Jughead #1 by Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson (Review)

Jughead #1 has a slow burning build to it and begins as a “slice of life.”  After an all-nighter of video-games in which Jughead’s character marries a sword and does many other ignoble deeds, Jughead goes with Archie to Riverdale High where they meet Betty, who has organized a protest to save Fox Forest. When they arrive to Ms. Grundy’s class, there is a major announcement: Principal Weatherbee is being forced into retirement, and a younger, easier-to-hate principal is taking his place. You can read all this in the accompanying preview pages, and as this is a spoiler-free zone, I can’t really say much other than that 99% of the hilarity happens after these four preview pages, and that you won’t dream where it goes.  And that comic books this funny these days are fairly rare.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when I laugh out loud at a comic book, I’m reading a vintage issue, usually Groo, Archie, Little Lulu, Cerebus, Mad, or the Donald Duck ten pagers in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. On the rare occasions that a new comic makes me laugh out loud, it is either John Layman and Rob Guillory’s Chew, or a comic book that Chip Zdarksy or Erica Henderson had something to do with*. Until today, the funniest new comics that I read this year were either Chip Zdarsky’s Howard the Duck or Erica Henderson’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, with the former having the best first issue and the latter being more consistently drop-dead funny.  When Jughead #1 was announced a few months ago, with the creative team to be Chip Zdarksy and Erica Henderson, it seemed too good to be true.

Humor is a wide and varied genre, and there are countless other comics that are humorous in their own way without getting a full belly laugh.  It can be fun to read these witty, charming, even snarky comics, that are happy at getting some titters or snickers, but it does seem that comics have become a little insular in their perception and performance of humor, with creators forgetting, or not caring due to having a captive audience steady market segment, that in most other forms of comedy, if you don’t make the audience laugh, and I mean really laugh, you’re dead.

Jughead is not that insular comic book that is unsharable outside of the comic book audience.  Zdarsky and Henderson are aiming at everyone with their comedy—not just comic shop customers, but people of every stripe, whether they’re kids, adults, rich, poor, whether easy audiences, or the mean drunks or overly caffeinated people that like to heckle everything.  Jughead #1 is solid comedy.  This uproariously funny skinny comic book made me laugh so hard I woke the dead. It’s an incredibly funny gem that you could give to any English-reading individual with expectations of sharing a laugh.  And while I’m not entirely sure that either of the creatorship got the memo that this is an all-new, all-different Jughead—with cues taken more from Bob Montana’s Jughead than Mark Waid’s—they put on an outrageously funny show while writing the Jughead comic that they wanted to do.

Jughead #1 is strongly recommended for not only comic book enthusiasts looking for the next great comic book, but also everyone else that you know.  No one should be deprived of reading this comic book.  It’s just that simple.

*Full disclosure: I also did laugh quite a bit at a few of the Quantum and Woody comics this year.