Four years later, still a heck of a job.

The fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina passed this weekend. A lot of good things have happened in New Orleans since then. A lot of bad things have happened too. As usual, I have plenty I could say on the subject, but I’m just going to link to the short story that’s thus far my definitive statement on it.

Six weeks after Katrina, I bought a ticket on the first Amtrak train into New Orleans since the storm. I spent a week talking to survivors and witnessing the devastation. Most of the hardest-hit parts of the city were still off-limits to visitors, but what I saw was plenty disturbing. I started writing this piece on my train ride back to Chicago after reading an article in the Times-Picayune about two women campaigning to get their mother’s remains released from a morgue. It was the most difficult thing I ever wrote, and it’s miles away from my usual style and tone, but in a lot of respects I think it may be my best work.

So then, all of that said, here’s “St. Gabriel’s Morgue.”

"Requiem for a wasteland" or "There's cheese in them thar hills"

From the steaming jungle of Fitzcarraldo to the snowy wasteland of Fargo, an impressive shooting location has been a vital element of many a classic movie. Great locations have also been responsible for classing up any number of unremarkable movies. Just look at the countless no-budget Westerns shot in Arizona’s monument valley and the mountain country of Italy. It’s a perfectly logical train of thought: If the best we can offer our audience is Lee Van Cleef shooting it out with badly dubbed Italian extras, we may as well give them something nice to look at in the background.

That’s all well and good, but I’ve always had a soft spot for filmmakers who lacked the budget or the motivation to move out of their own backyard. I’m talking about movies shot in my all-time favorite location: the arid hills outside of Los Angeles.

Now, I’ll admit that I’m a biased Midwestern boy who’s partial to verdant pastures and green, rolling valleys. I’ve seen quite a few places and still rank Western Wisconsin among the loveliest I’ve laid eyes on. That said, I’ve also been to the arid hills outside of Los Angeles. They’re not without their charms, but there is very little about the arid hills outside of Los Angeles that I would describe as especially scenic or beautiful. And yet, countless directors of the ‘50s and ‘60s dragged their barely paid crews and barely verbal actors out to the arid hills outside of Los Angeles time and time again. Guys like Roger Corman and Bert I. Gordon were such regulars out in those hills that the local woodland creatures started following them around, Snow White-style. (Though in Gordon’s case, the animals may just have been angling for future starring roles.)

Obviously, the major benefit to shooting in these hills was cost-effectiveness. They’re close enough to Hollywood that budget-minded directors could shoot all their location shots in one afternoon and be home in time for happy hour without burning so much as a full tank of gas. If you were shooting a cheap drive-in feature focused on bikers, monsters, hippies, aliens or any combination thereof, those grungy hills offered everything you needed. Also, they covered enough ground that nobody was likely to hassle you about permits and other such trivialities.

It’s also a relatively versatile landscape. The tall grass, sparse forests and rocky slopes and occasional creek beds are actually fairly distinctive, but they make a barely passable substitute for just about any terrain. I’ve seen those hills stand in for everything from prehistoric worlds to post-apocalyptic landscapes, to varying degrees of believability. (Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Mike Nelson hilariously pointed out “the famous Illinois Mountains” in Gordon’s Beginning of the End.) They’re like a mediocre impressionist – you never forget it’s him doing the voices, but you can at least sort of tell what he’s going for.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a new cheapie shot out in that terrain. I suspect that has a lot to do with the rise of affordable filmmaking tools and the decline of in-theater sleaze. Today, just about any upstart with a digital video camera and a limited distribution model can crank out a straight-to-DVD monster movie full of digitally rendered effects and backgrounds. Shooting in one’s own backyard is easier than ever, and industry competition has gotten so heated that making a legit film in California is often an expensive proposition, even in the arid hills outside of Los Angeles.

