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00:00 Archie 3000, issue 9.
00:03 It starts with no hint about who exactly is talking for the most part,
00:08 as Archie and his friends are annoyed that the girls are camping in the climate-controlled dome forest while they're left with nothing to do.
00:15 It's still to the one of them said "climate-controlled".
00:18 There could have been a natural way to find out about that, like a sign on it.
00:23 Archie reveals that you can only get in the dome with a camping permit.
00:28 I have to assume the permits take forever to get,
00:31 because instead of Chuck simply planning to get a camping permit for all of them,
00:36 he says he knows a secret entrance to it because he conveniently used to work there out of all of the other places.
00:44 I've never heard of anyone needing a permit to go camping before.
00:48 The girls reveal that they miss the boys, and one reason is that it's too late to invite them.
00:54 For no reason. You'd think the boys would hear this, since they can see them.
00:59 But apparently they still want to get revenge on them to force the plot, which is uncharacteristically spiteful.
01:05 So because the girls didn't just call them on their cell phones, Archie tells Moose to get into his rented costume.
01:13 You'd think the girls would hear this. They should have had whispering text bubbles.
01:18 So Moose scares them, and the girls all attack him with branches.
01:22 Would they have done that to a bear? Somehow this doesn't strike me as believable.
01:27 I feel like it's only being written to pander to feminists. I say pander because most of the Archie writers are men.
01:34 It doesn't even get to be satisfying because we never see a branch impact him.
01:39 Even then, just two bits of slapstick are never enough.
01:44 Moose walks into a tree, and somehow he can't get the head of the costume off.
01:49 It turns out Reggie messed with their food dispenser, which is supposed to give them marshmallows.
01:55 What's the point of camping with a food dispenser? Won't they simply bring marshmallows with them in a bag?
02:01 The marshmallow gets too big, and they don't want it to explode, so it gets thrown near Moose and explodes on the boys.
02:09 Not that we saw the impact, because somehow even that was censored.
02:14 Archie uses a remote-controlled drone to try to scare the girls with the sound of aliens.
02:20 Again, I don't know which girl is talking, and that's never acceptable.
02:24 One of the girls tells her friends not to worry because the campfire would keep the Ionian bat-wolves away.
02:31 A branch pokes another button on Archie's remote, and somehow there's silence before a lion noise plays.
02:38 This whole plot was a little boring because it's just a rehash of that Sabrina story where her and her friends went camping and the guys planned on scaring them.
02:46 So it seems cliche and mundane.
02:49 But this is way more interesting because of all the different technology used.
02:54 Archie tells the girls the truth, and Veronica looks smart by saying that she had a hunch they might be behind everything that went wrong.
03:01 Which makes sense because their food dispenser malfunctioned.
03:04 Chuck wants to use one of their force field tents for the night, and the girls refuse as a punishment instead of rewarding their honesty.
03:13 And Betty's uncharacteristically happy going along with their idea, when now they know that the noise wasn't from a real lion.
03:20 So for all they know, they're in danger.
03:22 Why do they think a little campfire would keep a lion away?
03:26 And when is it going to be explained why they expect aliens to be in the forest?
03:30 Especially a domed forest, which would be even less likely to house invasive species.
03:36 It'd only have them if they were already there when the dome was put on it.
03:41 I can understand a tiny minority of the species being alien invasive species, but they only ever mention aliens.
03:48 Thankfully.
03:50 In the next story, Betty thanks Archie for coming over to help her babysit.
03:54 Her hairstyle is especially ridiculous today.
03:57 While usually I can see why it'd be fashionable in another time period.
04:01 It turns out brats are even worse to deal with in the future.
04:05 With anti-gravity shoes, a telekinetic flashlight, and remote controlled dolls.
04:11 So this fails to be an enjoyable story because not only is it a cliche plot, but the comic's supposed to make you look forward to the future.
04:19 Of course, all of this could be avoided if their parents had the common sense not to buy toys they can cause problems with instead of video games.
04:27 So we should have been told why they have these things.
04:30 Surprisingly, the normally incompetent Archie solves the problem with each kid in the span of one panel each.
04:37 Warning them that their mother could hurt herself somehow cleaning the exhaust fumes from rocket boots off the ceiling.
04:44 He carries all of them at once as he walks upstairs.
04:48 He's actually so strong.
