about Archie and Jughead, and that they’re inseparable.

At its core, this is a story about friendship. It’s about the difficulties that come with realizing you can’t always relate to each other, and you can’t always read each other’s minds, and you sometimes say the wrong thing without meaning to. It’s a story about growing up, but not necessarily growing apart, and being able to reconcile your differences.

Archie assumes that after all of their bickering, Jughead would just want to go home and not hang out with him anymore. But turning back now would be contrary to what Jughead wanted in the first place, which was just to hang out with his best friend.

All’s well that end’s well, and Jughead and Archie patch things over and vow that they will always be best friends. It’s a wholesome moment, and reflects a common struggle for aspec teens that I rarely see addressed in media, if at all. Sometimes, it feels like your friends are all moving on without you, and sometimes they don’t even realize it when they’ve been neglecting your friendship. It takes communication to work these things out, and I’m happy to see that illustrated here.

This arc is my favorite, I think, and there’s reasons for that even outside of the aspects I’ve already detailed here. The kids getting lost in the woods on summer vacation is a fun way of framing the deeper story, and there are a lot of funny and endearing moments in these two issues. (Archie falls on his face, a lot, and Mr. Weatherbee is stoically exasperated with both of their antics.)

These are the last issues written by Chip Zdarsky. So shoutout to him for some of the most nuanced representations of aromanticism in fiction to date, even if he never wrote the word down on the page (I’ll get to that, don’t worry). But these are the first issues illustrated by Derek Charm, whose art style I love (no offense Erica Henderson), and the rest of the volume has a lot of other good aro moments in store. Until then, here’s himbo Archie:

See? Pure of heart, dumb of ass. You can’t be mad at him for long. (He falls into a hole later on the same page.)

Yeah, me too.

#woo!!! #techno's jughead reread #aro #aromantic #aro jughead #ace jughead #aroace jughead #jughead jones #jughead comics #long post #op

[arotechno]

Jughead (2015), Issues 1-6: Discussion and Commentary

"I am like unto a god, Archie Andrews. Respect me as such."

Recently re-typed and ready to go, here is a broad discussion of the first volume of the Jughead reboot comic series. I was originally going to review each issue individually, but given that the first six comprise one story arc, I decided to do the whole volume in one go. That means this is a bit crunched for time and therefore not quite as in-depth as I wanted to go! But I encourage you to read the comics for yourself, if you are able.

This will not be spoiler-free, for the record! The images here are taken from my own copy using my phone, so they're not the best quality! But they also aren't especially crucial to this commentary, so you'll have to bear with me.

I just really like the inside cover art for this volume, alright (it's also the cover of issue 5)? I can't help it, I'm aro, I see heart imagery and something in my brain goes haywire.

When we first meet Jughead at the beginning of Volume 1, he comes off as lazy and apathetic, at least on the surface. After an all-nighter of playing video games, Jughead is dragged to school by Archie. There, they find that Betty has started a new campaign to save Fox Forest, a beloved local greenspace that is being threatened by Veronica’s wealthy father, Mr. Lodge. Jughead is… not very interested in Betty’s cause, to put it politely. It’s not that he doesn’t care about Fox Forest, but he does not believe that Mr. Lodge would be convinced to change his mind by a petition. He tells Betty as such, and she remarks that he lives a very hollow life.

“Man, you’re so cynical,” Archie tells him. “Is there anything you’d actually fight for?”

The answer is yes. What ultimately gets Jughead to fight for something? Food—well, kind of, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

When Archie and Jughead get to class, they learn that the principal of Riverdale High, Mr. Weatherbee, is being replaced out of the blue by a new guy called Stanger. Stanger is a stiff, serious type, and he immediately starts making changes: new uptight teachers, a strict dress code, new bootcamp-esque curriculum, and most importantly, supposedly nutritious slop to replace the food in the cafeteria.

This sends Jughead down a bit of a rebellious path—he’s not a rule-breaker, but he’s perfectly comfortable with bending the rules in his favor while narrowly skirting around getting into trouble. He starts selling burgers in the cafeteria, with the proceeds benefitting Betty’s fundraiser for Fox Forest.

(Hell yeah, Jughead, unionize that student body! Sell those burgers! You have nothing to lose but your chains!)

This stunt gets Jughead on Stanger’s bad side immediately, and a slowly simmering feud between them ultimately boils over when Stanger plants a knife in Jughead’s backpack to get him expelled. Thankfully, his dad is able to talk his sentence down to a week’s suspension, but that doesn’t stop his friends (and his mother) from worrying about him.

