She's got Betty Cooper eyes.

I like Archie Comics just fine, although I'm mainly a fan of the older ones—I haven't picked one up in years. Is Moose still slow? Is Jughead still obsessed with hamburgers? Is Reggie still a jerk? Ah, in the Riverdale of my mind, those things will never change.

What is changing, apparently, is the look of the characters. Following what I guess must be a successful mangazation of Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch (tho' does today's youth recognize Sabrina as anyone other than Clarissa Explains It All former-teen cutie Melissa Joan Hart?), Archie Comics has announced they'll begin changing (as Newsarama reports) "the art towards a more contemporary comic book style, more realistic, and less cartoony....a continuing experiment and exploration with the characters." (Also, here's some early comicsblogosphere commentary and detached amusement from Mike Sterling and Dorian Wright). First up: Betty and Veronica get a makeover, and it ain't just the same ol' competition to see who can be prettier for Archie to take to the Riverdale High Prom with the usual hiliarious results, oh no, there's some serious facialogical rejiggeration goin' on here:



I for one say "Cool!" Even though they're not always successful, it's always interesting to see different experiments with a comics icon or art style to shake up the status quo for the moment. Who knows, it might prove to be ultra-successful and this time next year all the cool kids will be readin' comics. Might fail too—who knows? But it'll be interesting to find out. If we don't like it, we'll at least have sixty years of big-eyed reprints to fall back on.

But for those nay-sayers, those whose heads are spinning, those who scream to the heavens that the new Archie designs are murdering the innocence of their childhood, for those who wet their underpants at the merest sight of a little evolution...well, here ya go. I whipped this up for ya. Enjoy:



See? It doesn't really matter. Big eyes, small eyes: all that matters is that Archie and Jughead will get into some crazy scheme that'll backfire and have them put into detention by the Bee. Oh Archie...will you never learn?