Veronica Lodge: Beard?

There’s a new guy in Riverdale, and Ronnie’s got the hots for him.  Only problem is, he’s Teh Ghey:

Kevin will appear in September’s VERONICA #202, in a story called “Isn’t it Bromantic?” Kevin Keller is the new hunk in town and Veronica just has to have him. After Kevin defeats Jughead in a burger eating contest at Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe, she desperately latches onto him. Mayhem and hilarity ensue as Kevin desperately attempts to let Veronica down easy and her flirtations only become increasingly persistent.

Yes, that’s right:  Veronica notices Kevin after he’s just defeated Jughead in a meat-eating contest.  You’d think that would have been a dead giveaway.  But in all fairness, none of the kids in Riverdale have had any experience with gay culture – until now.

The press release notes that Kevin is Riverdale’s first openly gay character, so for all you who have been wondering about Jughead’s orientation all along, the jury is still out.  I always felt like Jughead’s love of food explained his “meh” attitude towards the girls, though on reflection, he does seem to have an unnatural fondness for foot-long hot dogs.

Beth and Lyta and I were big comic book collectors back in the day – I still have the collection up in the attic, several thousand of them, the majority of them Archie.  It’s not that Archie was our favorite, but they put out more of them than any other kind.  There were 100 Archies for every 1 Vampirella, so we ended up with a lot more of them.  And IIRC, as kids our focus with the comics collection was more with quantity than quality, though there are some gems in the collection.  Thankfully none of our parents were part of the anti-comics jihad – my mom’s attitude was that reading comics was still reading, though she might have felt differently if I hadn’t been a freakishly avid book reader as well – so we were free to indulge ourselves.  The only thing she really didn’t care for was Mad magazine, but we had a fair share of those too, including those classic issues parodying A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist. 

It’s nice to see Archie and the gang moving into the modern era, which was the whole idea behind introducing the new character.  Certainly it’s a far cry from those late-70’s Archie-with-a-Jesus-fish Spire comics, a Christianized twist on the world of Archie.  But that’s another topic for another day.

h/t to Oregon Beer Snob in comments at S,N!