Unfortunately, a sporting accident messes up Dilton's "portal-porter", instantly transporting half of the Archies into the world of Glee and half of the New Directions Glee Club into Riverdale! (Seriously, the folks of Riverdale need to toss Dilton, Sabrina, and Salem into a very deep well. They cause nothing but problems! But I digress...)
ARCHIE #641 ends with Dilton, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, Nancy, and Ginger Lopez in Lima and Rachel, Quinn, Mercedes, Brittany, Puck, and Blaine in Riverdale. To make this reality-shattering accident even more horrifying, the Glee Club needs to rehearse the perfect act for Regional Competitions and the Archies have to get into shape for a huge Battle-of-the-Bands!!!
This was actually a fun book. I really enjoyed Brittany's interactions with Dilton and it did a good job of setting up this unique cross-over. Much of this first chapter was spent introducing Archie readers to the Glee cast and vice versa. You might find that redundant, but I know at least one Archie Comics fan who's never watched Glee and who has no clue who any of these new students are and who appreciated the lengthy introductions.
Personally, I thought they attempted to build too many cross-dimensional counterpart relationships in this book. Archie was linked to Finn as they're both "All American Guy" types. Veronica is linked to Rachel because they have dark hair and because they're BFFs with gay guys. Kevin is linked to Kurt and Blaine because they all "play for the same team." Reggie and Puck are both bad boys. Betty and Quinn are blond. Dilton and Artie have glasses. Jughead and Mercedes have... well, they have nothing in common but their last names, but that's enough to be universal parallels in this book.
There were two bits in this book that made me laugh out loud and they both occurred on the second to last page. Universes collide and students go missing and this is Schue's reaction (bottom right-hand corner):
That is so Mr. Schue! By the way, what pop song mash-up covers this type of situation?
My other favorite lines come from Nancy Woods and Ginger Lopez. I saw them in the mix and thought it odd that they crossed over into the world of Glee. Two pages later and I get this line. Hilarious!!!:
There were a couple things I didn't like:
* Blaine was drawn really inconsistently. There were a couple spots where he was spot-on for actor Darren Criss. Then there were other times where I would see him and I only inferred it was him because he was wearing a bow-tie. Hopefully that gets better in the next three issues!
* Where was Sue Sylvester?? I watch Glee because of Sue and her crazy antics. Hopefully we'll see more than a couple head shots of her in future issues.
What I'm hoping for in this cross-over series:
* Much more Sue Sylvester!!! I want to see her side-kick Becky appear also! Archie Comics really hasn't included many (if any) characters with Down Syndrome or other intellectual disabilities in its books before. Maybe Becky could start a trend!
* I want to see New Directions sing old Archies songs!!! I know everyone loves "Sugar Sugar", but I'm a big fan of "Jingle Jangle". As long as the Glee characters are showing up in Archie's comic book, wouldn't it be cool if at least one of the Archies' songs showed up on Glee's television program?
* I want Kevin and Blaine to smooch. Just once! It would make my day!
I finally put ARCHIE on my official comic book pull-list so I shouldn't run into the same problems I did this past week with getting the next issue. Regardless, I strongly recommend ARCHIE #641. It turned out to be a fun introduction to one of 2013's most unique comic book/television cross-overs!