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Archie Vs. Predator
Publisher: Dark Horse/Archie Comics
Writer: Alex de Campi
Pencils: Fernando Ruiz
Inks: Rich Koslowski
Colors: Jason Millet
Letters: John Workman

Some things are just meant to go together. Chips and dip. Fish and chips. Archie and Predator. What’s that? The last one isn’t really one of those? Well the last comic by Archie Comics and Dark Horse Comics is going to prove they go together like cake and ice cream. Archie vs. Predator, the clear winner here is the audience. How so? Let’s find out.

Archie comics are known by many as being a comic about some teens living lives in Riverdale while a guy named Archie Andrews is inexplicably fought over by two women, Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge, for his affections. Predator is a series known for an alien race who live to hunt for sport and travel to other planets looking for worthy prey to kill. This probably isn’t becoming clear as to how Archie can be the perfect prey for the Predator but that’s part of the fun. This is such a strange crossover that it’s pretty brilliant.

At its heart, this first issue is almost just a regular Archie comic where the gang wins a island getaway thanks to Jughead’s luck and eating. This all changes when a “shooting star” flies by and lands on the island. The star is actually a ship of our favorite hunter alien who starts watching the shenanigans of Riverdale’s kids. It’s pretty great just seeing the gang do stuff from the infrared, I’d pay good money for a poster of Jughead eating a burger in infrared.

The book is funny, the fact that Reggie says the line “Gosh darn sexual Tyrannosaur” made me stop and have to consider this may be comic book of the year. To later have a snobby rich character make a wish upon the shooting star and that wish be “Death to the proletariat” really got to me. The book knows what it is and it’s great. The ability to have both Archie and the gang look like they always do along with Predator looking creepy and menacing in the same world an it not looking off is a great feat. Everything feels like it belongs in the same world when your mind says it should not.

While the book steers mostly towards Archie’s colorful fun, it does have one heck of a shot of Predator with some new trophies. It gets pretty gorey without being too over the top. There are definitely dead bodies in this though. Skeletons and bags of skin left behind if that’s too much for you in one panel. I am interested to see how the book handles further scenes of Predator at work.

If you want to pick up a fun book that has horror creeping into the Archie universe in a way different from Afterlife with Archie, where it almost feels like a wacky sitcom crossover, this is that book. Archie Vs. Predator could only get weirder if it were to become Archie V. Predator in the court case of the century. As it is, I’m excited for more and can’t wait to see what happens next.

Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net