Archie vs Predator

Ever since it was announced, I was pretty sure that Alex de Campi and Fernando Ruiz's Archie vs. Predator was going to be everything I wanted out of comics. Now, with the first issue out, I know for a fact that's true --- at the very least, it's my favorite Predator crossover of all time, replacing even the one where Judge Dredd takes his shirt off and fights a Predator with a knife alongside Dutch's granddaughter. But really, that first issue is just the tip of an alarmingly violent iceberg, which is why I spoke to de Campi about how she prepared for the series, why she's so drawn to writing Betty, Veronica, and the medium of emojis, and why she wanted to give Dilton a giant robot Archie that he could use to fight aliens. Really.

Aside from their first initial, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archie Andrews have never had all that much in common. That changed this week, when Dark Horse Comics released Archie Vs. Predator, and the alien big game hunter that menaced a dirty, sweaty, well-muscled cast lead by Schwarzenneger in the 1987 film Predator set his sites on Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and their quite killable gang. In film, Predators have been mostly content to hunt humans, and aliens from the Aliens franchise, across a series of five films — Predator, Predator 2, AVP: Alien Vs. Predator, Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem and Predators — but in comics, they've pursued and usually failed to obtain some pretty exotic skulls.

Even though it was announced months ago, I'm still having a hard time believing that we live in a magical world where Alex de Campi and Fernando Ruiz's Archie Vs Predator is a real thing that is happening. Even in a time when the company's most critically successful book is a moody supernatural horror story where the entire cast is about two seconds away from being murdered by zombies, Archie Vs Predator still seems like a beautiful, beautiful dream. That's why, in order to confirm that this is in fact happening, I spoke to Ruiz about what it's like to send the Predator to Riverdale, and how it compares to drawing Betty riding a dragon.