[American film buffs may recognize the tag line in the title!]

You're never gonna believe this.  After SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS trapped in a comic book high school love triangle, Archie is finally gonna get married.  Yep, the cover of issue #600 is out, and it shows him proposing, successfully, to... Veronica!

[If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because you are no longer 9 years old, which is the last time I looked at an Archie comic book.  Still, it's one of those things in the world that one expects to be stable and unchanging, like Larry King's hair or The Old Man in the Mountain.  (...oh)]

So, this is big news, to the kind of people who care about these things.
http://www.chron.com/
"The perpetual high school student ties the knot in a six-issue story that begins in Archie No. 600, which hits comic shops Wednesday and newsstands the week of Aug. 31. It's a milestone that has blond girl-next-door Betty Cooper absolutely teary-eyed — mainly because Archie is going to marry her rich, raven-haired frenemy, Veronica Lodge.
...
The story takes place several years in the future, right after Archie and the gang have graduated college. That's when we'll learn what life holds for Archie as well as best buddy Jughead Jones, wise-guy rival Reggie Mantle and other familiar Riverdale faces."


And it's got a lot of those people upset.
http://blog.taragana.com/
"When comic book store owner Dave Luebke heard that after 67 years, the carrot-topped everyman of the comic world, Archie, was proposing to va-va-voomy rich girl Veronica instead of girl-next-door Betty, he decided to protest by selling his copy of the series’ rare first issue.
...
“Betty is it. Not Veronica,” said Luebke, whose Richmond, Va., store has more than 1 million comics in stock. “This is serious.""

Yeah, very clever 'protest' there fellah.  If I want to protest something this important, like, say, height and stripe color of local speed bumps, could I please get a check for $38,000??

"Luebke’s Archie Comics No. 1 sold for $38,837 when Dallas’ Heritage Auction Galleries offered it Friday."

So, why would they pick now to get the kids hitched?  (Besides selling a bunch of books, of course.)  The rumors are flying... perhaps it was something that happened in issue 569, when Reggie finally got Betty on a date and we didn't see what Veronica did to try and make him jealous...


And since the Punisher has crossed over into the Archie world before, it could be a genuine "shotgun wedding".



Life goes on.  I suppose comics can change, too.  Just don't tell me that Peter Parker and Mary Jane have hooked up!