Archie-bald?!

Oops -- forgot the pic

And somehow the thread double-posted. I'm a mess.

He's James Van Der Beek-ing in real time.

He will always be pretty in pink!

You are vile OP

He's too skinny. And that hair color is tragic.

When guys get too thin, their heads start to look really big. Then they end up looking like lollipops.

That's what KJ Apa looks like right now. And with that hair color? Forget about it.

He looks horrible.

With his parents. He should be fine in the hair department.

His hair is dyed an unrealistic carrot-orange color because it is the color of the comic book character he is playing. People seem not to register that Riverdale is a television form of a comic book, just not a superhero comic. It’s exaggerated on purpose, and that includes Archie’s and Cheryl Blossom’s hair.

Is he coming out?

The color looks halfway decent, here.

It's that weird copper color that makes his hair look strange.

They couldn't find a natural redhead ?

They're so gingerphobic !

Cameron Monaghan would have been the PERFECT Archie.

Not sure why they didn't try to get him, from Shameless.

He wanted to leave, anyway.

And his red hair is all natural.

Cameron is sexy, too!

If they ever did an authentic Archie comedy—one in which Archie Andrews isn’t a fuck machine from an Abercrombie and Fitch poster—Andy from Big Brother would be ideal.

R11/R12, the "new" Archie people on CW are trying to be PC.

They want a redhead, but you can't BE a redhead.

You have to be an "ethnic" redhead.

Which makes fucking ZERO sense.

R14 He fucked the producer who cast him, that’s all. Look at his body. He was not cast because he’s “ethic.” He was cast because the CW thought all the girls and guys at home would want him inside them. They’re so overt about it that that’s pretty much the beginning and the end of his character, plus fake red hair.

R13 he looks more like a redhead Jughead.

R16 No, he looks like the real Archie.

Original original Archie.

Tell me who wouldn't want to have sex with THIS Archie?

What about this Archie?

KJ Apa was a brunette in The Hate U Give and he looks much better that way.

R19 He looks just like an emo lesbian I knew in college.

This is a cute side-by-side.

A Hispanic Veronica? An Asian Reggie? Even Josie and the pussycats are homegirls.

Diversity has to happen organically, not forced on our throat.

This is who was up against Apa to play Archie. He almost got the role. The CW definitely wanted an Abercrombie model fuck monkey type.

Seeing that photo at R24, it makes even less sense that KJ Apa got the part.

Don't get me wrong. KJ is a decent looking guy.

He's just not Archie. There are a ton of other CW shows that could have cast him.

I'm afraid that R23 is correct.

R23 I actually think they did a really good job with Veronica. I don’t mind at all that she’s Hispanic. (By the way, in the show, I believe her family is supposed to be Spanish and therefore European/white, not Latino.)

I read Archie comics my whole young life and I don’t think they could have done a better job casting Betty and Veronica.

Reggie is baffling. They completely fucked him up. I didn’t mind that he was made Asian—honestly, looking at the comics, that could be a possibility—But Reggie always has been the main villain and antagonist, a real asshole and a constant bad-boy threat who vied for Veronica’s attention. This series neutered him and made him nothing at all. And then it replaced the Asian actor with another Asian actor. Reggie is supposed to be one of the five main players. I’m annoyed they basically killed him off.

What's wrong with his hairline? Nothing.

Dying your hair constantly will result in you going bald. That's the price guys like KJ Apa are going to pay further down the road.

And please. The reason KJ Apa got the role is because he looks amazing shirtless despite having red hair for the show. For a lot of people people with red hair are still as icky as uncut dick.

[quote] A Hispanic Veronica? An Asian Reggie? Even Josie and the pussycats are homegirls.

You're just finding this out three years after the show premiered?

I honestly don't think this affected the show that much. Camilla Mendes is (by quite a margin) the best actor on the show, and does not seem all that much different from the comics' Veronica other than that she's often more ethical and less whiny. And the second actor they got to play Reggie is terrific too--hot and arrogant. Josie and the Pussycats were the biggest change from the comics, but since they never really were in Archie comics to begin with very much (though they were produced by the same company), the change has not been that startling.

Honestly, the biggest changes for me to get used to have been to have a sexual Jughead (who has always been a proud asexual before, even when that term didn't exist) and a slutty Kevin Keller (who is the standard-bearer for gay respectability in the comics).

Kevin came along after I stopped reading Archie, but I am disappointed in his character, who is nothing more than a plot device and a slut. Does he have any actual personality in the comics besides fucking closeted guys?

