Comics Review World of Betty and Veronica Jumbo #13

I’d been holding on to a $20 Barnes & Noble gift card from dad for Christmas for months.  I’d gone to B&N several times since receiving it, but hadn’t found one thing to use it on, not even to buy something for dad.  (I’ve done that at least twice with gift cards he’s given me.) 

 

There was nothing in the comic trade paperback section and I think I’ve given up on getting any more magazines because of the bad experiences I’ve had recently.  Even the Baseball Season preview magazine was kind of useless since it was produced during the lockout.  Finally last month, I picked up this Archie digest featuring Sabrina.  It looked pretty good just flipping through it, so I used the card on it.    

 

It was $9, which is a bit steep for a mostly reprint volume.  It is a couple of hundred pages, so it’s thick.  About a third of it features Sabrina, including the one new story in the digest.  The rest is Betty and Veronica, along with a Little Betty story and a Little Sabrina story (they’re cute).

The new Sabrina story kind of sold me on the digest.  I don’t know if I’ve seen Dan Parent do Sabrina before, but she’s very appealing here.  Unfortunately, the story is way too short at five pages.   

Next is the classic Harry Lucey-illustrated Sabrina story.  I don’t know if he did any more, but this one is good and looks good.  The rest of the Sabrina section is from the 60’s and 70’s I think.  She’s mostly well-drawn, but the stories are pretty goofy at best.  I did a whole post on Sabrina a while back.  The character is great, but most of her comic material isn’t.  I think the 70’s cartoon and 90’s TV show may have been the best iterations of Sabrina.

I was about to despair that I’d wasted my gift card, but the Betty and Veronica material turned out to be pretty good.  I got some definite chuckles.  I’ll hit a few highlights.  For example, I was introduced to this new Goth character, Shrill.  I’m not sure about the red eyes, but the rest is enticing.  I admit when I first flipped through this, I thought the story was about Veronica going Goth in it. 

 

Actually, Betty went Goth in a 90’s story once.

It didn’t make any real sense to the story that Reggie was dressed as Elvis, but it seems so natural.  This was probably produced during the time in the 90’s when there were Elvis sightings.

The middle left panel is sort of famous.  Here’s the whole page for some context.  She was taking care of some plants.

Jughead doesn’t look very sorry here.  He’s dressed as a cowboy because Billy Ray Cyrus was hot at the time.

This is some great extreme physical comedy.

I did a double take when I started to read this one.  That is Betty as a brunette.  (Betty and Veronica are the same height and have the same measurements.)  The story ends just how you think it would.

Lastly, I love this story for the last panel.

  

Admittedly, I don’t think I got my money’s worth out of this digest (though it wasn’t actually my money), but I did enjoy it.  The Sabrina material I bought it for was disappointing, but much of the rest was fun.  So, I recommend this depending on how big an Archie fan you are and how much money you have sloshing around in your pockets.  I’ll hold on to this for now, but I’ll probably give it away if the opportunity presents itself.

 

What to do with the rest of my gift card?  There’s an Archie digest listed on their website as a new release that I’m interested in, but I haven’t found it at B&N.  It’s not much better elsewhere.  I went to Coas Used Bookstore and Zia Comics last week and didn’t find anything for myself or even gifts for others.  In spite of how well-stocked Zia Comics is, all I could find that I found interesting there were some huge hardback omnibus editions of classic comics that were over $100.  Since I’d walked there, I doubted I could even carry one back with me even with my wallet lighter.

 

That may be my last trip to the comic store just to shop there by myself.  The new comics and trades they carry aren’t interesting.  The back issues they have are mostly just collectibles.  They need to just put those $1 boxes out again to root through and add to them with some old 80’s and 90’s comics.  I’m sure those boxes are there somewhere.  There’s plenty of stuff I’d probably like buy, but I can’t find it available in my area.