In a way, that’s a shame, because it feels like we’ve lost an important element of low-budget filmmaking. But it also makes me kind of happy to know that this terrain will be forever tied to a specific age and a distinctive kind of movie. Hiking through Topanga Canyon a couple of summers ago made me feel like I was part of some zero-budget film shoot. At every bend in the path, I half expected to be set upon by acid-crazed bikers, cheaply costumed monsters or scantily clad space women. But the genres and budgets that facilitated those characters faded away as Hollywood passed on to a different age. Perhaps it’s best that the sweaty, rocky, gorgeously unremarkable landscape they called home is relegated to the same fate.

- Ira Brooker

"Talking (and talking and talking) 'bout my generation" or "A lot of people hate this hat."

I'm starting to suspect that I never had any generationally appropriate idols.

Having already written arms-length obituaries for Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson, I once again find myself faced with the death of an undeniably important artist whose work never grabbed me the way it was apparently supposed to. The films of John Hughes defined the cinematic experience for many of my agemates, the first generation to grow up in front of the VCR. Many of my friends can quote his screenplays for The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles more or less verbatim. Had I seen any of those movies at the time, perhaps I could too.

But, like so many other vestiges of the 1980s, my family managed to avoid most of the Hughes oeuvre. By the time I got around to watching the abovementioned holy trinity, I was a jaded college kid unable to see the charm in the broad stereotypes and thinly drawn caricatures my classmates grew up regarding as family. Yes, I could pick out certain moments of charm, but by and large I saw these films as dull mélanges of stilted dialogue and unlikely characterization. (Seriously, has anyone ever responded to marijuana the way Emilio Estevez does in The Breakfast Club?)

So yeah, when the topic of John Hughes comes up, I’ve always been that one contrarian jerk in the group who derides your taste and bespoils your cherished childhood memories. But even I can admit that the man had some real talent. As a writer, he penned an awful lot of crap, but he was also responsible for some damned hilarious scenes, particularly in those Vacation movies. And there are even a couple of his directorial efforts* that I hold as dearly as the rest of you – one perhaps even more so.

The first, obviously, is Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. This is the one instance where I believe Hughes’ vision of teenage life rings mostly true. There’s plenty of shaky material here, mostly involving Principal Rooney’s slapsticky pursuit of Ferris (though Jeffrey Jones does a good job with the role). Even Matthew Broderick’s smirky charm would likely wear thin if not for the support of the movie’s true hero: Alan Ruck. I can’t think of many characters who more accurately embodied the exquisite angst of teendom than Ruck’s Cameron. Whereas most American films from this era and genre come off hopelessly dated today, Ruck’s is a performance that actually improves as I get older. The look on Cameron’s face before he plunges into the pool has more to say about youth and melancholy than all the speechifying The Breakfast Club could muster, and I give Hughes credit both for creating the character and coaxing a career-defining performance out of his young second lead.

And speaking of career-defining, let’s talk about Hughes’ work with John Candy. Although I like Ferris, it’s Hughes’ two Candy vehicles that stand up best for me. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is almost a no-brainer: put a manic John Candy and an uptight Steve Martin in close quarters and watch the hilarity ensue. It’s a straightforward, personality-driven comedy that’s one of the few Hughes films to capture the verve of his writing in the Vacation movies. I remember liking it a lot, though I haven’t seen it in at least a decade.

But for me, the definitive Hughes film will always be Uncle Buck, a film that went considerably darker than Hughes or post-SCTV Candy had ever gone. No, it’s not a great movie, and a lot of the flaws are Hughes’ fault (Macauley Culkin’s unbearably overwritten role, for instance). But it’s also the rare Hughes’ film to occasionally drop the shiny veneer and let a bit of grime through. Candy’s Buck may be a lovable loser, but there’s no avoiding the fact that he really is a loser through and through. He’s essentially Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie (another keen Hughes creation) cast as the lead rather than just the comic relief. No other film role better utilized John Candy’s entire skill set, and he predictably turns in a powerhouse performance. Buck runs the gamut of affability, vulnerability, gregariousness, slovenliness and gluttony, with a previously seldom-seen streak of genuine malevolence mixed in. Hughes provided Candy with the part that gave us a great indication of what the big man could have done if he’d ever been allowed out of the Funny Fat Guy ghetto. If Candy hadn’t died so young, Uncle Buck suggests he might have flourished in this age of smart showcases for guys like Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen.

