Fucking WHAT, Archie?!

In 1980, Archie Comics Group published Archie #298 of the Archie Series, and I am here 40 years later to make the case for it being the craziest comic ever published. It is the first media of any kind to ever score the rating of MAXIMUM!? on the Archie Derangometer, which says it all making everything past here mere whimsy in support of a point already perfectly made.

The story begins like nothing has or ever should start– with Archie shrieking the word “PLASTIC!” at no one and with no context. He’s furious, screaming it like a curse. Archie is filled with a dark insanity and the people around him live in constant fear of it bursting out like Anne Frank’s family watching her hold in a sneeze. When it comes out, the rules of everyone’s universe suddenly change and nothing can escape the wet spray of Archie’s madness. Welcome to Archie #298.

Note Jughead and Betty are not saying, “Oh this plastic bullshit again.” This is the first time Archie has ever spoken to them about plastic, much less lost his mind at them about plastic. There’s also no plastic on or near him which means he was on a walk with his friends in the park and his own thoughts wandered to plastic crimes so awful he had to stop and scream “PLASTIC!” He continues…

Archie exists in a fiction with loose rules. He has addressed readers directly to sell Twinkies, fought the Predator, and killed wizards by calling on the actual Christian God. So it isn’t unusual for the horny Riverdale gang to stop rubbing their pubises on Archie to do something like an environmental PSA. But are we sure that’s what this is?

It seems to be an environmental rant, right? Maybe Archie read something about the dangers of non-biodegradable waste and he’s simply having trouble remembering it or expressing himself? Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for this famously conservative and known psychopath to be howling about the plastic apocalypse?

Well, aside from violent, philanderous, stupid, cruel, and ginger, the best way to describe Archie is “a teenaged cranky old man.” This comes out here because the first reason he gives for his seething hatred of plastic is not how it kills seagulls or overcrowds landfills– it’s how plastic prevents him from listening to goddamn records before he goddamn buys them like he used to.

I’m not sure this is plastic’s fault since plastic has been around at least as long as vinyl records because vinyl is fucking plastic, but Archie accidentally makes a good point– retail trends have eliminated nearly every opportunity for consumers to masturbate in record stores.

So in case you fell for my masterful misdirection up there, no, this is not an environmental story. This is Archie deciding he hates the shit out of plastic and desperately trying to justify it while his loved ones try to reason with him. And to be clear, this is not a genius writer hiding a metaphor for American politics in a children’s comic. This is nothing more than what it is on the surface– a fictional character losing his mind because he’s being written by someone losing his mind.

Oh, by the way, Archie comics in the ’80s had three stories inside each issue. Let’s take a quick break from this plastic one and look at a scene from the second Archie feature!

Oh. Oh no.

Let’s maybe go back to the plastic one?

So Archie’s second reason for hating plastic is because of fastener packaging. Not because it refuses to decompose and its manufacturing causes carbon pollution, but because teenagers can no longer go into a hardware store, paw through a vat of unlabeled nuts and purchase a single unit. Again, I’m not sure this is the doing of plastic. This is like declaring war on zippers because no one will let you suck them off.

Anyway, Archie’s third reason for dedicating his afternoon to destroying plastic is cheese. CHEESE! SEE IT IN THERE?

Fucking try to open cheese! Archie DEFIES YOU! Oh, you say it’s got an e-z opener tab!? AN E-Z OPENER TAB!? BETTY, YOU TRUSTING, IGNORANT BEAST DID YOU SAY IT’S GOT AN E-Z OPENER TAB!? TO ARCHIE!? YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS TO EAT CHEESE OR BE LOVED! PLASTIC CONSPIRACY HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE YOU’RE IN ON IT I’LL KILL YOU I’LL RIP YOUR FACE OFF AND PRESERVE IT FOREVER IN Y-YOUR PRECIOUS PRECIOUS PLASTIC!