As an aside, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate Mr. Jones.

“Something’s off here and I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure Jughead didn’t bring a knife to school. My boy’s weird, but he’s not a criminal.”

I really like this line from him to Betty. He clearly knows his son and is willing to stand up for him, and it’s comforting to me, especially viewing the story through the lens of Jughead being aroace, that Mr. Jones is not at all bothered by his son being a bit on the strange side, as long as he’s still a good kid. Nothing but respect for Forsythe Jones II in this house.

Something fun and unique about this volume in particular is that in every issue, Jughead either falls asleep or passes out, and has an elaborate imaginative dream about the events of the story. In one he’s a pirate, for example, and in another he’s visited by a descendant of Archie’s from the future, who belongs to the time police. But towards the end of the volume, the line between these daydreams and reality seem to blur for Jughead. He comes to the conclusion in one particular nightmare that Stanger is trying to brainwash them all into becoming mindless agents for his evil organization—and then he realizes he may not be that far off from the truth.

Jughead brings this realization—that Stanger is using the school as a sort of training ground for secret agents—up to his friends, and understandably, they aren’t convinced. They worry that the compounded exhaustion of multiple all-nighters playing games and the stress of being suspended has started to get to Jughead, but he vows to prove it to them.

I mean, damn, Betty, that kind of hurts. (Don’t worry, Betty is actually a good friend, as I’m sure we’ll get into later in the series.)

To make a long story short (and to avoid spoiling the entire plot for those who haven’t read it!), Jughead does find proof, and once he does, his friends are immediately on board. They are ultimately able to save the day, and once it’s revealed that Stanger and the new teachers are ex-CIA trying to brainwash the students (no, seriously), Mr. Weatherbee is re-instated as principal and things return to normal.

I’m leaving out a lot of nuanced details, mostly for the sake of time, but there are a lot of surprisingly weighty moments to this first arc, and Zdarsky’s character writing is incredibly endearing and funny, while still hitting the serious moments when it needs to. There’s an interesting underlying commentary in this arc about military recruitment and U.S. propaganda; Stanger says that he specifically chose Riverdale because the students are so average. There’s something to be said here about the way the military industrial complex preys on average or underprivileged teenagers to convince them to serve when they feel they have no better path to take. It’s an almost funnily serious commentary for Zdarsky to make with a seemingly silly and off-beat comic series, and I respect him for that.

(If you recognize this panel, it’s because it appears on the page where Jughead’s asexuality is canonized. What a good page. So good that nobody ever points out this panel.)

By the end of Volume 1, we see that Jughead maybe isn’t as apathetic and careless as he seemed to be. Sure, he got up in arms about food of all things in the beginning, but it stopped being about food very quickly, once he realized that something truly messed up was going on. And it bothers him, deeply—at one point, the gravity of the situation begins to weigh on him so heavily that he nearly gives up entirely, convinced that there is nothing they can do and that they ought to just lie low until they make it out. But he does end up making things right, with the help of his friends, and in the end, he does decide to help Betty out after all. It’s the least he can do, really. You do get the impression that although Jughead’s friends often don’t take him seriously, they’ll always have his back when it counts—and he’ll do the same for them, even if he’ll insist on being a bit snarky about it.

(That slightly cynical attitude is still there, though, and truthfully, Jughead wouldn’t be the same without it.)

To close out, I am just going to share some of my favorite panels/quotes that didn’t fit elsewhere, including some choice Aro Moods. I hope this (admittedly brief) discussion of Volume 1 convinces you to read the comics, and to join me again when I cover the next arc. Until then, cheers to Chip and Erica.

Jughead’s attitude towards Archie’s romantic problems will never not be funny to me. He’s just like “RIP to you but I’m different.”

Kevin. :/ Kevin come on, man. Mr. Zdarsky, sir, this is character assassination. (Jughead’s face in the corner is a reasonable reaction.)

This one’s gone around so many times before (as have a bunch of other aro moments that I don’t think I need to bother re-posting here), but I just think it’s neat. Don’t worry, Betty lets go.

Aaand lastly, I just really like this line from Jughead. “The world is out of our hands, pal. You just gotta make your own weird way in it.” That we do, Jughead. That we do.

#my god the pain i went through to write this #aro #aromantic #aro jughead #ace jughead #aroace jughead #long post #jughead jones #ooohhh i'm gonna make shitterdale stans sooo angry #jughead comics #techno's jughead reread #<- tag for this little series #op