And Jughead simply bears no resemblance to Jughead. None. The Jughead I remember from the comics was a sort of live-and-let-live rambling tumbleweed of a person, and TV Jughead is a mopey romantic crusader.

The guy at R24 has slits for eyes -basically faceless.

At this stage in production he should just ask for a hair piece or just lighten the red every season until it's brown again.

In the comics Archie has 3 different girls head over heels in love with him. The actor needed to be someone really hot. That's why they chose KJ

R33 I grew up with the comics and the premise to me always was that Archie is the uber-average teen boy—distracted by hormones, trying to be a nice person, trying to be an athlete, trying to pass classes in school, trying to be in a band...just trying everything out and not doing incredibly well with any of it. Average looking, average talent, average wit. Veronica liked him because he was a good guy who confounded all her normal elitist predilections and because he fawns over her; Betty likes him because he is the kind of guy she can bring up and spend a life with; Betty and Veronica are both stuck on him because they are best friends who are competing with one another. It was never “everyone wants to fuck Archie.” At all. That’s why Reggie is his foil: Reggie is rich, athletic, better looking, more competitive—everything Archie is not except that Archie has a heart of gold. That’s what we thought, anyway. Now we know that Veronica never returned Reggie’s affections because she is a racist who hates Asians.

[quote] Archie is the uber-average teen boy

[quote] Average looking, average talent, average wit.

You've never watched the CW before, have you?

This is what fuels the CW...

And this...

Yes, I get it. The horny teens network. I’m just saying that Archie from the comics was someone physically different—although Archie is still essentially a moral character in the show. Betty and Veronica look like their comic counterparts and are very similar personalitywise, despite the very different situations they end up in. Jughead is a whole new creation.

"Diversity has to happen organically, not forced on our throat."

Yawn, Republicans say the same thing about gay characters in movies. If you hate "diversity" then don't watch the show.

Storyboard

[quote]And please. The reason KJ Apa got the role is because he looks amazing shirtless

100% truth. They got him for the beefcake.

No one who has seen the show thinks it's "PC." Have you seen the skimpy outfits they put the "teen" girls in? All the shirtless shots of teen boys? The implication that parents want to sleep with the kids? The teens are all drunk or on drugs and sleeping together and living together. Veronica even has some lace-up catsuit she wears at least twice a season. It's not "PC" in the least.

It’s really amazing. The Archie comics I grew up with adhered to the Comics Code Authority’s self-censorship guidelines, and according to Wikipedia Archie and DC were the last holdouts when the CCA finally went kaput in 2011.

Eldergays! Is that look in OP that different from what you wore in the 1960s?

R41 You keep insisting Riverdale isn’t politically correct. Who ever suggested that it was? When it was new, its primary storylines were that 16-year-old Archie had been fucking his music teacher Ms. Grundy for at least a year already and implications that Cheryl had had a sexual relationship with her dead twin brother. The series has been on for three or four seasons. Anyone who thinks anything about it is politically correct has never seen it, so I don’t really get what point you’re making.

[quote] A Hispanic Veronica? An Asian Reggie? Even Josie and the pussycats are homegirls. Diversity has to happen organically, not forced on our throat.

Young people are the target audience for Riverdale, not 60 yr old bigots.

Josie + 😺😺 did throw me at first because nothing about them resembles the comic characters. But Reggie as an Asian guy works; he looks enough like the comic counterpart. And Veronica looks just like Veronica. Aside from her parents’ names—Hermione and Hiram Lodge—there is no reason the original Veronica could’t be Spanish or Latina. I’ve only met one Veronica in real life and she is from Central America.

Aw jeez I only just now got the pun in OP's title.

And by the way, Archie Comics has changed its characterizations consistently over the years as social norms have changed. In the 40s, it was a patriotism-promoting comics series. In the 50s, it was the dumb, nice boy trying to impress the beautiful, teasing girls. In the 60s, there was more about women’s independence, including the launch of Sabrina, whose half-witch identity was also a standin for interracial relationships and biracial identities. Valerie, one of the Pussycats, always has been black, and then in 1971, Archie Comics introduced Chuck Clayton for the sake of diversity. And then along came Kevin Keller decades later—and gay people were elated and it was such a big deal that the comics did this that it helped to revive the Archie brand.

I would call Archie overall inclusive but not necessarily politically correct. The comics I grew up with were full of moral lessons, but those were dramatized through characters making mistakes and learning emotionally from them rather than preachy The More You Know types of approaches.

Is Aaronbald a name?

Is he still dating an underage girl?