People are still discussing the upcoming Archie character redesign… and remarkably accepting they are about this, too. I somehow don’t think we’d get a lot of people saying “I loved those books when I was younger… I guess I’ll wait and see how it looks” if they decided to radically revamp one of the supers.

Anyway, talking about this, KC reminded me of another time that the Archie characters were redone to make them more acceptable to typical comic tastes.

In Gen 13 #13A, August 1996, J. Scott Campbell (inked by Alex Garner and Peter Guzman) drew the Archie characters. The plot features Grunge pining after a chromium-covered “Captain Pyro” comic. When he doesn’t win it, he passes out and winds up voyaging through a series of other comic books. The first place he wakes up is Riverdale High.

Here’s Betty and Veronica, first as Archie sees them and then in Grunge-vision (complete with panel borders skewed for no reason!).

Weird how not much changes but their clothes get tighter and their boobs perkier.

Here’s the whole sequence, if you want to read it.

In issues #13B and #13C (some kind of attempt to get back on schedule by putting out more frequent shorter issues, except C is dated November), Grunge also meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bone, Liefeld parodies, DV8 babies, Jim Lee, Spawn, Madman, the Maxx, a Lady Death wannabe, Shi, Hellboy, Wolverine, and more. It’s a fascinating picture of a particular era in comics.