By Dustin Cabeal

I wish that I had written my prediction down for “Over The Edge” because I would impress no one right about now. I still would have guessed correctly, but I think that most anyone that’s been reading Archie regularly and understands bad TV drama could figure this one out from the solicits.

No, I won’t be spoiling it, but I’m not joking, it’s easy to figure out. I did before I read the first issue of the arc.

Mark Waid does that thing where he has the character’s flashback to a great character moment for Betty. It’s great in that it shows why the character loves/cares for Betty, but then also develops her overall character. None of the stories work without the others to support each other because it’s building an overall picture of Betty’s personality, that way Mark Waid can tear that down and then building it back up. I’m fairly certain that he did something similar during his run on Fantastic Four, just with different elements to get the results.

The art is decent, but each story begins and ends with a weird close up on a concerned face of a character. The weird floating heads end up looking less concerned and more constipated, and I’m not saying that to be mean. It’s just really unfortunate that it looks that way because it steals from the very serious moments going on and is really just a damn shame. The rest of the art is strong, but there is a lot of fine details that are lacking on characters depending on the depth of the panel.

If there’s a winner in all of this, it’s Archie. This is easy fodder for the second or third season of Riverdale, and it has an easy out attached to it so that you don’t have to keep the status quo. That’s important here because no one deep down wants to be without one of these characters, the world crumbles at that point and interest is lost in the brand.

I’m sure that there’s going to be some returning readers to this series, which hey, that’s cool and a good thing. I’m not one of them. The drama feels superficial, and while I appreciate this rebooted Archie, it’s still not for me.

Score: 3/5

Archie #22
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Pete Woods
Letterer: Jack Morelli
Publisher: Archie Comics