So I think most everyone knows these ‘New Look” stories that briefly lit up the Archie scene in the early 2000s. Very controversial when they came. Fans derided the art as ugly or unnatural, but since they didn’t replace the ‘house style’, the vitriol faded and the readers accepted each exciting new look event for what it was.

The picture above shows 5 of the 7 stories, one for each of the main gang members and well, that’s the end of that. Interesting ‘mini events’ that showed a new style and some new characters and stories.

Until last week, I was on the Archie Comics reddit page and someone posted looking for an old novel series that Archie put out. Someone enterprising found it, and Holy Goodreads, the plots for the Riverdale High series are exactly the same as the New Look stories.

Riverdale High was a 8 book series written by prolific children’s author, Michael Pellowski in 1990.

Book 2: Bad News Boyfriend- Veronica’s relationship with a despicable new student jeopardizes her friendships with her other friends.

Book 3: One Last Date with Archie-When Mr. Andrews accepts a job promotion, his family–including Archie–will have to move away from Riverdale. How can Betty and Veronica face the possibility of just one last date with Archie ? 8 black-and-white line drawings.

Book 4: It’s First Love, Jughead Jones-Food is the only love of forever-hungry Jughead Jones–until he meets up with sports star Melanie Marks. Jughead’s friends don’t kid him about hating girls anymore because Jughead’s in love, at last!

Book 5: The Big Break-Up-After dating Big Moose Mason for years, Midge Klump gets tired of the way Moose takes her for granted and goes out with Reggie. The couple splits up, and Archie and his pals scheme to bring them back together. 

Book 7: Tour Troubles and Betty Cooper, Baseball Star-Archie and his band go on tour, and Betty joins the baseball team.

Sound familiar?

Now, the Riverdale High series does have 3 books that have no corresponding New Look comic or any comic. And the New Look stories of My Father’s Betrayal, and A Funny Kind of Love don’t seem to have any corresponding stories to the book series.

Until I went on ebay and found Class Clown whose back cover has the same plot as A Funny Kind of Love straight down to Reggie dating a braniac, Bernadette Brownlee, and My Father, the Enemy which looks like My Father’s Betrayal. Also on ebay it reveals it’s a 10, book series, not 8.

Then there’s added confusion that Goodreads says there’s a book called Rich Girls Don’t Have to Worry while the rest of the internet says such a book doesn’t exist. But ebay does have a book that isn’t mentioned on goodreads, Is That Arabella? which seems to be the missing #9.

But it’s interesting because the New Look series was advertised as all new look, all new stories by Melanie J. Morgan. So, is it a coincidence? I doubt it, the plots sound too similar (unless the way they play out is wildly different in Pellowski’s work. Yes I’m now tempted to see if there’s any copies on ebay). Did they bank on no one remembering the series since it came out over a decade ago? Possibly?

It apparently lasted longer than the Betty and Veronica xoxo trilogy that also came out in 2010. They just don’t do well with prose novels.

Here’s the goodreads link and decide if the similarities are too much to ignore-https://www.goodreads.com/series/269550-riverdale-high

What do you think? Comment below.