04:50 He gets excited by their toy headband, which lets them control a hand to wrestle with another hand in a competition against the kid.
04:58 Then a kid shows Archie what she'll look like when she's 17.
05:02 So there's a gag that's uncomfortable today as Archie mentions that hibernation sleep is a thing.
05:08 At least it might have made her happy at the time.
05:11 Archie tells her to put the age mirror setting on 80 to make everyone laugh.
05:16 Convenient that they all have a sense of humor instead of the girl being scared.
05:20 And Betty complains because she wanted the kids to get put to bed and storms off.
05:26 It's good that it's not too depressing because Archie's still happy.
05:30 He agrees to read them a picture book that projects a changing hologram.
05:34 The kid wants to get Archie away from Betty because they haven't had this much fun in weeks.
05:39 So their kissing is interrupted when Archie gets sent to them by a biomagnet.
05:44 Which a kid would definitely not be allowed to have.
05:47 For this to even sort of be believable, I have to assume one of them invented it like Dilton.
05:53 The story ends with Betty thankfully still smiling somehow as Archie's pulled up the stairs.
05:59 And Archie also tries to keep it from being depressing because he smiles too.
06:04 I never thought I would like a babysitting story.
06:08 But this was surprisingly light-hearted.
06:11 In the next story, Archie gets told he somehow has a Time Warp package and needs to put his palm on a scan for identification.
06:19 It's Time Warp mail because otherwise it'd take 10 years to get here from the planet Flora, which was probably named by people from Earth.
06:27 And somehow, it only costs a few coins more this way.
06:31 He got sent flowers and uses a holo card to find out that they're from Betty while she's been on vacation.
06:38 At least he appreciated the flowers right away instead of finding them emasculating.
06:43 And nobody even comments on that possibility, which really shows that it's the future.
06:48 But by the time his father gets home, he finds the whole house full of leaves because of how big the plant grows.
06:55 This could have easily not been the case, partly because she could have sent him different flowers.
07:00 So it seems a little unfair that this happened to him.
07:04 Betty can't even send him flowers without something bad happening.
07:08 And this just reminds me of a story in a Jetsons comic.
07:12 So it's not as original as it thinks it is.
07:14 So go figure, Archie gets Dilson's help.
07:17 And he figures out what's wrong.
07:19 He finds out that the plant won't grow near Jughead's house because the dissonant sound waves of guitarophone practice are slowing down the plant.
07:27 And somehow that makes the whole plant shrink when he's told to play it in front of it.
07:32 Well that's a deus ex machina.
07:34 Especially since plants are known for growing better because of music.
07:39 But it's good for being creative.
07:41 It starts growing again when he feels like he can't play another note.
07:45 And yet he's still able to talk at length in the next panel.
07:49 So he can play another note.
07:51 He says he recorded some of his playing.
07:54 And Dilson plans to make a greenhouse to simulate Flora's atmosphere for the flower.
08:00 Reggie sees the flower and steals a bit of it.
08:03 It sure is big for one little cutting.
08:06 The story ends with a plant bothering Veronica's house.
08:09 At least it's not confirmed that I'm actually supposed to find this karma by someone saying so.
08:14 I don't think he really deserved this for such a minor thing when all he wanted to do was make their mutual girlfriend happy.
08:21 And she always ends up going back to dating Archie anyways.
08:24 In the next story, Archie and his friends ride hovering things over a farm and Betty has still too dialogue to give exposition to the audience they'd already known.
08:34 She wouldn't say their overly long title full of bold words.
08:38 She'd just say "farm".
08:40 The word "professional" in the acronym is redundant.
08:43 And I don't see how the word's resource mechanism even belonged there instead of a better word.
08:49 So they visit Archie's grandparents.
08:52 In all the normal Archie stories I've read, I can't remember ever seeing them.
08:57 So I wouldn't be surprised if they had a unique character design.
09:01 Archie's grandpa plans to give his friends a tour of the farm, which has a climate-controlled barn.
09:07 Like that's new.
09:09 At least there's a conveyor belt.
09:11 He reveals that he's making the cattle listen to classical music to boost their milk production.
09:17 I feel like that really would work.
09:19 Especially since it was proven that happier cattle produce more milk.
09:24 And Mythbusters showed that plants grow better listening to music.
09:29 The only thing implausible is that each cow has headphones when it'd be cheaper to play music over an intercom.
09:35 Each cow is attached to a different machine that vitamin-enriches the milk.
