Will June's The Best Archie Comic Ever Special be the best Archie comic ever?

The Best Archie Comics Ever Special #1 cover art (Image credit: Archie Comics)

Everyone has a Multiverse these days and Archie Comics is no exception.

The venerable comic book publisher is about ready to explore theirs and offer what it's calling its "blockbuster of the summer."

June's The Best Archie Comics Ever Special #1 is a 32-page one-shot anthology featuring iconic Archie characters in stories the publisher says mix "romance, humor, and adventure," and are a little more "epic" in scope than your usual Archie fare.

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In a seeming Multiverse-within-a-Multiverse story by writer Fred Van Lente and artist Tim Seeley, Pureheart the Powerful (that's superhero Archie Andrews to you and me) meets a superhero that looks a lot like him.

"Is this other hero an imposter, or is it a case of imposter syndrome," reads Archie's description.

Then, the reluctantly heroic "Jughead the Burgarian" (as writer Aubrey Sitterson calls him) debuts in a sword & sorcery action-adventure story in which Jughead is "hell-bent on saving the day and waging war against a menacing wizard."

That story is drawn by Jed Dougherty.

Finally, in a story by writer Ruben Najera and artist Giorgia Sposito, the "world’s most dangerous woman" Veronica Lodge teams up with super-spy Betty Cooper on a top-secret case of intrigue and espionage.

Matt Herms colors and Jack Morell letters the entire special.

The main cover is by Seeley and Herms and Tom Whalen illustrates a variant cover.

"Archie Andrews contains multitudes, and The Best Archie Comic Ever is like a prism with infinite sides, reflecting every endless possibility," says Van Lente.

The Best Archie Comics Ever Special goes on sale June 15.

Speaking of the comic book multiverse, Archie has been involved with two of the most unlikely comic book crossovers ever.

I'm not just the Newsarama founder and editor-in-chief, I'm also a reader. And that reference is just a little bit older than the beginning of my Newsarama journey. I founded what would become the comic book news site in 1996, and except for a brief sojourn at Marvel Comics as its marketing and communications manager in 2003, I've been writing about new comic book titles, creative changes, and occasionally offering my perspective on important industry events and developments for the 25 years since. Despite many changes to Newsarama, my passion for the medium of comic books and the characters makes the last quarter-century (it's crazy to see that in writing) time spent doing what I love most.

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