I'm a librarian who loves anime, manga, and reading a wide variety of genres.
Jughead gets expelled for bringing a knife to school, except he swears he has no idea how the knife got into his backpack. While his dad tries to get everything straightened out, Jughead passes the time by walking his dog and basically just hanging out. Cue the dream sequence (I'm guessing every issue is going to have one of these?).
This issue seemed much shorter than the previous ones, even though it was about the same length.
I liked that Jughead's dad automatically believed and supported him (while still punishing him by taking away his video games), although he maybe could have found a better way of demonstrating his support. I'm going to guess that Jughead got his deft rule-bending skills from his father. And speaking of those skills, I got a kick out of the bit with Jughead and his dog at the edge of the school grounds.
This particular issue slid into Jughead's usual dream sequence much more smoothly than the other ones. If the situation hadn't been
, it would have been easy to believe it really was a part of Jughead's reality. Unlike the other dream sequences, which helped him come up with solutions to his problems, this one just tried to put together some kind of explanation for his current situation. The results were creative, but I'm going to guess that, in reality, Mr. Stanger is more focused on increased academic rigor, modernization, and rigid discipline than on taking over the world.
I can't believe I only have one more issue left. I just checked the release dates of the previous issues and it looks like there's a little over a month's wait between each issue. The fourth one came out on February 10th, so after I finish it I'm going to have an annoying wait ahead of me for issue 5. Ugh.
Extras:
This time around, the issue ended with two short classic Jughead comics. These were less annoying than the previous ones, but still hideously dated. The first one, in which Jughead conned Pop out of a bunch of hamburgers with a single penny, was probably the best out of all the classic Jughead comics included in these issues.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)