09:40 Which makes sense since their bread was vitamin-enriched in real life.
09:44 And turns it into a dairy product.
09:46 It comes out pre-packaged.
09:49 And the special feed keeps the chickens laying eggs at a faster rate.
09:54 And the atmosphere domes make sure the climates are suited for each type of crop.
09:59 That's just a greenhouse, but better.
10:01 I imagine that Eggman's bases would have these in them, along with automatic farming machines.
10:06 So they'd always have a bunch of food for Eggman.
10:09 He's growing food from other planets too.
10:12 And his products get sold all over the solar system.
10:15 It may be a bunch of exposition, but I just love seeing such an optimistic prediction of our future.
10:21 Then they get greeted by the bank president who somehow has the name "I Am Greedy".
10:26 Which refers to him as "Just insult him" I guess.
10:30 He wonders if the farmer hired these teenagers to save the farm.
10:34 So now I'm thinking this would rip off an episode of the Sabrina cartoon "Hodown Showdown".
10:39 Where Sabrina and her friends help the farm get its produce shipped.
10:42 Just like that episode, this guy says he has until tomorrow to pay the mortgage.
10:48 And he wants to replace the farm with yet another type of building nobody needs more of.
10:53 The farmer didn't tell Archie about this because he was embarrassed and he kept hoping things would work out.
10:58 He says farm technology is changing so fast that it's hard to afford the best equipment and make a profit.
11:05 A floating device shows them a video call from his wife saying that dinner is ready.
11:10 Dilton wonders why everyone is looking to the team genius for advice.
11:15 It shows how much more respected geniuses are in the future that is constantly a part of their team.
11:20 When he wasn't in the earlier comics and was rare at first.
11:23 He plans to redesign the old equipment into a speedy crop growing and packaging machine.
11:29 His adventures are so likely to cause trouble instead of being beneficial.
11:34 That I called him a main villain by accident in an earlier issue.
11:37 So I'll just be impressed if this doesn't backfire.
11:41 The text box says he achieved it soon.
11:44 So I'm wondering how he got this done so fast.
11:47 And I'm also wondering why they didn't already have this machine if they get dairy products packaged.
11:53 I guess they can't afford to buy something like this.
11:56 So Grady shows up again this early for no plausible reason.
12:00 He at least calls the machine a great idea.
12:03 And Reggie wants to put his wallet photo in it so that his face would be on all of the packages.
12:08 When he'd know that wouldn't be allowed.
12:11 This somehow shocks him and makes the machine spit out the crops.
12:15 Why did Dilton assume Reggie crossed the circuits?
12:19 How can really putting a photo in a hole cause the circuits to cross?
12:23 When only a hand would move them.
12:25 Thankfully in a Deus Ex Machina he caused the crops to taste like other crops.
12:30 And someone thinks he can make a healthy profit selling these on Neptune.
12:35 But they'd only be successful for the novelty value for a little bit of time at best.
12:40 Because most people would prefer a crop to taste how they expect.
12:44 Imagine if you bit into pancakes tasting like steak.
12:47 It might not matter how good it tastes.
12:50 That was just the best example I could think of off the top of my head.
12:53 Maybe this could be profitable for a long time if you plan to sell these crops to people who never gave a chance to certain crops that they get their taste from.
13:01 It could mean that the people on the terraformed Neptune have never given strawberries a chance.
13:06 So they'd only buy something that tastes like them if they could buy them in pineapple form.
13:10 So the farmer predictably gets the money and the story ends with it being revealed that Reggie's been repeatedly getting shunked for a while.
13:18 At least Dilton's nice enough to try to make something to replace him.
13:22 I'm glad this wasn't a story about Archie and his friends doing normal farm work.
13:26 Because I already saw that.
13:28 So it'd be a bit boring.
13:30 Even if it does have the advantage of having a lot of variety in what was done for him.
13:34 When I expected three things to be done.
13:37 The first story is by Rich Margo Poulos.
13:40 The second story is by Harold Smith.
13:42 The third story is by Bill Golliher.
13:44 And the last story is also by Rich Margo Poulos.
13:49 Archie 3000 issue 10.
13:52 This story starts out with Archie and Reggie sending emails, I mean letters, to a song store.
13:58 It makes no sense that there's still letters being sent.
14:02 They had their letters typed down.