But I digress. This is supposed to be about the other John, the one who’s been such a constant puzzle to me. This is a man whose writing brought out the best in John Candy, Alan Ruck and Chevy Chase and yielded some of the most memorable comedy scenes of the 1980s. On the other hand, his work on offal like the Home Alone movies and worthless remakes like Flubber and 101 Dalmations also contributed to many of the worst aspects of Hollywood in the ‘90s. He’s an unmistakable influence on many movies I really dig, from Mean Girls to Superbad (possibly my favorite film of the current decade). He also, however, opened the door for directors like Allan Moyle (whose dreadful Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records are basically Hughes films made somehow even less subtle) and Hughes’ greatest protégé, the odious Chris Columbus.

I suppose that any artist will be judged primarily by his finest work, and John Hughes at his best created some iconic material that made a huge impact on a generation. It’s not his fault that most of that work never really connected with me, or that it did connect with a lot of people who made poor future use of it. Heck, if nothing else, he brought me the indelible image of John Candy leering downward, chomping a stogie, wearing a bad hat and wielding a power drill.

Still, if we’re talking ‘80s teen movies, I’ll take Heaven Help Us any old day.

* Possibly important note: I’ve still never seen Weird Science. Maybe that would be the one to win me over.

Seven lessons learned from Prince's "Graffiti Bridge" soundtrack

I’ll confess right up front that I’ve never seen Prince’s 1990 film Graffiti Bridge in its entirety. I’ve never read a single good word about the movie, and as a big fan of Purple Rain, I’ve always feared that watching the sequel would taint my appreciation of the original. (I’ve also never watched Purple Rain while even remotely sober, which may contribute to my belief that it’s a cinematic masterpiece.)

I do, however, own the Graffiti Bridge album, a weird piece of work even by Princely standards. It’s not an awful album by any means. As Prince soundtrack albums go, it ranks well below the flawless Purple Rain and the minor classic Parade (Music from the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon), but considerably above Batman. Whereas the first two would stand alone as excellent albums even if you didn’t know the films existed, the songs on Graffiti Bridge sound very much like pieces of a larger, disjointed narrative. It’s a mishmash of guest stars, skit-songs and tonal shifts whose whole is rather less than the sum of its parts.

Still, it’s an interesting listening experience with some scattered but worthwhile highlights. On my most recent spin, I realized that Graffiti Bridge even has a few things to teach us, some more vital than others.

Want to underline your sequel’s inferiority? Open with a weak knock-off of the original.

When Prince was writing “Can’t Stop This Feeling That I Got,” he was probably consciously trying to create a musical link between Purple Rain and Graffiti Bridge. Trouble is, he did it too well. His opening track sounds so much like “Let’s Go Crazy” (minus the awesome spoken-word preamble) that my primary reaction to it is to wonder why I’m not just listening to “Let’s Go Crazy” instead.

The concept of Prince featuring George Clinton is way cooler on paper.

There’s no question that Clinton’s brand of whacked-out space funk was a major influence on young Prince, but there’s also a considerable difference between their sounds. A confluence of these two powerhouses should have shaken the music world to its very foundation. Instead, “We Can Funk” is a pretty decent entry in the Prince dance track canon. The most Clinton-esque elements to be found are a long group chant toward song’s end and the awesome/atrocious lyric “I’m testin’ positive for the funk / I’ll gladly pee in anybody’s cup.”

