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00:00 Archie 3000, issue 15.
00:03 Mr. Lodge yells at Archie for serenading Veronica, and Archie uses exact words against him, that he never forbid him from being just outside their house after 10.
00:14 The next day, Mr. Lodge gets told that his new force field was installed, and when it goes on after 10, nothing would be able to enter or leave his property.
00:24 Why does he even say "leave" when he doesn't really want the "leave" part?
00:28 And why did he take so long to try this?
00:31 Mr. Lodge says it's time for Archie to leave, even though it's only 7, because his family is going to a play on a terraformed Neptune tonight.
00:40 Archie gives her a love letter, and plans to visit Betty with the love letter.
00:45 It turns out he gave Veronica the love letter for Betty... somehow.
00:50 Why should I be against that?
00:52 Sure, she'll be mad at Archie, but what else is new?
00:54 She'd get mad at him for something else, even if it didn't happen.
00:58 So this is a good excuse for him to want to go back to her property.
01:02 It sure is convenient that he felt like reading his love letter to Betty again and found out the truth early to cause the plot to happen.
01:09 It makes sense that someone would want to re-read something they wrote out of pride.
01:14 I thought the force field would activate after they went in the house, but instead he runs into it.
01:19 He calls Dilton, who says that he doesn't like to get involved in these situations, even though he helps him and his friends with their little problems all the time.
01:27 Why is Dilton drawn unrecognizably and not anyone else?
01:32 He says there's a small hole on top of every force field to allow oxygen in.
01:37 I'm conflicted about reading that.
01:39 I never thought about the idea that it'd be bad for a force field to always remain around a place because it'd keep oxygen out of it and trap the carbon dioxide in.
01:49 I guess I always assumed that oxygen and CO2 were still able to get past it because they're gas, and this idea was never referenced in anything I saw with force fields.
02:00 Force fields already feel unrealistic, so why not?
02:04 I'm torn between appreciating this trying to make force fields make sense in fiction and thinking that it ruins force fields in fiction.
02:11 It makes force fields look less competent this way.
02:15 At least there's a panel of Archie failing to find the hole in it, but he still does in the next panel.
02:21 Then it gets dunk.
02:22 Thankfully, Dilton tells him not to worry and says he came prepared instead of being stupid.
02:28 He brought cooking lard, which makes him fall to the ground, thanking him.
02:32 He finds out the note isn't here because she took it with her.
02:36 Why wouldn't she have taken the love letter with her to read it as soon as possible?
02:40 Hell, you'd think she would've read it already and it'd only still be in the house if she was mad about it.
02:45 Dilton tells Archie to turn off the force field.
02:48 He sets off the sprinkler system, basically.
02:51 It's force has got such a lengthy name no normal person would use.
02:56 Archie finds out Betty went with Veronica, and Veronica calls him a two-timer.
03:01 This never makes any sense. She should already be used to him doing this.
03:05 She never liked when he went with Betty, but this kind of reaction would only make sense if she was mad at him for dating someone other than Betty.
03:13 But still, even though she should know that Betty's no competition for her, there's been plenty of stories where she's been jealous of her.
03:20 It just seems unjustified because she should know better with Betty.
03:24 And why on earth is Betty mad?
03:26 She'd be used to him dating Veronica and giving her love letters.
03:29 She'd just be elated that he made a love letter for her and be smug about it to Veronica.
03:35 In the next story, Ethel angst is about the usual, and an ad robot says she should go to the Alpha Body Shop.
03:42 She says ad robots are annoying, but it's in character for her to take the card anyways, and it's good of her to thank him.
03:49 Out of nowhere, it turns out that anyone who uses this shop's technology has to return once every two weeks to keep the changes in place.
03:58 It's already using unrealistic technology.
04:00 At that point, why would this be needed?
04:02 It's not like plastic surgery undoes itself.
04:06 How is our technology better?
04:08 This is only better because it only takes a few minutes of pain, and apparently it's way cheaper.
04:14 Why wasn't she given anesthesia?
04:16 I guess she opted out because it'd be expensive.
04:19 You'd think only witchcraft would be able to achieve this, complete with only being temporary.
04:24 She gets made beautiful and told that when she comes back, then she'll be told to discuss their "modest fees."
04:31 So it makes sense that she won't get to come back no matter what, because she could not afford to keep it up.
04:36 She hopes a new guy would notice her.
04:39 She drops a hanky and gets his attention.
04:41 The guy with the haircut Archie should have tells her not to fret and catches it,
04:47 and she's smart enough to give him a fake name for herself considering that she might get in trouble because of her reputation otherwise.
04:53 There's no way she'd have kept her overbite.
04:56 The machine would have gotten rid of it for her.
04:59 She's so pretty, but wouldn't a machine be about perfection?
