Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Reggie could have been treated as any other bully: mean, taking out his troubles on everyone else, with no friends and no real confidence to speak of.   Reggie is redeemed through the titular 'me', his dog Vader, who narrates this mini-series.   He's also redeemed via his backstory where Betty Cooper unintentionally maligns him in her overprotectiveness over Archie, and the way he could take the lowest of the low roads, and doesn't.  Or in the way he accepts some things at the end.    But mostly it's about how kind he is to Vader, at least for the most part.  He gets dismissive and snaps at Vader when he's under extreme stress, but again, makes up for it in how he reacts to how that spirals out of control.

In fact, no one is cookie-cutter character here: snippets of Midge and Moose give them layers, particularly the eye-opening and surprisingly deep, yet short, look at Moose's home life.   

It's clever, and fun, and this may be my favorite of the New Riverdale titles.   I would love to see more stories about Reggie and Vader.   The art is lush and some of my favorite from New Riverdale as well, and I thought the facial expressions were spot-on.   

I'm even forgiving those horrible new old-school issue they tacked on - blargh - to try and get me into that.   I read them in the hopes it would be one tenth, one millionth, as good as this mini-series, and alas, it was not.