Archie #569
	Script: Angelo Decesare Pencils: Stan Goldberg Inker: Bob Smith Colorist: Barry Grossman Letterer: Jack Morelli Editor: Victor Gorelick Editor-in-Chief: Richard Goldwater Published by: Archie Comics
	Reviewed by: Bruce Logan

Archie Andrews and his ever-young friends. If you are from the North American continent, chances are, well, it is a pretty much given that even if you haven’t read their comic, you must have seen these characters in print at least once, be it only in passing, or on clothing, and/or any other merchandize. Not only this region of the world, but in today’s day, one can (safely) expand on that to include quite a few places all over the globe. Having grown up in a different region myself, my first exposure to them came in the form of old hand-me-downs from my brothers, who themselves had gotten them from my visiting cousins. However, even before I hit my teens, the name Archie was as much as a known (and of interest) to me as say, Spider-Man and He-Man. In fact, there was a time that I was more into Archie than I was into Batman and/or Wolverine. Now just wrap your heads around that.

Anyways, months after I read my last Archie related comic, here I am, actually trying to review one of them. Now for someone who has had the comic reading part of his brain warped by words such as story-arcs and continuity, this style/genre of comics do seem a bit odd…at first. However, that problem is solved soon enough (not even one issue and the ‘continuity’ monsters withdraws back into its shadows). Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica and the others…they never get old (they do get young though, i.e. Little Archie) and they sure as hotdogs don’t graduate from high school, and there is where we pick up this issue from.

The first story if about Archie giving the readers a crack course in Survival and in true Archie fashion it isn’t survival in the wild or even surviving a bunch of rowdy tweens. What it is is about surviving high school. Right from how to get in if one is late to how to get a ‘free pass’ from gym-practice, everything is covered, including how to (try to) get away with not having done homework. As for the cherry on the ‘late cake’, it is the one thing that more important (for a teen) than any of these. It is about ‘surviving your parents’. Sadly, the class ends just before Archie can reveal that oh-so-important secret.

Moving on, we pick up with the trio of Archie, Jughead and Veronica over at the Lodge mansion. As with Archie and the others, Veronica’s dad (Hiram Lodge) is also stuck at the same age and with the same problems, in this case Arch and his ‘Klutz Supreme’ personality. Poor Hiram, if only one could change the friends of those around them (i.e. Ron) or even retroactively, change their own, then his precious crystal would be still standing and more importantly, standing unharmed.

The third of the four stories here is vaguely, or maybe not so vaguely, similar to one I read elsewhere (only there it was with Betty). It is about Archie’s job over at ‘Shop Better Foods’ and the way all the running around while on the clock affects Archie in his off time. Anyone who has worked in such a place (or even any other place that required a frequent and repetitive action) is bound to recognize and maybe even empathize with one of the few male ‘redheads’ of the comic world.

As for the last story, about as simple as the others, this one seems to carry a moral in it in the way of proper use of a limited commodity, in this case the gas/petrol for Archie’s jalopy (or whichever car he is driving now).

Conclusion: What do I write in conclusion, except that as with any other Archie comic, this one is up to standard in the niche it fills, in both story and art…and that too without any Ideological Crisis and/or a Political War.

RATING: 4 hotdogs out of 5