Place them side by side and Morris Day can easily upstage Prince.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen Purple Rain or heard an early record by The Time, but Morris Day is one of the great showmen of his era. As wild and weird as Prince can be, Morris brings so much more manic energy to his couple of tracks, especially “Release It.” Granted he’s not half the musical genius Prince is, but when Morris starts bossing his "stellas" around and stealing nookie from his side men, I find myself wishing Graffiti Bridge had been his vehicle rather than his benefactor’s.

Once upon a time, there was Tevin Campbell.

Remember Tevin Campbell? That sweet-voiced pretty boy who ruled the R&B charts in the early ‘90s? He’s part of the bizarre Graffiti Bridge entourage, and he’s rather awesome. His “Round and Round” is both one of the best tracks on the album and a more enjoyable effort than Campbell’s future work. By this point, the Prince-Michael Jackson feud was pretty well wound down, but it would be easy to read Prince’s championing of a charismatic child star with a voice soulful beyond his years as one last shot across the bow.

Mavis Staples can do no wrong.

Prince being Prince, he probably could have recruited Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner or another top-tier mega diva to fill this role (he did allegedly pitch the part to Patti LaBelle). Instead he went with the less iconic but equally skilled Mavis Staples, and her brassy, classy presence gives the album just the boost it needs in its saggy second half. Her “Melody Cool” is an undeniable highlight of Graffiti Bridge, a swaggering slab of soul that’s one of the few blatantly cinematic moments that translates gracefully onto wax.

Prince should never dabble in hip-hop.

Sadly, Prince viewed the half-assed flow shoehorned into “New Power Generation (Part II)” not as a failed experiment in genre-bending, but as the gateway to several albums’ worth of hip-hop flirtation. It’s all pretty embarrassing stuff. “Cocaine was a thing that I took on / and Nowhere was a place that I was goin’”? Really?

“Thieves in the Temple” is no “When Doves Cry,” “Graffiti Bridge” is no “Purple Rain.”

Don’t get me wrong – Graffiti Bridge’s big single is a damned good song, maybe even a great one. But unlike its predecessor, it’s just not sturdy enough to hang an entire album and feature film on. As for the title track, it’s little more than a pleasant coda, utterly lacking in the majesty and passion of “Purple Rain.” You know that famous scene at the end of the first film, where Prince’s guitar neck erupts during the fadeout of “Purple Rain,” dousing the crowd with highly suggestive sparks? “Graffiti Bridge” is more like half-hearted wanking with no money shot.

- Ira Brooker

"The Man in the (Rear-View) Mirror" or "World Without Glove"

I’m feeling a little left out of the whole Michael Jackson mourning process. Much like Kurt Cobain, Jackson never really impacted my life the way I’m told he was supposed to.

A lot of that has to do with my upbringing. Where pop culture was concerned, the ‘80s hardly even happened in my neck of Wisconsin. During Jackson’s peak years of media dominance, the majority of music being played in the Brooker household fell into either the Contemporary Christian or Oldies genre. My main exposure to the King of Pop came via jokes in Bloom County strips and the Z93 DJs who yammered away during my morning school bus commutes. The former taught me that he was a creepy freak straight out of some macabre children’s book. The latter made him emblematic of the depravity, decadence and unbearable annoyance I came to associate with Top 40 radio.

I was familiar with some of his songs, sure. Half the girls in my fourth grade class were enamored of him (really not that impressive a feat, as there were 12 students total in my fourth grade class). I really didn’t have much of an opinion on his music, but my inborn contrarian streak made me dis him at every opportunity, to the chagrin of the young ladies of Leon Elementary. I specifically recall Katie Pottinger getting rather upset with me for insisting that there would not be any Michael Jackson songs played at my wedding. (For the record, there were not.)

When I reached my twenties, I started piecing together my Lost Decade by listening to some of the music I’d ignored at the time. Compared to a lot of other musical decades, I still find the ‘80s pretty lackluster, but there’s a lot of greatness there. Digging into the archives led me to quite a few amazing artists, from Talking Heads to Kurtis Blow to Laurie Anderson, not to mention a mighty impressive string of one-hit wonders (one area where the ‘80s truly dominated).