14:04 So why would she get them in paper form for a redundant extra step that wastes paper?
14:10 Instead of her manager telling her not to go out with either of them until she learns more about them.
14:15 He plans to stage a contest.
14:17 And the winner gets a date with her.
14:19 So he's totally irresponsible somehow.
14:22 Failing to consider that the winner of the contest might be a total creep.
14:26 Maybe he just became a manager.
14:29 And somehow she doesn't object.
14:31 Even though she wanted to date these two guys specifically.
14:35 Can't she do that anyways?
14:38 The Guinness Book of World Records was replaced with a microchip in the future.
14:43 Because nobody predicted the internet.
14:45 And her manager plans to make the contest one where the fastest one to astroski around the world wins a date with her.
14:53 You'd think that sport wouldn't be allowed because it'd be so easy to get hurt doing it.
14:58 Then again you could say that about every sport.
15:01 Archie and Reggie see the singer on the beach and find out that she's Jughead's cousin in unlikely coincidence.
15:08 That seems unnecessary.
15:10 So how did they take until now to find this out?
15:13 I assume Jughead wasn't very interested in the job she had.
15:18 Reggie says he could've set them up for a date all along.
15:21 So naturally the two guys are mad at Jughead.
15:24 Who should've been smart enough to know he could offer to set them up for a date in exchange for a burger each with her permission.
15:31 Luckily she keeps smiling.
15:33 And Archie says they can't waste time bothering Jughead now because the race is about to begin.
15:38 It turns out Reggie was smart enough to sabotage Archie's skis so they'd only work in reverse.
15:44 For the story's benefit I have to assume he could've done a better job sabotaging them.
15:49 Outright breaking them.
15:51 Either way he could still use it to fly around the world.
15:54 Reggie reveals that it's conveniently possible for Archie to fix his skis.
15:59 Somehow.
16:00 Archie could've gotten injured this way.
16:03 We say that Veronica's glad she didn't invite Archie to her vacation because he'd be jealous of the guy she's cheating on him with.
16:10 He plans to give her a pie as we don't know if he knows she's taken or not.
16:15 Archie's ski hits him and he somehow gets made to spin around and hit her face with a pie.
16:21 It would've made sense if Archie made him do that on purpose.
16:25 Eventually after he gets chased by a train, meaning Reggie could've gotten him killed,
16:30 he gets sent by some people who are written to talk in condescending gibberish just because they're not from his country.
16:37 You'd think something so insensitive wouldn't have made it into a comic from the 90s.
16:42 But the writer and artist probably know better now.
16:45 Anyways, at least Archie comes out of it having something nice to eat.
16:49 For no reason, Reggie has a wrist radar sensor letting him try to detect if Archie is near him.
16:56 It's forced that Reggie makes a Superman reference when it was instantly obvious it was Archie and this is a thousand years into the future.
17:05 He plans to kick in the fusion afterburners to go faster.
17:09 Why didn't he go at that speed all along?
17:12 Then he could get the race done and go back to doing what he likes faster.
17:16 Eventually, Archie gets spun in a revolving door and explains that the ski has auto gyros to put him back on course,
17:23 which is why he doesn't stay upside down.
17:26 Eventually, Reggie wins the race.
17:29 Thank goodness there is a surprise, even if he didn't deserve this.
17:34 I'm guessing he'll still get screwed over though, so it's still predictable.
17:38 Archie sets a new record because he was the first to ski around the world backwards,
17:43 and so he gets a kiss in the cheek and called Hiro and he says he won.
17:47 Reggie would still get a date with her because the rule of the race said that beating the existing world record would get you a date.
17:54 It's better writing to have the jerk fail than constantly succeed effortlessly like a gemstone.
18:00 But I still hate that his loss of her was forced.
18:03 In the next story, Veronica tells Betty that she just got a new dance hologram of a celebrity they think is handsome.
18:10 Archie insults the celebrity Danny Dens for being clumsy out of jealousy,
18:15 and thankfully the writer has Veronica point out that he's clumsy too to prove she knows his character.
18:21 He usually isn't clumsy though, so most of the time he still doesn't feel like Archie.
18:26 And she tells Reggie that he trips over his own feet trying to show off a lot.
18:31 That's literally never happened before.
18:34 I have to assume that she thinks Danny is a lot more handsome than Reggie is,
18:39 because otherwise, she'd be acting like Reggie's above criticism too.