05:04 Then she would have spent her whole life being made insecure about her overbite, because Timmy Turner was.
05:10 But she has one just to make Betty find it familiar, even though there's little chance that she'd recognize her overbite exactly.
05:17 Any overbite would look the same to her.
05:20 The guy gives her candy and asks what he can do to prove his love to her.
05:24 She says he's sweet, but this isn't necessary, showing her goodness.
05:28 He plans to write a poem about her unmatched beauty, and naturally she tells him not to because it's not necessary.
05:34 The real reason is this is meaningless because the beauty's fake and temporary.
05:39 There's no way he would recite the poem anyways.
05:42 She asks if her looks are all he can talk about.
05:45 This implies that Ed will listen to a remotely deep character even at this point because all he can talk about is her looks.
05:51 Otherwise, you'd think he'd have noticed her and been told about her hobbies and various personality traits.
05:56 It's like they didn't do anything regarding those.
05:59 But it's believable that he just didn't find them interesting.
06:02 There's no way he would keep smiling and say he'll wait for her at the tree.
06:06 How would he be oblivious to her feelings?
06:09 Ethel begs to be returned to normal and is lampshaded.
06:13 She returns to Sputnik, who screams and runs away instantly.
06:17 Later on, an ugly guy starts heading for Veronica, and Betty tells her to be nice,
06:21 and he calls Ethel by her fake name and tells her with poetry that he doesn't deserve a girl like her.
06:26 He fell for the same offer.
06:28 So it turns out that he still liked her for her,
06:31 meaning that it's forced that he screamed and ran away instead of immediately telling her that.
06:36 It's obvious that the only reason he'd scream and run away is that he was repulsed by her, but he just had a change of heart.
06:43 It makes sense that he could only think of a poem about her looks,
06:46 because what else is he supposed to make a poem about?
06:49 How is she so nice, even though she almost never shows signs of actually being considerate?
06:54 She used to chase Jughead.
06:56 At least when she did that, she had two personality traits.
07:00 This story is better than I expected just because of the ending,
07:04 even if it was as predictable as I thought up to that point.
07:07 But it'll be pointless if he's a one-off character.
07:10 In the next story, RJ says he can't wait to play the next VR game.
07:15 RJ lampshades that RG's unnecessary exposition makes him sound like Dilton, but that doesn't make it okay.
07:21 We didn't need that explanation when it's self-explanatory.
07:24 They get sent to a game with a bunch of pretty girls that want to kiss them.
07:29 The first player to kiss a thousand girls is the winner.
07:32 This is being too nice to these characters,
07:34 so it'd be surprising if the writer didn't contrive a way to make them miserable out of jealousy.
07:39 It turns out that Betty and Veronica are upset because the guys were supposed to study with them.
07:44 So it's justified that they're gonna get mad at them.
07:47 If they wanted to kiss girls, why couldn't they have gone to them early and asked to kiss them that much?
07:53 If they said no, then they'd have the right to play the game.
07:57 Betty thanks RJ's dad for telling her what's happening.
08:00 There's no way there'd be mega math for them to study.
08:03 They go to where they're playing the game, and somehow there's a screen that shows them their progress.
08:09 Betty's naturally hurt that they'd rather be kissing dream girls than them.
08:13 But they should realize that, again, it's not like Betty and Veronica are gonna agree to kiss them a thousand times,
08:20 and they're fake girls.
08:22 Veronica boosts the game counter up to ten thousand.
08:25 So somehow her idea of insecurely punishing them was to give them an excuse to do even more kissing.
08:32 Oh no, they're tired because they did too much kissing.
08:35 I feel so bad for them.
08:38 But it's still a relief that the writer wasn't quite as sadistic to them as I expected.
08:42 Their game ends, and when offered a kiss, they somehow run away screaming when they aren't Jughead.
08:47 And somehow Veronica wonders if their helmets can be programmed to let them kiss guys.
08:53 First of all, that should be the case, because the game would have 50% less appeal otherwise.
08:59 And second, this just proves she's no better than them.
09:03 Though maybe she shouldn't be blamed for wanting to kiss someone other than someone who'd rather kiss a fake girl than her.
09:09 But it's her.
09:10 In the next story, Veronica Skype calls Betty that she has a date with Archie, and she gets jealous for multiple reasons.
09:16 Then she gets called by Dilton because he needs the girls' help with an experiment.
09:21 He thanks her in an unrealistic way, and she somehow says she had quantum homework.
09:26 He says he made a female android, but he needs to program her with the woman's brain patterns.
09:32 Why did he even call her an "it" for a second after all of the time of working on her?
09:39 Why didn't he give his robot a name after all of that time?
09:42 Maybe he knows that the robot would end up desperate to date Archie, and he doesn't mind because he wants to spite Veronica.