And eventually, I even got around to exploring the works of the Great Gloved One. Listening to Michael Jackson 15 to 20 years after the fact was a peculiar experience. There was no denying the man had recorded some great songs – “Billie Jean,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Black and White,” just to name a few. There was also no denying he’d recorded a lot of saccharine dreck full of subpar lyrics and ostentatious chirping. Taken as a whole, though, the Michael Jackson oeuvre really made me appreciate the vision, drive and dedication of a deeply troubled, endlessly electrifying musical genius. A genius named Prince.

To me, Michael Jackson’s most important musical legacy is inspiring Prince to spend more than a decade soundly and consistently kicking his ass. Accounts vary on whether their rivalry was friendly or bitter (my absolute favorite Prince and MJ anecdote suggests some acrimony), but there’s no question that each man pushed the other to greater heights. In my estimation, Prince’s heights soared far, far higher than Michael’s. Jackson dominated headlines and ruled the charts, but Prince’s output was more prolific, his skill set more versatile and his sound more timeless (Batman not withstanding). When Jackson started making revolutionary music videos, Prince went ahead and made a groundbreaking feature film. And Thriller may be the all-time best seller, but Purple Rain is a perfect album.

In my mind, it’s clear that Prince wins this contest, but I also doubt he would have reached those peaks if he hadn’t been constantly glancing at Michael Jackson in his rear-view mirror. I know that Jackson deserves plenty of credit in his own right – heck, his Jackson Five vocals alone would earn him a place among the greats – but where my own personal musical education is concerned, I’ll think of him most fondly as a supporting player on the path to Sign o’ the Times.

- Ira Brooker

"Kanye the Barbarian" or "Kanye West doesn't care about book people"

As he is apt to do, Kanye West raised quite the kerfuffle last week when he declared himself a “proud non-reader of books” (while promoting his own ludicrously slim book, no less). Kanye went on to say, “Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed… I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.”

The outcry from the writerly community has been predictable, with a lot of righteous fulmination on our culture of ignorance and the unforgivable arrogance of Kanye West. Say what you will about Kanye. Personally, I think he’s an excellent producer and decent rapper who’s adopted a manufactured messiah complex as a means of keeping his name in the headlines (The line about not wanting a book’s autograph is just too over-the-top not to be performance art), but I get why so many people have come to hate him.

I won’t go so far as to say Kanye has a point here. I don’t think he’s even trying to make a point, beyond proving that he can generate controversy by making controversial statements. But he does open the door for what I think is a long overdue conversation. Simply put, I think readers have a tendency to overvalue what they do.

Don’t get me wrong – I love reading, I love writing and I love books. In fact, I freely admit to being a literary snob. But I’m snobbish about what I read; my problem is with people who are snobbish about the very act of reading. There seems to be a prevailing idea that being a regular reader affords one a certain superiority over less bookish types. Even though I usually love any opportunity to indulge a false sense of superiority, I’m afraid I can’t completely agree.

My favorite bookstore in the world, Maple Street Book Shop in New Orleans, sells a popular bumper sticker emblazoned with the slogan “Fight the Stupids.” Much as I love the shop, I really dislike the implication that people who don’t read a lot are stupid. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for not reading much, from learning disabilities to time constraints to a basic lack of interest. Just as I know many exceptional writers who can’t spell to save their lives, I know plenty of well-rounded, intelligent people who seldom crack a book. It’s a matter of personal preference and learning style, and it’s nobody’s place to think himself better or worse because of it.

I think that strain of snobbery has hurt the institution of reading as much as any video game system or prime time reality show. The idea that books are only for nerds and eggheads was born out of centuries-old class struggles that carry on to this day. It’s perfectly natural for readers to have a defensive reaction when someone bashes books, but that shouldn’t manifest itself in disdain for those who don’t know David Foster Wallace from David Alan Grier. It’s something of a tyranny of the minority: a relatively small population of voracious readers has long convinced the world that those who don’t care for books are illiterate morons, and that’s too bad. In my experience, heaping shame on people for what they’re not is one of the least effective methods of changing their opinions.

