Are Christian comics better or worse since Archie Gets a Job! (from 1977)? The comic promotes a combination of functional illiteracy and profound ignorance, not to mention encouraging teasing of people’s appearances, particularly fat-shaming. Just like Jesus, no doubt.
The comic’s all about Archie and Jughead getting summer jobs at school teacher Mr. Weatherbee’s beach-front Christian book store. It’s not very Christian-y for the first half or so. It’s not, you know, any good—and the fat-shaming starts almost immediately, along with some ageism—but it’s not shockingly insipid Christian-y either. Not until Big Ethel shows up to be shamed for her appearance, only to get a Christian dating book (which is an ad for creator Al Hartley’s son’s real book; Hartley includes an illustration of his son to show off how handsome he is—at least Jughead thinks so, anyway). Pretty soon Veronica shows up at the store to get the same book because all the boys on the beach are enraptured by Ethel reading it to them. Silly Veronica thought her body would get her Christian boys. Not so. They want someone to read them Hartley’s kid’s book.
I do have to admit it might be fun to read the book but not aloud to a beach full of studs. From that point, Hartley lays on the Christian thick. Why get a book on sociology, ecology, or solar energy when you can just read the Bible and not learn anything real at all? And Archie and Jughead are much better fellows for selling Bibles—the Bible “tells you how to be a winner”—than pushing drugs or porno on the beach like other people. Sadly we don’t get to meet those people.
They’d probably be scummier but more amusing.
The last bit of the comic is all about how even teenagers need to tithe, which seems very anti-Capitalist.
There’s actually a couple technically good panels as far as how Hartley plots the action, but the comic’s a disappointment. The cover has Jughead crucified on a giant kite, which has no pay-off in the comic itself.
It might be amusing to read Gets a Job with the seven deadly sins in mind but… probably not. Again, there’s a good reason no one took Archie comics seriously until 2010 or whatever. This thing is dreadful.
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