09:49 But he'd also spite Betty.
09:51 But she's been unlikable too, so ironically it would make sense to want to spite her.
09:56 She's just as likely to hit Archie.
09:59 He turns on the power and thanks Betty.
10:02 You'd think Dilton wouldn't give his robot a hairstyle that tall if it'd just barely go under the entrance to the chocolate shop.
10:10 This would apply to Search too.
10:12 I've always assumed that most doorways are tall enough to accommodate her hairstyle,
10:17 because otherwise it'd be uncharacteristically ridiculous for them to give her that hairstyle.
10:21 Because she doesn't have a name, I'm forced to call her "Android" when she applies for the waitress job to be near Archie.
10:28 Pop Tate instantly says he'll give her a chance because droids are hard workers, and he calls her "Droidina".
10:34 The "na" part shouldn't be there, and it reminds me of Echidna as her avatar, but at least "Droidie" is better than "Android".
10:41 It's better that the "na" is included in her first name.
10:44 There's no way Droidina would accidentally spill ice water on Archie.
10:49 She plans to mop it up and hits him with it.
10:52 Again, she should've hit Veronica instead because we hate her.
10:56 But sadly, it isn't character for Betty and therefore her to give Archie the abuse for dating someone else instead of that someone else,
11:03 even though Moose doesn't operate that way because of double standards.
11:07 It only seems out of character at first because this isn't how I'd want Betty to be, but that's because I grew up on the later comics.
11:16 Then she sprays ketchup on his head.
11:19 Dildon shows up saying he tracked her down by her headband's electricity because he's more competent than I expected.
11:26 And thankfully, she does at least explain that she was bothering Archie on purpose.
11:30 Then it was needlessly confusing to have her look genuinely surprised and upset when she said "oops".
11:36 It's surprisingly sweet of Dildon to hold her hand.
11:40 Veronica assumes he's dating her, and somehow Archie doesn't say "no", but knowing her, she'd still splash him.
11:47 Predictably, when he says there's always Betty, she just plans on yelling at him.
11:52 The first story is by Dan Parent. The second story is by Bill Gallaher.
11:57 The third story is by Rich Margot Poulos, and so is the last story.
12:02 Archie 3000, issue 16.
12:05 Archie tells Pop-Tate that his team won the Scoofball game.
12:09 There's no way it'd be called something so silly. Somehow he offers them free sodas.
12:15 Then Alien who never thought he could be a good cook walks into the place, and he's got such an oversized head that he has to have a magic spell as a natural part of his body that keeps him from toppling over.
12:26 These people are extremely used to aliens if they don't instantly burst out laughing at seeing him.
12:32 It's not like he deserves politeness anyways.
12:35 He says he serves deep-fried cricket heads, which takes advantage of the fact that he's an alien, along with the fact that his species still lives in trees.
12:44 It's ironic because part of the reason humanity started becoming the most intelligent species is that they stopped living in trees, because then they could sleep more soundly on the ground, meaning that their brains were working better.
12:57 And it's also hard to believe his species could have prospered with no opposable thumbs.
13:02 I have to assume other sentient species went out of their way to help them.
13:07 Pop-Tate tells him that humans could beat Malthusians in a game that apparently the latter is way better at.
13:13 But it seems like they're just believing a stereotype so far.
13:16 Why would they be the best players in the galaxy with so many disadvantages?
13:20 Wouldn't you need opposable thumbs to play a sport?
13:23 If Betty thinks that Spion the other team isn't like her, she has no excuse for being here with Jughead.
13:30 I was just talking earlier about Jughead not being Jughead enough, and then I see Jughead with his eyes open way too much.
13:37 I know it would make sense if he had his eyes open all the time, but it's wrong for the same reason that no one would want to see Professor Pickle's eyes.
13:45 They overhear Aliens say that Scoofball is a game for math geniuses.
13:50 While one of them stiltedly says "As you all know."
13:54 To be fair, it's sadly realistic that someone would jump at the chance to put down a group of people he thinks is better than.
14:00 But the fact remains that he didn't need to say "As you all know."
14:04 I'm somehow supposed to think that guy is Moose, but the artist isn't trying hard enough.
14:10 A ball bounces off his head, not hurting him somehow, and Archie says they have trouble.
14:15 Why didn't he think like that before?
14:17 He's in trouble because Moose is always stupid, not because he has a super humanly hard head.
14:23 An alien could have a super hard head, but still have a great brain.
14:27 Dilton says that in the game, no one knows where the ball will appear next.
14:32 It's not interesting to read dialogue, and he's only illustrating the game with lame stick figures that have red heads.
14:40 So you're not as invested.
14:42 He says Malthusians are masters at the game because of their ability to mind-slink with each other,
14:47 which is ripped off of Star Trek and lets them calculate together the location of the ball at all times.
