Written by Alex Segura
Illustrated by Dan Parent‘ARCHIE MEETS KISS PART 1 -Riverdale Rock City’ – The biggest band in rock history invades Riverdale! When the Archies find their town overrun by monsters because of a spell gone wrong, can the KISS gang save the day? Find out in part one of this four-part epic featuring KISS!
In this corner, a lovable group of teenage icons from Riverdale, whose number one hit “Sugar, Sugar” was most likely your mom’s favorite song when she was 13. And in this corner, a band of hard-rocking merry makers and merchandising geniuses who may or may not be Knights in Satan’s Service, with a penchant for rocking and rolling and partying at all hours. As hard as it is to believe, these guys have never met, but thanks to the fine people over at Archie Comics Publications, that little oversight has been rectified.
Found out how it worked out for ‘em after the jump!
Really, Archie Meets KISS doesn’t need another extensive review or a detailed dissection of what goes on. At its core, it’s a little slice of perfection, and if you don’t already own it or aren’t at least thinking about owning it, then you probably wouldn’t be interested in reading what I have to say anyway. But, for those of you who do have it (or will have it eventually), congratulations — you have a sense of humor!
As the fourth wall-breaking Sabrina tells us at the beginning, “It all started at a meeting of the Riverdale Monster Society!” That’s right, folks. When Archie, Betty, Jughead, Veronica, Reggie, and Dilton aren’t hanging out at the Chok’lit Shoppe, or playing gigs, or practicing abstinence, or solving mysteries, they’re in a treehouse with their friend, the Teenage Witch, keeping Riverdale safe from ghouls and goblins. And based on Riverdale’s general lack of monster trouble, we can assume they’re a successful bunch.
The trouble begins when Veronica and Reggie feel slighted by the group, and try to cast their own “protection spell”, which accidentally opens a wormhole that brings monsters to Riverdale instead of keeping them out. But the monsters aren’t alone. They’re soon followed by the Demon, Starchild, Spaceman, and Catman — KISS — and seriously, what’s not to love about that!
The creative team of Alex Segura and Dan Parent are absolutely perfect to handle this story. Segura’s fondness for both casts is pretty evident from the get go, and as one of the top brass over at Archie, he’s got the characters’ voices down, and the setting couldn’t be more Riverdale. Admittedly, there might have been another Archie artist who could have brought more pyrotechnics to the project, but a flashier artist might not have pulled this story off as convincingly. Parent’s mix of modern and classic Archie house style keeps things fun and familiar, and never distracts us, he just entertains.
Couple things that surprised me, though: A) the decision to lean on the Archie’s “weird mysteries” angle, and to use KISS’s standard comic personas instead of pitting them against each other, band-to-band. Of course, that could just be me getting super excited by Francesco Francavilla’s variant cover, too. It’s only the first part of a four part story, so there’s plenty of time to touch on that. But I will say, with Josie’s cameo in this issue, I’ll be supremely disappointed if we don’t see KISS, the Archies, and the Pussycats share just a little bit of stage time.
And B) there’s honestly very little KISS in the issue. Again, this is just the first act of a larger story, so we’re sure to get our KISS quota met by the time it’s all said and done. But I have to imagine some die-hard KISS fans were a little disappointed. Still, the story is called “Archie Meets KISS”, not the other way around, so that one’s on me.
Final Verdict: 8.5 — Guys, seriously… Archie Meets KISS!
