Updated on February 26, 2023
Veronica #208 (Kevin Keller #2)
Written by: Dan Parent
Art by: Dan Parent
The second issue of Kevin’s miniseries sees more revealed about the Keller family’s past. While planning a surprise birthday party for Kevin’s father, Veronica (and the readers) learn about several of the places the Keller family previously lived, including England, France, and several other towns in the US (that, as I noted in the previous review, are real-world towns along the east coast, near New York). Kevin is shown dealing with life as an “army brat,” with his father being away for months at a time. Part of how he deals with the long stretches is cute: writing stories where Little Kevin imagines himself as Superboy, protecting his family from various threats while Dad’s away. (Well, Superboy or whoever the Archie “celebrity stand-in” would be—though I’ve read one “Little Archie” story where young Arch becomes “Little Captain Pureheart”…)
The story also touches on Kevin’s high school years pre-Riverdale, with scenes showing Kevin dealing with bullying/teasing classmates (something I experienced too often in school, unfortunately), and helping another student who’s being bullied. No indication if the other student (named Sidney) is gay as well, though I noticed the line “it gets better” is used by Kevin (possible reference to the anti-bullying-of-gay youth campaign?). How Kevin deals with Sidney’s bullies at one point involves the sort of stunt that Reggie would pull. There’s also another scene showing more of Kevin’s writing goals, as he’s attempting to write a book about his father.
Unrelated to Kevin, but we get one amusing visual gag involving Jughead’s nose. Heh. On an also-odd note: the entertainment trope of somebody taking a photograph of someone in an embarrassing state is seen here (Veronica finds an old photo of Kevin with a black eye, of all the odd times to photograph someone). Apparently fictional characters are shutterbug-crazy, though given the rise of cell phone cameras taking photos/videos of real-world embarrassing incidents, maybe it isn’t so far-fetched anymore…
I look forward to the third issue of this storyline, where it sounds like we’ll get to see more of Kevin’s modern-day life in Riverdale.
