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Aug 30, 2016

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 552: Archie Giant Series Magazine #602, October 1989

http://www.comics.org/issue/222710/

It's appropriate in a comic dealing with time travel that we see a hint on temporal continuity in the Archie universe. A year after his previous adventure with January McAndrews, Jughead is still dreaming of her, even though his memory of their adventures together were erased from his mind. And, strangely, Jan is having the exact same dream.

Once again, Jug is approached by the time agent, and she explicitly states that it has been a year since their last encounter. Much like the Christmas "Jingles" adventures, there is a specific period of time that has passed between issues. This is fundamentally antithetical to the premise of the Archie universe. No one ever ages or changes - or graduates or progresses, really.

This issue marks Jan's second appearance, and is pretty obviously a lead-in issue to the Jughead's Time Police series that debuted the following year. Jughead comes into possession of a mysterious beanie with very advanced time travel technology attached, and, at the issue's end, January deputizes him and then dashes off into time to see if she can solve the mystery of where the tech came from. One assumes it's addressed in the 6 issues of Time Police.

Which, *sigh*, I'm going to have to find.

Is it meaningful somehow that one of the few people we've seen Jughead actually develop romantic feelings for is a descendant of his best friend, and pretty much a female version of Archie? I know recent comics have identified Jughead as asexual, but there's this odd moment in the late 80s and early 90s where they try to make him a romantic lead. Thank goodness it was short-lived.

Onward.

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