Archie #622

July 17, 2011

Title: Prisoners of the Prehistoric (King of the Los Land Part Two)

Writer: Tom DeFalco
Pencils: Fernando Ruiz
Inks: Rich Koslowski
Colorist: Digikore Studios
Letterer: Jack Morelli
Cover: Fernando Ruiz
Editor: Victor Gorelick     
Publisher: Archie Comics

Archie and the gang have taken a trip with Mr. Lodge to the mountains of San Montana. As the archeological expedition began, though, the kids fall into a mysterious lost land full of rampaging dinosaurs and Amazon women. Archie, as you can imagine, is pretty happy about this. Betty and Veronica, not so much. The girls get separated, make a discover of their own, and… well… there’s an implication here of some decidedly un-Archie behavior. I’ve been impressed lately with the ways that Archie Comics have been working to create new, different comics that push the boundaries of what you expect from them… but man. The end of this issue feels like it’s virtually handing things over to fanfic waiting to be written. Aside from that rather shocking finale, it’s a pretty standard Archie comic. Tom DeFalco understands these characters very well. The one thing he’s not doing is pushing the envelope with them. For the most part, this is the sort of stuff we always get out of Archie, and while there’s nothing wrong with it by itself, I’m kind of reaching the point where I want to see more. That’s a compliment for the rest of the line than it is an indictment of this fair-to-middlin’ issue.

Rating: 7/10