With no one taking Archie’s warnings seriously, he does what every ranting lunatic does– he merges his new anger with his previous frustrations and loses all perspective of the original problem which he was wrong about this entire time and all contradicting facts are evidence of a deeper conspiracy. Archie is now only this rage and obsession, and he declares to a grocery store that sealing albums, wood screws, and cheeses in plastic will lead to the end of all things.

Let’s take another break from the plastic story and check back in with the one where Reggie leapt out of the bushes to sexually assault Midge.

I’m not fucking with you; I didn’t edit any of these panels. The full context is this: Reggie saw Archie running and had an idea: if he blinded and face raped Moose’s girlfriend, it would look like Archie was running from the sex crime! The one hitch in his plan was how he chose to commit this act on a girl in Riverdale, each of whom can identify Archie by taste.

So to sum up, the less crazy story in this Archie comic is one where Reggie ambushes Midge, licks her mouth to frame Archie for sexual assault, it doesn’t work because she doesn’t care, and then it also doesn’t work because everyone licks her mouth all the time, the end. Let’s get back to the plastic thing.

Archie has become so defined by his hate for plastic and so detached from reality by trying to make excuses for it, he is now willing to literally die rather than give any ground in a deranged argument he started for no reason. He’s willing to sacrifice all his dignity and relationships in the name of some unclear vision of the way things used to be. I want to stress again: we have no reason to believe this is a metaphor for American politics. This is ordinary Archie craziness wobbled slightly off its axis to accidentally create exceptional Archie craziness. Assuming this meant anything would be like watching a cat run across a typewriter and thinking it wrote “Help me I didn’t die from heart failure I was poissned you need to solve my murder hi this is mom, *poisoned, sorry typing is hard w/ ghost hands” on purpose.

As if this would end any other way, Archie self-destructs. His plan (to drive himself mad with cheese packaging rage, close his eyes, and sprint into the street) backfires almost immediately.

While Jughead and Betty try to find all of Archie’s neck shrapnel, let’s take a look at this comic’s third Archie feature. Maybe it’s not the troubling work of a lunatic!

Jesus, I’m not glad we did this at all. If I’m following the plot, this story is about Jughead smashing an unattended boy’s toy boat? Who would write that? And why? Surely there must be some kind of denouement that…

Oh. So in the ’80s when a group of strange teenagers broke your toy you… went with them into the open ocean? They didn’t even put a life vest on this boy they kidnapped. They just let him stand on the deck while Veronica cranks that shit into the chop like a racing motorcycle. She’s 15-years-old and her boat doesn’t have railings! There should be another panel of this comic where the gang takes a blood oath to never speak again of the boy, whose name they never learned, who they borrowed without asking and lost at sea.

So now that we’ve finished the backup stories of whimsical sexual assault and well-intentioned child abduction, let’s get back to the final page of Archie’s plastic adventure and see if he learned a lesson.

What the fuck? Archie didn’t learn anything! A fucking ice cream man could have pulled up and said, “That’s why you don’t ignore reason and implode your life over nothing, son! If you want to stay safe, make sure all your products use Real Plastic™!” and it would have been fine. Instead, Archie heard a doctor say the word “plastic” and he recreated the exact circumstances that just injured him. And is it “a long story,” Betty? Or is it, “Our mentally ill friend decided plastic was attacking him 10 minutes ago and we’re children with no means of helping the criminally insane.” And then it just says END after the main character has a mental breakdown and flees from his own delusions.

This is a targeted attack against everything you know to be true and right. It’s so deranged the author gave a Story By credit to the abortion ghosts who shrieked it at him in the night and it should have been the last Archie story ever told. The idea of Archie coming back to Riverdale High in issue #299 for another everyday framed-for-facerape story seems absurd. He’s like a wild animal. These kids can’t be around someone capable of assaulting them and running into traffic any time he can’t open cheese. Every issue of Archie after this should have been about the authorities hunting him, END.

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