A ‘Chasing Amy’ Character Is Canonically Related to Archie Comics’ Jughead, Kevin Smith Reveals
Jay and Silent Bob have met both God and Ben Affleck, yet it’s still more than a little odd to see them hanging out with Archie Andrews and the Riverdale gang.
This week, the Kevin Smith-penned crossover comic Archie Meets Jay and Silent Bob debuted with a story entitled “Chasing Archie.” The Clerks director previously told The Hollywood Reporter that the comic is “a midlife crisis project about death and learning to deal.”
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While that may sound surprisingly intense for an Archie story, it does make sense, considering that it picks up soon after the tragic events of Clerks III in which (spoilers) longtime customer service worker Dante Hicks dies of a heart attack. At least he didn’t get shot in the head back in 1994.
On the plus side, Dante’s death created an opening at the Quick Stop, which is filled by none other than Archie. The redheaded teenager essentially becomes a surrogate Dante to his grieving best friend Randall. Although Jay and Silent Bob don’t even seem to be aware that the clerk has passed away.
The comic is quick to point out that both Archie and Dante share a lot in common, mostly the anxiety of having to choose between two women. And in both cases, one of them is named “Veronica.” Although as far as we know, Archie never shamed Veronica Lodge for her sex life.
Also like Dante, Archie gets violently kneed in the junk, which is probably the worst thing to happen to the character since the time he saved his friend from an assassin’s bullet and bled to death.
How exactly does Archie end up working at a convenience store in New Jersey you might ask?
Well, he reveals that his best pal Jughead Jones is actually the first cousin once removed of Alyssa Jones. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Alyssa is the indie comic book writer played by Joey Lauren Adams in Chasing Amy.
Yup, back in 1997 when Chasing Amy premiered, audiences had no idea that the female lead was secretly related to the burger-scarfing, jalopy-riding Jughead. This connection is especially weird because Chasing Amy included a prolonged discussion of Archie comics, specifically, whether or not Archie and Jughead were lovers.
So Archie comics exist, but the characters are also real? And the real Jughead is related to one of the people discussing whether or not his comic-book doppelgänger is secretly fucking his best friend? This is even more confusing than the revelation that Mallrats is a movie within the world of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Alyssa was actually first mentioned in Clerks, when her sister Heather (not to be confused with her sister Tricia from Mallrats) shows up at the Quick Stop.
Thankfully no one in the Jones family ever mentioned having an unhinged Uncle Alex.
