>>151155133
Riverdale started out kind of like a parody of Archie comics, where you take the lighthearted escapist humor comic, but with violence and dark secrets and all the other things you'd never find in a normal Archie story.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips did a very good "dark Archie" parody/tribute in a six-issue story from "Criminal" where all the characters are thinly disguised Archie characters, except Archie married Veronica and now wants to kill her so he can be with Betty. (Brubaker clearly likes Archie comics; his series "Deadenders" was post-Apocalyptic Archie.)

As Riverdale went on it started adding in crazier and crazier stuff and oddly, becoming closer to the tone of the comics, because they had some titles where Archie foiled crooks, became a superhero, magic and the supernatural found their way into some stories, etc.