Archie & Friends #137

Book excerpt: "A Night at the Comic Shop," Part One. Part one of a two-part story that reintroduces some of the most memorable characters Archie ever published! Working at the Pep Comics shop to get a discount on comics and a place to store his collection, Chuck is visited by his friends as he bags and boards. Suddenly, glowing meteors from the MLJ Nebula rain down in Riverdale, including one that crashes into the shop and morphs into a door to other dimensions! This cosmic portal leads to a world that Chuck, Archie and his friends have only ever seen in comics - a world of talking ducks and bears, super-powered heroes and oddball beings from other planets. It doesn't take them long to realize they are in the presence of a veritable 'who's who' of some of the greatest comic book characters ever published by Archie and its earlier incarnation, MLJ Comics: Captain Sprocket, Cosmo the Merry Martian, Squoimy the Woim, Gloomy Gus, Judge Owl, Ginger, Suzie and more! The trouble is, now that the 'fantasy world' has invaded the 'real world,' the 'fictional' characters seek as much a taste of reality as possible: Wilbur and Seymour want to meet 'real' girls to date, Pat the Brat realizes there's a whole new potential audience to pull pranks on, Cubby the Bear wants to see how earth bears live, and more. On top of it all, Super Duck and Reggie get into a no-holds-barred shouting match! Realizing the veritable 'Pandora's Box' situation they're in, Archie decides it would best for the comic book characters to go back through the portal to return to their own worlds, but the characters have other plans. Namely, they plan to stay indefinitely!