Archie (2015-) #5

Jughead is definitely the only intelligent person here.

Is this really how overly sensitive, tantrum-prone, dumb, and oblivious teens are these days? Heavy yikes!

Betty makes a stupid life choice, Jug is the only person who has a sense of honour and a spark of intelligence in his skull. Well, except Archie for a moment, but he spoils that by turning against his best friends over the horrid vixen who's treating him like trash.

I think maybe I was doomed from the start when I started with the television show - back when it was actually good - but I can't stand the way some of the characters are behaving. Even if they weren't characters I found familiar, though, I think I'd still be so over the pettiness and tantrums everyone seem to consider normal teenage behaviour. I love interpersonal fluff type stuff, but not when it's so weighed down by an abusive “relationship” with a clueless victim and good people being treated like trash by those they should be able to trust.

It's weird, because the reprints of classic Archie comics in the back of these issues are charming (if also dated) and don't feel as overly melodramatic. Maybe they're trying too hard when modernizing? I don't know.