Publisher: Archie Comics
Writer: Marguerite Bennett and Cameron DeOrdio
Artist: Audrey Mok
Colourist: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99

With Riverdale, (Archie Comics with a Twin Peaks makeover), currently the latest offering on Netflix, it’s time for anything Archie related to be fast-tracked onto the presses before the re-imagined resurgence bubble bursts.

Now, call me a crusty old curmudgeon if you must (and we must!), but maybe giving Riverdale’s all-girl super group with those cute kitten ears headbands, Josie and the Pussycats their own title may be a step too far for some and probably me (but not me, says the editor, the restraining order has expired anyway).

I bow to no-one in my admiration of the original Archie titles and Mark Waid did a magnificent job of re-inventing the Riverdale gang in Archie #1, which in turn led to the TV series I guess, but I find it hard to see where Margueritte Bennett is going with Josie and the Pussycats #4.

Josie and the Pussycats #4 is over-wordy, full of questionable puns and reads like a comic book adaptation of one of those fluffy, romantic, lightweight Audrey Hepburn movies from the 1960’s. Most of those seemed to be set in Rome too. If that was the intention, congratulations, you’ve scored a bullseye Margueritte. For me, it just seems muddled and confused as to which generation of Archie it belongs in.

Josie and the Pussycats #4 is centred mainly on Josie’s budding romance with her manager, Alan (hardly professional behaviour and bound to create tension within the band) plus some sub-standard Inspector Clouseau clowning with some incompetent jewel thieves, it sits uneasily between the innocent, cartoonish incarnation of years gone by and the more realistic, harder edged version that is being touted as the new look Archie house style.

 

Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker