Still, there were a couple of titles I was interested in and a few others that I had some interest in to make up a bundle. It was a good deal. On the day I ordered, they were offering free shipping, but the small print specified at least $20 orders. Shipping on my order would have been $6.
Archie has suddenly started offering pre-orders on new digests for $5 and just released new digests for $6. This is a significant undercut of the $9.99 retail price. One of them was a Jughead title that I was actually planning on looking for at the store the next day. I added that to my cart and got the free shipping. Everybody wins. (This is an interesting sales development, though. The pre-order offers are only up for a couple of days, so you have to jump on them.)
There was also a Christmas bundle. (They always skip over Thanksgiving to go straight to Christmas.) It was more expensive for fewer titles with less selection. And I already had some of them. I made a list of all of the Christmas digests I already own and I’ll be looking for a better deal over the next two months. There’s a couple of items I’m interested in, if I can get them at a discount. Sure I’ve got plenty of holiday comics, but a few more wouldn’t hurt.
Archie Showcase Digest #18: Archie Halfway to Halloween
As Archie goes all-out for Christmas, they also do so for Halloween. And also like their Christmas in July Showcase issues, they also double-dip with this six-month early Halloween Showcase. For your Halloween reading, this is great. In June, I’m not so sure, but it’s still fun.
Most of this issue is comprised of reprints of Archie’s Weird Mysteries and two multi-issue Halloween stories. It includes what I think is the first issue of Weird Mysteries, which I reviewed earlier (3-4-21). This is the story with a KISS knock-off band playing at Riverdale High. The other issues are enthusiastically drawn by Fernando Ruiz. I like the artwork, though the stories aren’t that great.
The centerpiece of the volume is a three-part story called, “The House of Riverdale.” This ran through issues of Archie, and Jughead. It is a surprisingly spooky story for an Archie comic. It includes a cameo from Sabrina, as this is right up her alley.
The other story also runs in three parts. We’ll call it The Tale of the Cursed Jewels. It ran through an issue of Archie and two issues of Betty & Veronica. It’s more mischief than scary. Sabrina again makes an appearance. The artwork by the Kennedy Brothers and Dan Parent shines.
Shuffled among these stories are older stories from probably the 60’s that are classically illustrated. There is an interesting Little Archie story that is sort of a retelling of original The Mummy movie. This story might have made more sense with the regular Archie high school gang.
The Josie and the Pussycats meeting a vampire story is from the 80’s. I had the original comic it was published in, so I got some nostalgia from this one.
Overall, this is a really good seasonal comic, especially for that House of Riverdale story.
The Complete Cosmo the Merry Martian
I was sort of interested in this as part of Archie’s Halloween bundle at a 50% discount. I didn’t know anything about the character other than he came from the 50’s and there’d been a more recent revival by Archie, possibly to keep the character out of public domain.
The classic 50’s stories are cute and well-drawn. They feature Cosmo as a Martian exploring the Solar System with his friends. The stories are, let’s say, “science-light.” There is some fun with Cosmo’s crew trying to figure out baffling earth customs. In addition, there are trips to the Moon, Venus, and Saturn.
This story with the Vegetable people reminds of that infamous Lost in Space episode and predates it by about a decade.
Jarringly, we skip from the 50’s to the far future, 2014. Cosmo is revived in this Archie parody entitled, The Good Guys of the Galaxy. It features a very odd mix characters that are presumably also old Archie characters. This send up of the MCU is done by Fernando Ruiz and his energetic art and Tom DeFalco’s excellent story. It’s funny, adventurous, and full of imagination. It’s not just the highlight of the volume, or even the whole Halloween bundle, it’s an all-time Archie classic. Oh, how I wish they’d continue this as its own series. Unfortunately, it’s not the 80’s, where Archie would casually spin off goofy titles all the time.
Following this, there are three short Archie stories where Cosmo makes an appearance. He’s a guest in one, but just a little cameo in the other two. (Ruiz would often sneak little shots of Cosmo into his stories.)
Finally in 2018, Archie did a full revival of Cosmo in a new series. This book includes the first issue of that. This followed Archie losing their license to Sonic the Hedgehog. Cosmo and his crew were redesigned to look a bit more video game-like, so this was sort of meant to take Sonic’s place. It kind of follows the original series in some ways, while updating the characters. Not having read any of the other issues, it’s hard to say how well this revival went. It wasn’t a bad idea and the artwork is good.
I've got a bunch more Archies to review, but I'm still reading them.
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