A 'Glee'-ful contest for Archie & gang

BLAINE ANDERSON and Kevin Keller? Betty Cooper and Noah Puckerman?

Things are not as they usually are in the halls of William McKinley and Riverdale high schools.

And that's just the way it should be, said Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who writes for "Glee" and penned the four-issue story arc "Archie Meets Glee," which sees Riverdale's and McKinley's famous - and vocally talented - students come together in a crossover crash that blends the snark of the television show and the long-standing wholesomeness of Archie, Jughead and Betty, among others.

The two worlds combine this week in the pages of Archie Comics No. 641, a story drawn by artist Dan Parent that extends through issue 644.

Show creator Ryan Murphy said that the story honors and celebrates "the two worlds. Not just their similarities, but their differences, which I think we've done."

So what prompted it? A friendship between Aguirre-Sacasa and Archie Comics' co-chief executive Jon Goldwater, who met at New York Comic Con in 2011.

"How perfectly these worlds mesh and how funny the comparisons are between the characters," said Aguirre-Sacasa, who was given free rein to tell the story that uses the conventions of wormholes and time warps to place the characters in the different universes.

"The idea," he said, "was that rather than just have them meet at a competition to do something that was a little bit more comic-bookish."