Of course, I don’t believe that not reading is anything to be proud of. If I thought Kanye was doing anything but playing a role, I’d agree that he deserves chastisement for that part of his statement. But think of it another way – if Kanye had called himself a “proud non-watcher of television,” would it have generated the same kind of backlash? I strongly doubt it. In fact, he’d probably have been heralded as a positive influence by the “Kill your television” contingent.

I’ve never understood the knee-jerk “books good, TV bad” mindset. I’ve had intense, life-enriching experiences while enthralled by books, TV shows, movies, albums, paintings, graffiti tags, what-have-you. I’ve also been repulsed and scarred by all of the above. It’s all art, and none of it is inherently better or worse than the rest. Scrolling through any given New York Times best-seller list will reveal a slew of books that I’d consider far less life-enriching than most of what I watch on TV.

Would the “television rots your mind” set really try to tell me that my brain cells would be better served by reading Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (#4 in paperback nonfiction this week) or Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man (#1 in hardcover advice) than by engaging the brilliant screenwriting of shows like The Wire or The Venture Bros? And even beyond disposable volumes like Max’s and Harvey’s, there’s some truth to Kanye’s statement: plenty of roundly acclaimed authors really do be so wordy and self-absorbed (I’m looking at you, John Irving). Television at its best is just as valid and worthwhile as any literary format, but somehow bashing TV is seen as meritorious, while dismissing books approaches heresy.

At the bottom of it all, I’m sort of glad to see that comments like Kanye’s can still spark such a vehement response. I’m a great supporter of the written word, and it’s nice to see that so many people still defend literature with such gusto. That gives me hope for the days when my own books finally see print. At the same time, I think we could all stand to chill out and take stuff like this a tad less seriously. The world already looks at the literati as a bunch of uptight blowhards. Looking down our noses at non-readers and whipping up tempests in every passing teacup does little to combat that image.

But don't get me started on Kanye's off-hand dismissal of Twitter. Them's fightin' words!

- Ira Brooker

"Archie, my Archie, why has thou forsaken me?" or "The Last Temptation of Jughead"

The first time I remember feeling betrayed by a force beyond my comprehension was the day Jughead fell in love.

Jughead Jones was my childhood hero, a lazy, gluttonous cynic who cast a welcome shadow on the generally sunny landscape of Archie comics. Aside from his insatiable appetite for hamburgers, his defining personality quirks were a loathing for romance and a general disinclination toward women. I had no particular problem with girls, but I always admired Jughead’s refusal to fit into the typical teenage box occupied by the rest of his lovestruck peers.

Then, some time in the early ‘90s, the Archie staff decided to shake things up by introducing a storyline in which Jughead not only fell in love, but did so with two girls at once. To make matters worse, my sedentary role model – a man with a talent for idleness if ever there was one – took a fast food job to support his newfound woo-pitching habit.

I was crestfallen upon reading this revolting development. The character who had taught me that it was not just okay but downright cool to buck the system and follow one’s own path was suddenly just another everyman, a dark-haired knock-off of his predictable pal Archie. In one fateful issue, the writers had reduced Bob Montana’s greatest creation (OK, so Montana lifted more than a little from E.C. Segar’s Wimpy) to a weak-kneed also-ran no better than old-school Archie knock-offs like Wilbur and That Wilkin Boy. Heck, Jughead even traded in his signature crown for a burger joint ball cap. I wouldn’t have been surprised at treatment like this from a conniver like Reggie, but coming from Jughead it really stung.

Thankfully, the majority of Archie fans shared my sentiments. Reader response was overwhelmingly opposed to the cuddlier, canoodlier Jughead, and his career as a romantic lead was scrapped almost as soon as it began. Me, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. I realized for the first time that the world of fiction is a malleable thing, and that the people who created the worlds and heroes that I loved might sometimes be misguided, cash-blinded or outright stupid. (All of those ideas were reinforced in spades soon after, when I first watched Superman IV, but that’s another story.)

