REVIEWS

To start, what is Archie’s Weird Parody?

Klein: Archie’s Weird Parody is a rock musical about the characters of Archie trying to escape a pre-written story. It’s about suburbia, conforming, and wanting more for yourself. It explores the safety of suburbia for marginalized people, especially if that suburbia is in an unchanging comic book. Jughead takes the lead in a quest to understand what it means to break out of a mold, while the rest of the Archie gang go on their own journeys to better understand themselves and the town that they live in.

Raymond: It’s a story about storytelling, and about what gets lost or added when certain people tell stories. It’s about the Archie characters discovering and claiming their autonomy and individuality by becoming their own authors.

Neil, how did you get all this from Archie and Riverdale?

Klein: Until 1989, the Comics Code Authority would not bear the CCA seal, showing a comic was approved under the code, and in turn “appropriate” and “worthwhile” to be sold if a character seen as morally good was also seen as queer. Pure censorship! I love Archie and Riverdale, and as I learned more about both, it became clear to me that this wasn’t just censorship of what might’ve been, but censorship of what (to me) clearly already was. I saw clear queer narratives hidden in the pages of Archie Comics, and I myself yearned for the freedom of these characters. So in the spirit of anti-censorship, I wrote a show about these characters talking out loud about their queer identities, and talking out loud about what it means to be people of color in suburbia.

Max, you play Archie Andrews. Is he queer in Archie’s Weird Parody?

Raymond: Yes. Since the first version of the show, the focal point of Archie’s journey has been the tension between the romantic desire he’s expected to have for Betty and the romantic desire he actually has for Jughead. That journey is what initially drew me to the 

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