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Don’t Miss This: “Jughead’s Time Police” by Sina Grace, Derek Charm and Matt Herms

By | September 25th, 2019
Posted in Columns | % Comments

There are a lot of comics out there, but some simply stand head and shoulders above the rest. With “Don’t Miss This,” we spotlight series that we think need to be on your pull list. This week, we look at “Jughead’s Time Police,” a 5-issue miniseries that finds Riverdale’s iconic slacker on an increasingly complex quest to keep multiple Archieverse time streams intact.

Who Is This By?

“Jughead’s Time Police” is written by Sina Grace, a multitalented comics creator whose writing credits include a GLAAD-nominated run on “Iceman,” a witty one-off story for “Jem and the Holograms,” and “Ghosted in L.A.,” a new creator-owned series from BOOM! Studios currently on its third issue. With an unapologetic, often nostalgia-tinged pop sensibility and great ear for dialogue, Grace has shown a knack for creating – or reinventing – compelling characters that quickly become fan favorites.

Naturally, Grace jumped at the chance to write one of the most well known and enduring characters in all of comics. “The idea that there could be multiple Jugheads across a slew of time streams got my imagination buzzing with possibilities,” said the writer earlier this year, adding rhetorically, “what would happen if Jughead knew there were other Jugheads? From there, I cooked up a pretty wild tale that goes forward, backwards, left and right.”

Illustrator Derek Charm, who essentially redesigned the Jughead character back in 2016 during his iconic run on the eponymous series “Jughead,” provides the inks. Matt Herms, who’s previously worked on virtually every Archie title under the sun, including the flagship “Archie,” “Josie and the Pussycats,” “Jughead: The Hunger,” “Blossoms 666,” and others, delivers his highly adaptive, bold and refreshing color palettes, while stalwart Jack Morelli does letters with aplomb.

What’s It All About?

In truth, the book’s plot won’t blow you away, but with consistently outstanding artwork and a sassy, self-aware script, that doesn’t matter. The overall arc goes like this: distracted by an epic drum solo blasting through his headphones, Jughead hopelessly screws up the lemon meringue pie he’s baking for the Riverdale Pie Fair. After the judges get sick and Jughead is summarily banned from the competition for life, naturally his only recourse is to recruit Riverdale’s science nerd Dilton Doiley to help build a time machine. Needless to say, they succeed and from that moment on the narrative incorporates – and riffs on – several pretty well known time travel tropes, pulling out all the stops and having a blast along the way.

I mean, you’re definitely not going to get a deep, philosophical treatise on life choices and alternate timelines, but you will find plenty of laughs, inside jokes and irony that make the idea of a true Archie Multiverse a lot less farfetched and way more cool. Suddenly, madcap ideas like a Riverdale filled with werewolves or occult-loving Blossom twins who secretly worship Satan – not to mention The Archies actually meeting The Ramones – start to make more sense and feel fairly plausible.

It’s not exactly the Rosetta Stone of Archieverse continuity, but in many ways, it tilts in that direction. There’s isn’t a magical thread that suddenly and neatly ties all the various series and spin-offs together in a nice, tight little bow, but with a couple of well-placed cameos in issue #4, as well as occasional hints and insinuations, there’s clearly some kind of effort to at least begin weaving some things together.

What Makes It So Great?

While Sina Grace’s script sets the tone with a witty, irreverent vibe and a smattering of quirky, less predictable action, Derek Charm’s incredible art and Matt Herms’s luscious colors also deserve a huge share of the credit, if not straight-up top billing. Their visual aesthetic blends elements that feel equal parts nostalgic and wholly original. It’s a bold but breezy style that feels absolutely authentic, unjaded, and true to the classic Archie look, while simultaneously incorporating a surprising amount of depth and visual nuance. The futuristic scenes, in particular, are wonderfully multilayered, with lots of glowing lights, geometric shapes and patterns, and high-powered motion lines. It’s not just an Archie book set in some generic comic book future, it’s a highly specific, well constructed, future Archie timeline and the payoff is outstanding.

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Similarly, Grace’s clever dialogue deftly tightropes the line between droll self-deprecation and snarky overindulgence. A great example throughout is the subtle and sparing use of Jughead’s shaggy mutt Hot Dog as a self-aware commentator who coolly breaks the fourth wall with his deadpan asides. As Jughead desperately searches for a distant, backwater time stream in which to hide-out, for instance, he naturally winds up in Hamburg. Undeterred by the controversy potentially surrounding this definitive historical moment, Hotdog flatly states, “The idea of putting meat between two pieces of bread isn’t exactly rocket science, so different countries were coming up with a version [of the hamburger] at the same time…but this is where Jughead thinks it originated, so relax.”

Ultimately, as alluded to above, “Jughead’s Time Police” feels like a narrative and stylistic quantum leap, ushering in a whole new era cross pollination and overlap within what may well become a legitimate multiverse of parallel Riverdales. As Archie Comics’ co-President Alex Segura said a few months ago, “There have always been lots of threads weaving through the Archie stories…. ‘Jughead’s Time Police’ pulls back the curtains to reveal that maybe, just maybe, there’s an infinite spectrum of possibilities out there for Archie and his friends – and different, out-of-this-world versions of our beloved characters might just be a turn of the page away.” Honestly, you don’t even have to turn the page at all. With a vast array of killer variant covers from some of the best in the business, there are multiple stories waiting to be explored right there on the shelf.

How Can You Read It?

“Jughead’s Time Police” #4 hits comic book stores today. Hopefully, your local shop has issues 1-3, too. Either way, get caught up and add what is sure to be a monumental final climactic to your pull list. In at least one time stream, Jughead solves world hunger. When Jughead meets other Jugheads, who knows what might happen? The final issue drops October 30th. You can also buy digital issues on ComiXology or the Archie Comics app, available for iOS and Android. Of course, you could always wait for the trade paperback to be released on February 11, 2020, but there’s no guarantee this time stream will still exist.


//TAGS | Don't Miss This

John Schaidler

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