I bring this up because Archie Comics has recently announced its latest “re-imagining” of its keystone characters. In a forthcoming storyline set in Archie’s post-collegiate future, Mr. Andrews will allegedly resolve his age-old love triangle by proposing to either Betty or Veronica. I’m no Reggie-come-lately to the Archie universe (as evidenced by my Archie-memorabilia-strewn home office), so I fully expect some convoluted scenario that will lead to our hero remaining unhitched and undecided. And that’s good. That’s as it should be.

What bothers me about this whole scheme (besides the fact that they’ve done it before, albeit in a weirder format) is the callous obviousness of the marketing ploy. I’m sure it’s not an easy time for Archie Comics. Their titles were fairly dated and pedestrian back when I started reading them, which was part of their strange appeal. Judging by my recent readings, they don’t hold up too well in the increasingly frenetic world of adolescent entertainment. I can’t really blame them for their frequent reboot attempts, which have included a creepily realistic art makeover, saddling Jughead with a baby sister, and launching yet another in a long series of uninspired animated shows. It’s just that this retooling never ends. When I was a kid, there were flailing efforts to re-cast Archie as a street-smart middle-schooler, a superheroic adventurer and, oddly enough, a remote-control racing enthusiast. Heck, even back in the ‘60s, the comics writers were shameless about trying to capitalize on the surprise chart success of a song from Archie’s Saturday morning cartoon show.

So yeah, I get that this supposed Big Decision is a desperate attempt to score some national press coverage and get losers like me talking about Archie on our barely read blogs. Obviously, it’s working to some extent, so kudos to the marketing department. But you know what else gets people talking? Quality.

I was originally drawn to the comics because of their universality. Some of my earliest memories as a reader are of Archie stories. The appeal was easy: they were peopled with lively, funny characters with whom I loved spending my summer afternoons. As I got a little older, though, I started to see more of the nuances. The crisp, exhilarating artwork of Samm Schwartz, for instance, was often filled out with surrealist background gags worthy of early Mad comics. Sure, a lot of the storylines were predictable, but there were plenty of weird, impeccably written little gems tucked in the pages of my Double Digests: a quirky piece in which Jughead is kidnapped by a crown-coveting religious cult, or a clever bit in which the denizens of Riverdale High can speak only in rhyme, or a fast-paced farce in which Archie throws the school into a panic using only a tackling dummy and a rubber mask.

Archie’s myriad creative teams have never gotten the kudos they deserve. With that in mind, it’s no wonder they now feel driven to chicanery like this marriage malarkey, but I think they’re underestimating the power of the internet. A stunt like this is a quick, cheap way to grab the spotlight. A better long-term solution would be to hire some sharp, new writers who could restore that long-gone sense of creativity and quirkiness while working within the established confines of the Archieverse.

Back when the Archie team was flexing its creative muscles more frequently, there was no real established network where people could spread the news, so those creative efforts went unnoticed. Nowadays, a sudden jump in quality would create a groundswell of buzz on the web, and a continued commitment to quality may very well engender a cult following. Countless cartoons and children’s books have proven that it’s possible to appeal to kids and adults at the same time by maintaining fresh, funny writing that works on multiple levels. Heck, I personally know a number of comics-experienced writers who would undoubtedly be up to the task (and I wouldn’t mind a crack at it myself).

The good folks at Archie Comics have given me a lot over the years, and I’ll be forever in their debt. When I see them resorting to gimmicks like the supposed resolution of Archie’s eternal triangle, however, I get nervous about their viability for the future. Rather than cranking out one-shots that are maybe worth a glance, I sincerely hope they’ll direct more of their future energies toward crafting comic books that are genuinely worth reading. Perpetual adolescence and arrested development needn’t be one and the same.

- Ira Brooker