We only got a taste of the cold snap here in New Mexico
that Texas got a couple of weeks ago.
Still, it was cold. It was
strangely inexplicable that I went out twice over that weekend, including a
questionable trip to the mall. It’s next
door, so I walked out in the cold. I’d
say it was invigorating, but it wasn’t.
It made a lot more sense when I went out the next weekend when it was
warm and sunny. Much of the rest of the
city seemed to be out then as well.
Regardless, I’d risked hypothermia looking for a baseball
preview magazine. I found a couple, but
found them wanting and already out-of-date with recent trades. I’ll wait and see if anything better comes
out at the end of March. I couldn’t find
a NASCAR preview at all. That’s a bit
disturbing for the sport. I’m still kind
of regretting not getting last year’s preview with Chase Elliot on the cover.
In spite of the frosty trip, I wasn’t going to buy something random just to justify the excursion. The only thing that caught my eye was this Archie digest. Though it has a simple design, Dan Parent certainly drew an irresistible cover. The premise of this digest series is a retrospective sampling of Archie Comics’ 80 years of material. This was all enough to get me to buy it.
Taking a glance at the first story inside, which was new
material, I was charmed by the Kennedy
Brothers artwork. The rest of the
digest goes backward in time through the decades and finishes with the very first
Archie story. (Sidebar: a bunch of these
40’s stories are in the public domain.) There’s a short text piece that accompanies each section, which describes
the selections for that decade. The
digest is double-sized, so it’s well over 100 pages. It seems like the perfect package.
So, what went wrong?
Even starting with the first new story, this isn’t the best
material. It mostly falls flat and isn’t
Archie at its best. The digest does not
fail for lack diversity in material though.
I suspect future volumes will showcase even more obscure iterations of
Archie and his friends, so there’s that to look forward to. I hate giving this earnest effort a bad
review, but it was $8. I was expecting
more. It’s only $2 less than the Christmas trade that I reviewed earlier. You’d be better off
finding the Jughead Time Police
trade.
I’ll give an overview of the material anyway, mostly
because I scanned several images.
I like this dynamic art by Pat Kennedy from a recent comic.
There’s an Archie’s
Weird Mysteries selection based on the cartoon. This SIKK band seems familiar, though it’s
hard to imagine them playing a high school dance. Unfortunately, the story isn’t that great.
There’s a Sabrina
story from the 90’s based on the TV show then, and another story from the
70’s.
There’s a couple of stories based on the New Archies 80’s cartoon show. I never saw the show when it was first
broadcast on Saturday mornings. It’s
nothing very original, but does show the adaptability of the characters.
A couple of Josie
and the Pussycats stories represent the 70’s. They’re kind of cute, but mostly because of
Dan DeCarlo’s iconic artwork.
There’s a truly meta story from the 60’s called, The Line.
And some truly mod fashion also from the same time.
And let’s twist with Archie and Veronica.
The 40’s and 50’s stories were slapstick fun. My favorite story was next to the last. It had a plot right out of a sitcom with the
Andrews family getting sick of the people of Riverdale and planning to leave
town. It likely has a more complex plot
in nine pages than I’ve seen in any other Archie story. That’s not saying much. Don’t read this looking for War and Peace.
Do I regret this purchase? No. There was a code in the book for a free downloadable comic. When I used it, they gave me three issues of Jughead and Archie. That was a nice bonus and kind of made up for the high price. At least I didn’t get sick from going out in the cold. I can’t entirely recommend this comic, but it was a good effort. I’ll check out the next issue when it comes out.
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