Dan Parent

Something that's been overlooked pretty often since the big Archie Reboot is that the company is still publishing stories featuring the classic, gag-centric versions of the characters. It's publishing a lot of them, actually --- every single Archie Digest features a new lead story about the gang, and in 2016, that amounted to over 300 pages of new material in that classic Archie style. Now, it's all being collected in the Archie: Best of 2016 Digest Annual, a 348-page digital collection out next week. Check out a preview.

Every month, comic publishers release their solicitation announcements to provide information to readers and retailers on comics that are coming out in three months’ time, but there’s so much information dropped at once that a lot can slip through the cracks. This month in DC’s April solicitations, we’ve got guest artists galore, fan-favorite team-ups and a clue towards the incoming return of a classic DC super-team.

Of all the improvements that we've seen from the folks at Archie Comics over the past few years, the most incredible might have been their response time to trends. There was a time, as recently as ten or eleven years ago, when attempts to capitalize on what was hot among the the kids these days could take years, to the point where I once saw a comic where Jughead wore a shirt that said "Don't Taze Me, Bro" about two years after that particular meme was in the consciousness. Which, now that I think about it, was probably the least worrying thing about that choice. But no longer! Witness Archie Comics Double Digest #275, where the teens from Riverdale become obsessed with Cosmo GO!, a very familiar phone game about catching cute characters through the magic of augmented reality. Check out a preview (along with a look at the vintage stories that are published alongside it) below!

It doesn't seem like long ago that Kevin Keller was a gay high school kid, unsure if he was the only one like him in Riverdale High. But now, in Life With Kevin #3, he's already an adult and becoming a celebrity, but he takes a step back into the high school scene to help out an awkward gay fan.

The Holidays are upon as, and the year is basically gone. And as you know by now, that mean that here at ComicsAlliance, we're looking back at the best that comics had to offer in 2016. So here, to give you warm feeling as you head into your holiday weekend, are the best Archie Comics covers of the year.

There's a street in Riverdale's magical Yellow Wood called Storybook Lane, and as you might expect from the all-consuming weirdness of the Archie universe, it has the same nebulous relationship to fables and fairytales that Memory Lane does with time. Just something to keep in mind when you're reading the new Betty and Veronica: Fairy Tales collection --- it's out this week, and you can check out a preview below!

Horror has been a big part of the Archie Renaissance, but in the classic Archie titles, the idea of Veronica being sent to a possibly haunted house still has all the charm and novelty that you want it to, and this week, that's exactly what we're getting when the Archie line goes Halloween for October.

It's rare to see Dan Parent working outside of Archie Comics, where he's the most prominent writer/artist of the last two decades. However, DC has unveiled variant covers drawn by Parent for their four Hanna-Barbera reboot titles: Scooby Apocalypse #7, The Flintstones #4, Wacky Raceland #5, and Future Quest #6. "I'm so excited to do these four Hanna- Barbera covers," Parent told ComicsAlliance. "As a lifelong fan, and fan of the new series of books, it was a dream come true!"

If you were to ask me about my favorite Archie Comics characters, we'd probably spend about an hour where I talked non-stop about how great Jughead is, those amazing stories about Cricket O'Dell (the girl who can literally smell money), and I'd probably eventually get around to mentioning the short-lived breakdancers from the '90s, Claude and Raoul, who occasionally showed up to give Archie the wisdom they learned on the streets. Rest assured, however, that there would be plenty of discussion about Cheryl Blossom in there, too. If, however, you asked me how to make Cheryl better, then I think I'd only have one suggestion: Give her a pet monkey. And now, in the classic-style stories still leading each installment of Archie's line of digests, that's actually happening. Check out a preview!

It wasn't that long ago that Archie Comics made headlines with the introduction of Kevin Keller, the first out gay character to go to Riverdale High; he quickly became a hit with fans, and he was one of the first signs that Archie as a publisher was willing to shake up what people thought they knew about the company. Since then Kevin has become a mainstay of the Archie books and has proven to be a successful spinoff character in his own right. He'll even appear in the cast of the upcoming TV show Riverdale This week, Archie Comics launches Life With Kevin, a new digital first series starring an adult Kevin Keller living away from Riverdale, chasing his dreams in the big city. ComicsAlliance caught up with cartoonist Dan Parent to talk about the unique style of his new book, adapting the Archie formula to adult characters, and of course, Kevin's love life.