The concept of Archie: The Married Life focuses on the adult life of the decades long teenage characters from Archie Comics. To add a bit of a Run Lola Run / Sliding Doors twist to things, they avoided making either Betty or Veronica camps furious by telling both possibilities. In one world, we see what happens if Archie marries Betty, in the alternate universe we see what happens if Archie Marries Veronica.

I've greatly admired Archie Comics for a long time, and especially appreciate their continued success of pushing the envelope and not resting on tradition. This particular book spun out of a concept from long time Batman film producer Michael Uslan, was written by one time DC Comics editor and writer of hundreds of comics (including Superman, Star Trek, Aquaman & Conan), and illustrated by Norm Breyfogle (maybe my favourite Batman artist of all time). Not names that would traditionally associate with Archie books.

The Married Life is a fascinating soap-opera style look at the realities of every day life after the safety of high school and university / college. It takes familiar characters and throws all kinds of conflict and obstacles at them, with the added slightly sci-fi extra twist of of telling a pair of possible outcomes for our not teen anymore heroes. I look forward to reading the next couple of phone book sized volumes. Not only are these really great Archie stories, and it's impressive that they can keep putting out stories of interest after all these decades, these are just really good comics period.