Snoochee Boo Cheese, Comic Fan – Riverdale has got more jerseys.
How do you do two very different visual worlds, as one clean cut and cartoon, another horrible and deadpan – was meant to always clash? For veteran Archie artist Fernando Rous, the answer was on par with simplicity, familiarity with fandom, research and style.
When Archie meets Jay and Silent Bob #1, Ruiz takes on the challenge of dropping Kevin Smith’s cult classic character into Archie Comics’ refined pastel-colored universe. As a result, Jay, Silent Bob and Clarks’ Randall Graves are cartoons that look just as seamless as Surreal, as if they were just a few blocks away from Pop’s Chock Light Shop.
Courtesy Archie Comic
“As soon as the people at Archie Comics asked me to meet Archie, Jay and Silent Bob, I knew this would be the kind of project I wanted,” Ruiz says. A New Jersey native and lifelong fan of Smith’s film, Lewis introduces the pigeon with enthusiasm and a full rewatch of the Ascunivers catalogue view. “I studied characters, their traits, their body language and thought about how it would translate into cartoons.”
The comic itself is as weird as the title suggests. Written by Kevin Smith, the story follows Archie Andrews, who is earning a summer job at New Jersey’s iconic quickstop. What starts as a part-time job will escalate quickly. Archie becomes friends with Randall, crashes the Pussycats concert and navigates a new love interest. There is even a faint promise of progress in the number of music and the eternal Betty vs Veronica stalemate. This is an event exclusively for mature leaders in double size that somehow feels like both the Ascicioniverse spinoff and the Archie Classic.
Courtesy Archie Comic
Jay and Silent Bob were surprisingly easy to translate into Archie Style. “Jay already had a Juged vibe,” explains Lewis. “Long hair, beanies, angled chin – he fits quickly.” The silent bob beard and rear cap were also easily simplified. “That’s the key to drawing Archie’s character: simplicity. If there are lines that can escape by excluding them, then just leave them out.”
Randall, meanwhile, needed a little more finesse. “He doesn’t have the big visual narratives like Jay or Silent Bob,” Lewis points out. “His character passes through with body language. He leaps, he leaps forward, and he walks like he’s not anywhere.” It was only once that the character he clicked on was moving, or rather, rather, by inaction.
Courtesy Archie Comic
The setting got just the same amount of love. “Quickstop is just as character as the rest of the store clerk,” Lewis says. He adapted its famous dirty charm to Archie’s aesthetics of clean lines by sliding visual Easter eggs such as Tulie gum, nail cigarettes and movie mascots. “I wanted to feel it was familiar to me, but it still fits Archie’s world.”
When the pages came together, Lewis was amazed at how naturally the two worlds merged. “At a moment there was little separation between the Archie Gang and the store clerk characters,” he says. “They integrated so well and it felt like they were always sharing the same universe.”
Courtesy Archie Comic
Courtesy Archie Comic
Even in every wild moment packed into this comic, romantic drama, musical confusion, Jay is… Jay. And somehow, it’s really, really.
“This is historic,” Lewis says. “And I’m happy to draw it.”
Want to learn more about comic designs? Read past anatomy of design features!
