Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett takes a critical look at the MST3K reboot and gets a scoop on the new Archie comic from Ty Templeton.

Last Friday, Netflix premiered Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (see “Trailer for 'MST3K' Reboot.”) The Return is how this new version of the show is officially being billed. But for hardcore fans of the show, like me, it’s really just Season 11 of a series which took an unexpected, unscheduled hiatus back in 1999. 

Along with being a hardcore fan, I’m a longtime fan; When the series showed up on Comedy Central back in 1989, I caught a few minutes of it and can still remember my initial reaction; that it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen.  But I’d catch the odd segment here and there, mostly because it always seemed to be on, and after about six months I finally “got it” and was hooked.  But being a fan of MST3K wasn’t easy back before I got on the internet...  I can still remember waiting for the announcement the network would pick it up for a second season.  The same way I waited to hear if the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) would actually pick up the series when Comedy Central cancelled it.

Which, I suppose, helped prepare me for the twenty year wait between Seasons 10 and 11.  Not that I was seriously waiting, I never honestly believed it would ever really come back; my suspension of disbelief just couldn’t stretch that far.  When it did come back finally I faithfully promised myself that I would resist the urge to binge watch the whole thing all at once on Netflix., But all my steely resolve dissolved the moment I saw the new opening.  Which was when I figured, I’m a man in his late 50s, and seeing as how tomorrow makes no promises, I had to ask myself; why, exactly, was I delaying gratification?  So, over the course of 24 hours I watched the entire series, and almost immediately afterward, I began watching it again.

At the moment, we’re hip deep in revamps and revivals of movie, TV and toy franchises, fueled by brand name recognition, 90’s nostalgia and childhood memories, so it would be easy to dismiss MST3K: The Return as just one more  However, the producers have managed to create a show for modern audiences that remains true to classic MST3K.  Or, as the headline of a piece on the Gizmondo site put it, “The New ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ Is the Perfect Pop Culture Revival” It wasn’t just geek-centric sites like Gizmodo that raved about it, it got positive review from everyone from the L.A. Times to the New York Times to  whoever’s writing reviews on Roger Ebert’s website; it even got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Netflix will be making the show available throughout the English speaking world, making me wonder if the humor will be too “American” to do well in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. 

Thanks to a brief run on the UK version of The Sci-Fi Channel, I knew it already had something of a cult following in Britain, but I was still startled when I saw headline on The Guardian, “Danny Baker: ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ nearly killed me’.”  It was an interview where a British comedy writer and radio DJ was asked about what he considered to be “the funniest” in various categories (word, book, film, etc.).  Under “funniest TV show” he answered “Mystery Science Theater 3000. The Jack Frost episode nearly killed me.”

While seeing what has been considered “just a cult show” for decades getting the recognition it so richly deserves is sincerely satisfying, I’m looking forward to finally seeing a licensed comic book almost as much as seeing new episodes of the show.  I know one is in the works at Dark Horse (see “Dark Horse Partners with 'MST3K'”).

So I’d like to suggest they might to use an artist who is both talented and a big MST3K fan, someone like Todd Nauck, whose credits include Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and the Invincible spin-off series Guarding the Globe.  A couple of days ago I came across online this illustration Nauck did featuring Crow and Tom Servo along with new host Jonah Heston, fleeing from mad scientist Kinga Forrester.  Anyone who has seen MST3K: The Return will know he’s perfectly captured all of their likenesses.  Anyone interested can check out more of Todd Nauck’s art on YouTube, and Instagram.

(Click for larger view.)

You’ve really got to admire the way Archie Comics has so quickly become adept at marketing the same set of their classic characters to different audiences.  You have different signature “looks” for the Archie horror comics, the more realistic “New Riverdale” titles, one resembling the Riverdale TV show, and the familiar “classic” style is still being used in the Archie digests.  According to a piece that appeared on the Comicbook website,  “Classic Archie Gets a Riverdale Twist In New All-Ages Series From Dan Parent and Ty Templeton,” in July they’ll launch Your Pal, Archie  a “classic” Archie comic that will have a slightly more modern look.

Dan Parent has been working for Archie for thirty years, but this is the first time writer/artist Ty Templeton will be working for the publisher. Templeton is probably best known for his recent work on DC’s Batman ‘66, but I’ll always fondly remember Stig’s Inferno, a strange, funny black and white he wrote and drew back in the 1980s.  I was curious about the kind of stories he’d be writing, and he told me. “The editorial direction I was given was to make the stories funny, and to look at the great post-war stuff by Bob Montana and Bill Vigoda, when Archie was more of a screwball comedy like Bringing Up Baby. So that's my baseline... I want to bring the funny... But it's not all falling down stairs and tripping on hoses... I'm interested in Archie's relationships as a place to find humor. The first issue focuses on Jughead and Archie, and I kept trying to think of them as a classic comedy team like Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis, Hope and Crosby, Cheech and Chong, R2D2 and C3PO, Fey and Poehler.”

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.