Jumping in Headfirst

Archie "Lyrics are stupid. Music needs to SOUND good." They're two points that are totally separate and yet are often conflated with one another, and have been ruining modern music for at least ten years now. A piece of my soul may well have died reading it, yet I have to applaud Mark Waid because it kind of captures the youth of today spot-on. The comic as a whole is excellent though, finally explaining to readers the dreaded "lipstick incident" that caused Archie and Betty, Riverdale High's most unbreakupable couple to, well...break up. It's a familiar story: they start listening to people outside the relationship. The most terrifying real life villain--two high-school kids--kick things off by essentially telling Betty she doesn't know how to gender right. This leads to a Hollywood-esque "makeover" where Betty goes from tomboy to super girly girl, then goes on a "date date" with her boyfriend Archie, which is incredib...

Batgirl In case you needed to know, Dick's response to Barbara's monologue is, "Yeah...you're right."   This is just...legitimately bad, and pretty much indefensible.   This issue could have played out in any number of ways.  It's about the marriage of longtime Batgirl supporting character Alysia Yeoh--it could've just been about Batgirl trying to keep the wedding day from exploding while dealing with some criminal threatening Burnside.   (Or to be honest, the opening is adorable as all hell so it could've just been about the wedding and I'm pretty sure Batgirl's current target audience would've been all about it.)  It features Lucius Fox, so it COULD have been about briefly bringing him out of retirement as Batwing for a team-up between the two.  Or if it just HAD to feature Dick Grayson, you could've done one of those neat comic books where a villain they're dealing with today is one they dealt with when they first met,...