An Archie recap

Usually when I find an interesting Archie comic, I want to do something to make the comic less recognizable as an Archie comic (for example, I'm working on a Betty & Veronica comic where I've changed their hair color). In this case, however, I think that it helps that it is so obviously Archie, Betty, and Veronica. ;-)

I only had to change three words to turn the Archie & Friends (Archie, 1992) #90 comic into a TG storyline. The GCD doesn't list the cover artist, but the signature is clearly Rex W. Lindsey.

Is Archie ready for a makeover?

Superb work. I like the fact that only a minimal change to the wording (and the font matchout was gorgeous!) was required to do the change.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, sehlat.


and the font matchout was gorgeous!

The Action Man font that I used is a little more irregular than the lettering for the Archie & Friends comic. That is probably best shown in the letter "E". The bottom horizontal line is slanted fairly stongly upwards and the middle line is much higher than the middle lines for the A, F, G, and H letters. On the other hand, once I had adjusted the kerning and leading just a bit, the letters fit almost exactly over the old letters before I 'erased' them. I've never had a font come that close before.

Another nice thing about the Action Man fonts is that it is available in extended and shaded versions as well. There are not that many free comic book fonts that have multiple versions. [Discussing some of those fonts is probably going to be in my next post in the Free fonts for art and recapping thread.]


I was surprised at how grey the inside of the text balloons were. I don't know if that was an artifact of the scanning, or whether the original comics were like that. To me, it just didn't look right, so making them much whiter was the biggest cleanup that I did for the comic cover.

Doesn't seem like a 1992 comic should have much aging, so it's probably just the scan coming out more blue/gray all over. The issue number box, for instance, was undoubtedly white in the original, but is a lot grayer here.

I look forward to hearing more about these fonts - sounds promising!

Great cover! I think the Archie material tends to work best (for our purposes, that is!) when there's a non-regular character like the tranny idol to play with. There's too much baggage with the regular characters, who we "know" just have one gender.

Great cover!

Since the 'Teen Idol' seems to have almost no hips, it was easy to imagine that the choker necklace was there to hide an Adam's apple. ;-)


Doesn't seem like a 1992 comic should have much aging

Since the skin tones didn't seem to have that much blue/grey in them, I wondered if it might have been more of a printing problem than a scanning problem. The issue number box, the barcode box, and the speech balloons were all roughly the same color of light grey that also was close to the grey in the background. Yet when I also turned the background grey into white, that didn't look right, so I made it just slightly lighter grey than it was originally.


I think the Archie material tends to work best...when there's a non-regular character

I've tried looking at some of the Archie comics with occasional characters, such as Cheryl Blossom, to see if I could work up a group of comic book cover recaps, but haven't found the right 'hook' yet. :-(

<< There's too much baggage with the regular characters, who we "know" just have one gender. >>

Actually, the "real" Archie himself is no stranger to crossdressing, going all the way back to the '40's when he went in complete drag to sell shampoo door to door. When he has been crossdressed, too, it hasn't been a caricature ; he's looked like a girl, albeit not a sexy one like B or V. Even B & V have crossdressed occasionally, although they, in true MtoF TG fiction style, have still looked like gorgeous girls.