Kevin Keller preps for a blind date in Archie - Love and Heartbreak

Archie: Love and Heartbreak excerpt
Archie: Love and Heartbreak excerpt (Image credit: Archie Comics)

Romance is a big part of the Archie comics' long success, and it's being magnified even more for the upcoming one-shot special Archie: Love and Heartbreak. As the title suggests, the February 9 one-shot won't all be 'happily ever after' - but that's true in real life sometimes too, right?

Archie: Love and Heartbreak cover (Image credit: Archie Comics)

"Coming off the heels of our 80th anniversary, we wanted to welcome fans of the modern comics back to the romantic core of Riverdale with this special one-shot," says Archie Comics' senior director of editorial Jamie L. Rotante in the announcement. 

"Capturing the ideals of young love, readers get to experience firsthand the ups-and-downs of new relationships and what it means to discover yourself in a way we haven't seen before in Archie comics. We hope readers see a little bit of themselves in each of these stories."

Archie: Love and Heartbreak is set in and around a carnival that's arrived in Riverdale, giving these teens a chance to get out and meet, mingle, and in some cases, mess around. The three couples at the center of the romantic hijinks are Archie and Veronica, Jughead and Betty, and Kevin and Devon.

Check out this preview of Archie: Love and Heartbreak:

Archie: Love and Heartbreak is written by the team of Thomas Pitilli, Stephanie Cooke, and Sina Grace. For Art, Pitilli is pulling double-duty, alongside Lisa Sterle and Iolanda Zanfardino. Matt Herms and Jack Morelli are coloring and lettering the book, respectively. Pitilli has drawn the main cover, with a variant by Paulina Ganucheau.

Archie: Love and Heartbreak goes on sale on February 9 - just in time to buy for Valentine's Day.

Archie Comics is doubling down on "humor, heart, and horror" in 2022 according to our interview with its top editor.

Chris Arrant

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)

Read more
Heart Eyes
Heart Eyes director describes the new slasher as a rom-com that’s just as "fun and violent" as Friday the 13th: "For me, it was about asking, 'What haven't I seen in a while?'"
Cover art for Hey, Mary!
Eisner-winning writer Andrew Wheeler’s new YA graphic novel Hey, Mary! is a sweet LGBTQ+ themed tale of self acceptance
Finn riding Jake with a broken sword in the air.
Oni Press shares an exclusive preview of the first Adventure Time comic in 7 years
Doombot and the Runaways.
4 years after Marvel's Runaways ended, the gang is back – and Doctor Doom is coming for them
A girl and a skeleton on the cover of Ice Cream Man #43.
Preview Grant Morrison and Matt Fraction's one-page horror stories from Ice Cream Man #43
Naoe and Yasuke walk in the sunset in a screenshot from Assassin's Creed Shadows
Reflecting on Assassin's Creed's romances has me looking forward to "the more developed relationships" in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Latest in Comics
King Kong wrestling a giant squid monster
The Monsterverse expands with Return to Skull Island, a comic tying into Netflix's King Kong-centric animated series
Close up on Emma Frost's face as she sits on a throne on the cover of Emma Frost: White Queen #1
"Bow down to the White Queen" as Emma Frost gets her own X-Men solo comic that flashes back to her time as a villain
The Biker Mice From Mars.
Oni Press's new Biker Mice From Mars comic will take a "hard-hitting approach to the stories" and "definitely won't pull any punches"
Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider #12
Gwen Stacy and Loki team-up for a cosmic adventure in Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider #12
An alien attacks.
Xenomorphs have taken the island as Alien: Paradiso nears its endgame
Cover art from Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma #1.
13 years after his New 52 series ended, cult DC hero Resurrection Man is back in Quantum Karma
Latest in News
Balatro
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Kingmakers
Kingmakers is a strategy game about taking on medieval armies with a gun, but its devs thought the giant mech was too much
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
Daredevil recap: The Defenders
Marvel fans are discussing which of the Netflix series characters would have survived the Blip