A while back, One Million Moms was up in arms over Life with Archie No 16, which showed resident Riverdale gay, Kevin Keller, getting married on the front cover. The mad mamas put pressure on Toys ‘R’ Us to not sell the comic at all, and the company bowed down to the hate by not selling the harmless rag at their front check-out counters. As a result, the issue sold out.
As if its success wasn’t sweet enough revenge against One Million Moms, the comic’s writer, Dan Parent, is capitalizing on the controversy and using it as inspiration for the upcoming issue of Kevin Keller No 10, on stands on Aug 7.
In the upcoming comic, Kevin gets his first kiss and has to deal with the disapproval of an uptight Riverdale mom who Parent says, “gets very offended and pitches a fit. Kevin is kind of used to that, but Veronica records the whole thing and of course uploads it to the Riverdale equivalent of YouTube and that starts a bit of a debate.”
Parent describes the storyline as a “playful poke” at One Million Moms, and the comic’s publisher, Jon Goldwater, considers it to be the logical next step for Kevin Keller. “We certainly pride ourselves on being contemporary, but that’s not the reason why we’re showing ‘The Kiss.’ Just like when Kevin first told Jughead he was gay, it was in the natural course of conversation,” he says. “We are creating this in the same way. It’s just part of the story.”
Kevin Keller first appeared in Veronica No 202 in 2010 to such fanfare that his arrival in Riverdale resulted in the first-ever second printing for an Archie comic.
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