#clay walker

After the AIAOY reprise, as Flora and I were the last to leave the rooftop area, an absolutely WRECKED Phantom (Clay is so baby) staggered out toward us, fixated on Flora like he couldn't believe what was happening, and Flora—who had apparently known to expect this—took his hands and put her hand on his mask and said "I'm so sorry" in this really comforting, motherly way. And as he finally pulled away, she jokingly called out, "Kill him!" and CACKLED.

But then something happens. Something big, something supernatural, something that requires their presence. Their knowledge of a time that never happened, battles never fought, wars never won. Maybe there's a man named Pickens or Cypher, maybe there's an old Soviet enemy of the Blossoms or Lodges, maybe their children get involved in something the government is trying to hide, a la Stranger Things.

And we need to call in the big guns.

I think we would start with Archie's kids learning about their grandfather, listening to their dad's stories about him, and realizing they don't line up. There were more stories than there was time to live them. So they look into their family's history. They start asking questions, and the questions lead to problems, as they always do in stories.

Imagine Archie's kids going to their father - a real salt-of-the-earth man who writes poems in his spare time without a violent bone in his body - and saying you're never going to believe me, but I need help.

Archie doesn't remember juvie, or starting vigilante gangs, or Hal forcing Betty to bury him alive, but he does remember that there are Bad Things that happened in the gaps between the happy things, gaps that get larger and larger as he got older. He remembers what invulnerable skin feels like, what phoenix fire tastes like, what the Sweet Hereafter looked like. So he calls for help.

And help descends upon them in the form of household names that know their construction worker dad personally.

Tabitha Tate, the famous civil rights attorney who represented MLK's suit against the CIA for their attempted assassination of him, and not only won but lived. Cheryl Blossom, the artist-activist who partially funded the suit and put herself bodily between the Black lawyers and white protesters every day of the trial. Toni Topaz, who founded Black Athena as a high school literary club newsletter and turned it into the must-read for civil rights protesters from coast to coast. Betty Cooper, bestselling author and editor-in-chief of She Says Magazine, the go-to source for feminist and progressive causes.

Kevin Keller, whose theatre company is as close as you can get to Broadway without being on Broadway. Clay Walker, a widely-known tenured literature professor at Columbia, who has a standing column in Black Athena. Fangs Fogarty, Elvis before Elvis, who is still alive because fuck you Riverdale writers' room. Reggie "The Blur" Mantle, the Lakers player everyone knows, even if they don't follow basketball at all. Veronica Lodge, the woman to know in Hollywood, who just won an Oscar and seems to produce every movie you've ever heard of. Jughead Jones of Jughead's Madhouse Magazine, which they and their friends read religiously.