14:53 That means they're cheating at the game and won't be allowed to compete in it against non-Malthusians.
14:59 Dilton plans to even the odds, but oh, not by giving them special helmets.
15:05 Instead, he's gonna direct them to the ball manually.
15:08 So he's asked now what, and he's too stunned by getting hit in the head with a ball.
15:13 Then after the story wastes time with Pop-Tate talking to the jerk with annoying dialogue because he needed padding,
15:19 a ball bounces off Moose's head again, and Junkhead explains that they're gonna win because when a ball bounces off someone's body,
15:27 it somehow makes it impossible for the competitors to predict where the ball is gonna be.
15:32 They'd be just as good at calculating the trajectory if it bounced off someone.
15:37 They're only winning because they're the main characters, and these lazily identical aliens are jerks.
15:42 If all that's gonna happen after this is just the characters hitting the ball, it's boring to see so much of it,
15:48 but I get the comic's half assuming that we'd find it underwhelming if the story just cuts to the final point being scored.
15:54 The bad guy gets told he's gonna have to eat something bad, but there's no way he would do it.
15:59 Pop-Tate gives Archie custom-made team jackets.
16:03 He was nice enough to buy them with all of the money from Belzac, because he loves his food, and paid him a fortune for his recipes.
16:11 Then there's another story where Archie has multiple dates at the same time.
16:15 It just barely tries to be different because now there's a third girl involved.
16:20 He tells Jughead to hand him a book on insta-clones.
16:24 Again, even in parts of the real world, governments have banned cloning preemptively, so this wouldn't be a part of the story.
16:32 Archie adds water to cups with hair from his head each to make three Archies.
16:38 He had four identical objects prepared for this. He must've made them with a synthesizer.
16:43 He hears water glasses breaking, gets greeted with the clones who don't seem to have clothes on.
16:49 So why is he smiling and Jughead seeing this?
16:52 I assume they got underwear, but that should've been shown.
16:55 Archie's dad complains that he can't wash up when Archie's been in the personal hygiene unit four times as long as usual.
17:03 All of the clones are shown brushing their hair.
17:06 Archie must've waited until now to brush his hair for today because he didn't think of doing that until after he had to make the clones, since it's such a minor detail.
17:14 Jughead asks why he didn't make the clones right before his dates.
17:18 I thought it was right before his dates. Archie says he won't have time later because he has to run an errand.
17:25 I assume the reason he says he can't let his parents see these clones, even though he has a way to make them just fine, is that he doesn't want to get nagged for making them.
17:33 Then we somehow see all three of the girls who planned on dating Archie today together waiting just outside the flower shop and hearing Archie.
17:42 Finally, Jughead asks Archie why he needs three clones, as I think of how sadistic it is of the writer to have all of the girls somehow be here by an insane coincidence.
17:53 Besides, in a world where anything can be synthesized and people make flowers that way, there wouldn't be a flower shop, so they definitely wouldn't be here.
18:02 There's so many worse things Archie could do than this.
18:05 Archie plans to spend an hour with each girl.
18:08 His girlfriends don't love him enough to be fine with him doing something that he'd like because he'd like it,
18:14 so the insecure jerks waste a whole page on the reaction anyone could have expected them to have when they were already shown mad.
18:22 Archie tells his clones to synchronize their watches.
18:26 There's no way they'd not simply be called watches.
18:30 He also tells the clones that smooching is his territory.
18:34 Not only is anybody able to make clones, but they're able to make clones that are completely loyal to them.
18:40 A lot of people wouldn't do their jobs anymore.
18:43 Surprisingly, when Archie goes to Veronica, she just says that was fast instead of immediately hitting him like would be in character.
18:50 Then she gets asked to a dance by a stranger in a grease and tells him to hit the road.
18:55 But she would have done this no matter what.
18:58 Betty also ditches him for another guy.
19:01 And then Gwen does the same thing to Archie.
19:03 You know, girls, you're not proving you're better than the cheater if you cheat too.
19:08 I skimmed these pages.
19:11 At least it's a surprise that they didn't state clones, but instead triplets.
19:15 I'd say all of these people deserve better than each other, but they're all unlikable jerks, so they don't.
19:22 Pop Tate at least apologizes before telling Archie to leave, but there's no way to say you can't let one person tie up a whole booth.
19:30 Unless he knows that the clones aren't sanctioned because they're only doing what they're told.
19:35 What he should say to make sense is that he knows the clones don't have money.
19:39 And that's the end of the comic.
19:41 Even though it's more fascinating to see Archie in the future.
19:44 It must have gotten low sales because it's off-putting to see Archie with long hair.
19:49 The first story is by Chris Allen and Mark Waid.
19:52 And the second story is by Robert Lauren Fleming.