I’ve never had a problem with Archie as an adventure hero. The old Life With Archie comics were some of Stan Goldberg’s best work, and Pureheart the Powerful put a neat mythic superheroic spin on the mortal tribulations of the traditional Archie & the Gang. The R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. spy stories and the early Archies band inadvertently fighting crime were good-natured parodies of U.N.C.L.E. and Monkees. I even dug the “New Look” Archie stories of the late ‘00s, based on non-graphic Archie novels written by Michael Pellowski and published in the early ‘90s.

But there were some adventures Archie ought to have avoided. I speak of:

• Archie’s R/C Racers, a global race of remote-controlled toy cars.
• Archie’s Adventures in the Wonder Realm. “After hooking up Archie’s new console, Dilton’s invention brings the games to life by sending the gang inside! Little did he know they would end up trapped! Now it’s up to Archie to save them! Will he rescue them in time or its it ‘Game Over’ for his friends?”
• Archie’s Weird Mysteries. Scooby-Doo made its TV cartoon debut in 1969, one year after The Archie Show ushered in a new era of kid-friendly Saturday morning programming. Thirty years later, in 1999, it was Archie who was beholden to Scooby-Doo. The comic book version of the series, drawn by Fernando Ruiz, never really found itself.
• Archie’s Clean Slate. Some of Al Hartley’s longform Christian adventures were easier to take than others.
• Dilton Doiley Dropout. What smart kids will do to be liked.