18:44 She wants a chance to find out what it's really like to dance with a partner,
18:48 so she uses the tangible hologram of him to dance and get swung around.
18:53 Betty doesn't like it because she can't stand being dizzy.
18:57 Somehow, she doesn't simply say that's why she prefers dancing with Archie,
19:01 nor does she have a thought bubble saying that she'd rather dance with Archie because that's her actual character, remember?
19:08 Then Veronica gets introduced to the real Danny by her father, which is fortunately justified,
19:13 as he's here to get the bad king of large enterprises for his next intergalactic concert tour.
19:19 Good, it's not just to spoil her for no reason.
19:22 She doesn't like that he's shorter in real life,
19:25 and predictably, she hates that he steps on her feet dancing with her,
19:29 which was actually foreshadowed because the guys called him a clumsy clod.
19:34 But if she was warned about that, meaning that it's such common knowledge even they know about it,
19:40 she really had no excuse for letting him dance with her.
19:43 She gets told they took an old video of a good dancer and put his dancing into the hologram.
19:49 It's totally forced that he would dance with her if he'd know he does this with everyone he dances with.
19:55 The only way this could make sense is if he was trying to get her not to hit on him
19:59 and spend all day trying to get a date with him because she's a teenager.
20:03 At least it's Veronica who suffered.
20:05 She's also nice enough to give her dance hologram to Betty instead of throwing it away
20:09 with the logic that if she can't enjoy it, no one should, especially not a rival for Archie.
20:15 It's worth it to have an out-of-character moment that's nice.
20:18 In the next story, we see Archie's car get pulled into a hovering tow truck because it died on him,
20:25 and Jughead gives him the idea to rent a car, which runs by computer touch pads,
20:31 and there's no steering levers. I guess he'll crash it.
20:35 It's not good to not have enough tangible feedback because there's touch pads instead of buttons.
20:41 He takes Veronica with him in his car, and they get strapped to the chair by robotic arms
20:46 instead of real seatbelts people would want.
20:49 She can barely breathe, and this only happens because he flew his car too fast.
20:54 He says they forgot which button is for the brakes that get activated by retro rockets.
20:59 The car heads for a fictionalized Mount Rushmore that has the president's heads be huge peaks on the mountain
21:05 when in real life they're really tiny parts of the mountain overall,
21:09 which makes sense because they take forever to make otherwise.
21:13 I assume the sculpture of the woman is representing their first female president.
21:17 She and Archie hug, and Veronica is finally useful by pressing a button to save their lives,
21:23 sending the car upwards from an anti-collision system.
21:26 Why wasn't it activated by default?
21:30 She can't get the instruction manual from the glove compartment because it's locked tight.
21:35 Why didn't the car salesman give him the instruction manual right away if it existed?
21:42 He presses another somehow unlabeled button to spray with ketchup by accident, as well as grape juice.
21:49 He puts on the radio, and somehow the music's too loud right away.
21:53 This is just another story that's scary to the future to a paranoid extent,
21:58 seeming unfair by forcing everything bad that's happening.
22:02 Mr. Lodge mentions instant little tree seedlings, which doesn't make any sense.
22:09 Thankfully, the car doesn't land on and ruin his garden, which would be predictable.
22:14 Veronica gets sent back to him, and Archie wants to hit the emergency stop, but doesn't know which button it is.
22:21 You'd think every car would have the same control panel,
22:24 because something as complicated as a flying car would have to have a standard control scheme for every single model more than anything
22:33 because of how hard it would be to figure out how to fly it, and how risky it would be if you failed.
22:39 Besides, you aren't even allowed to drive a car if you need to know how to drive a stick to drive it, and you don't know how to do that.
22:47 If he was given a car with different controls, he'd be offered a lesson to teach him how to drive it first.
22:53 He should have refused it because it'd be illegal to try to drive a car he wasn't trained to,
22:57 for the same reason it's illegal to drive without passing a normal car's driving school.
23:02 He releases the reserve oil tank. Not that it makes sense that he can do that.
23:08 And the story ends with Mr. Lodge covered in oil.
23:12 There's no way he'd call his flying car a jalopy when it looks nothing like one.
23:17 The only great thing about the story is all the variety in what happened.
23:21 But so what? None of this would have happened.
23:24 The first story is by Rich Margo Poulos, and so is the third story.
23:29 The second story is by Kathleen Webb.