Archie Meets the Punisher

First, check it out online here.

Second, what the hell? I'd heard of this thing for years, but always thought that it had to be some sort of massive inside joke, some nonexistent snipe hunt that old comics hands would occasionally talk about just to laugh at the gullible newcomers who believed in it. I was honestly shocked when I found out that it really, truly existed.

When I first read it, my gut reaction was that I would've done it very differently. Like, it wouldn't be a team-up; instead, it would be a battle... a titanic gore-fest that involved the Punisher drifting into Riverdale and leaving bodies stacked like cordwood in his wake. The way I saw it, he'd ride out of town with Archie's carcass trussed up like a dead deer on top of his van (this, in fact, is one of the two established-superhero-character plots I've ever thought up-- the other one involved Wolverine finding out he was dying and spending his last days going around kicking people in the nuts while he told them what he thought of them... the centerpiece of that one being a 16-panel page of Wolverine repeatedly kicking Gambit in the nuts, thinking, "Man, I could do this ALL DAY").

But, after thinking about it, this approach is way more perverse. My way would be so over-the-top as to be an obvious joke; this comic, by playing the crossover completely straight and taking everything reasonably seriously, really fucks with your head. It might not be quite as much fun to read as my version (come on, you know you want to see Jughead get a grenade rammed down his throat), but it's infinitely more troubling...

Ultimately, Archie Meets the Punisher is one of those things that makes me very, very happy just by existing. I don't care much for Archie, and I can take or leave the Punisher. But I'm glad to know that there's a crossover between them.

Now I want to see Lobo get hired to kill Richie Rich.
--Keith Pille




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