Afterlife with Archie #5

Escape from Riverdale
Chapter Five—"Exodus"
written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
art by Francesco Francavilla

Maybe it's being confined in Lodge Manor like too many tigers in a pen, or maybe it's the short emotional fuses that come with living through a zombie apocalypse, but Riverdale's refugees are on an narrow path to romantic detonation in Afterlife with Archie #5.

Feeling betrayed and dismissed, Ginger is understandably frustrated by her closeted lover's receptivity to her longtime boyfriend's consolation and affection, but she's unreasonably hostile to clueless Chuck's desire to be alone with Nancy.  Nancy's devastated by the crisis but simultaneously cowardly and selfish for refusing to break it off with Chuck even if she chooses not to tell him she's been having an affair with Ginger.  Reggie's bullishly malicious to dead crush Midge, whom he egotistically and hard-heartedly snarks deserves her fate for preferring Moose over himself.  And when Kevin offers a friendly and compassionate gesture, Reggie erupts with a bitter, misguided, and homophobic barb, for which he receives a well-deserved punch.  Cheryl's up to her typical sexual manipulations, incestuously teasing her brother Jason by shamelessly imposing on Dilton in his bedroom.  And, of course, Veronica sparks the same old jealous rivalry when she discovers Archie has sought comfort from Betty instead, and always looking for an advantage over her competition, Betty doesn't waste the opportunity to further ingratiate herself into Archie's romantic sympathies.

Despite their collectively callous amorous machinations, in then end they're all saved by philandering Hiram Lodge's somewhat loving but mostly guilt-inspired and begrudging dedication to his dead wife's public generosity, an irony that Lodge butler Smithers is keen to note.  Indeed, Smithers' mute devotion to Hermione and Veronica Lodge lures some suspicion.

In its short run, Afterlife with Archie has so far proven itself willing to engage many of Riverdale's more subversive subtexts.  Transforming typically boy-crazy Ginger and Nancy into confused, frustrated, and closeted lovers with a decidedly rougher gay experience than Kevin certainly ups their stakes as characters.  Cheryl and Jason Blossom's codependent manipulations edge closer and closer to incest.  But "Exodus" plants suggestions of a possible affair between Hubert H. Smithers and Hermione Lodge.  The butler has always been quietly paternal to Veronica, here at the deathbed pleading of Hermione.  His sole presence at her birth, and possibly the suspiciously early date of her delivery, as well as Hermione's informal address of Smithers as "Hubert" as he held her for the first time, add up to a far more familial tableau than anything Afterlife with Archie has yet to provide for Hiram and Veronica.  Smithers is a shadowy—and not a little creepy—wallflower in Lodge Manor, but it imposes him on the life and death of Hermione and the birth and childhood of Veronica in ways that pushes Hiram to the edges.  The details are neither original nor conclusive, but their cumulation in a single issue is pointed.

Afterlife with Archie #5 takes a small step back, but after "Archibald Rex" how could it not?  The interesting question is:  it only took five issues to force Archie and his fellow survivors to leave Riverdale; will they ever be able to come back?

[July 2014]