Okay, this is a really good Archie digest. As Archie is “The Official Comic Book of
Christmas,” you’d expect a Christmas issue to be entertaining, but starring
Jughead, you’ve got gold. Heck, I marked
half the book for comment. However, I
have to question how many more of these Archie Christmas digests I’m going to
be getting. I’d already read a couple of
stories in here. There’s only so much
classic material.
(Though this didn’t stop me from ordering more Archie
Christmas books online yesterday. So
much for not buying more. I never
usually order stuff online, but I really kind of wanted the new Archie Christmas
floppy comic. They’re not going to come
until next month, so I don’t know when I’ll be covering them.)
It’s going to be prohibitive to cover everything good in
this book. I’m going to just hit a few highlights. Great Archie artist, Rex Lindsey, stories
start and end the book. There’s four
stories featuring Hot Dog. There’s a
couple of trips to the North Pole. There
is romance and even something of an explanation why Jughead avoids girls. (It’s not good sense. It’s something else.)
I think this was my favorite of the stories I hadn’t read
before. It features Fernando Ruiz’s very
appealing artwork. Whenever you see
Jughead dressed up, it’s fun.
Jughead’s dog, Hot Dog, has a couple of heartwarming moments.
Jughead makes a disastrous trip to the North Pole.
His sister, Jellybean, makes a better impression on St.
Nick.
What would Archie be without some physical comedy?
I love this panel by Pat Kennedy.
There’s a story where a female elf wrecks Santa’s
operation. All of the boys want video
games, but she decides that they won’t pay attention to their girlfriends if
they get them. Here’s her solution.
 |
A lot of these Christmas themes seem to be arriving in two’s. There’s a couple of stories about the dangers
of mistletoe. In both of these stories,
somehow Jughead is suddenly irresistible.
Okay, I’ll get to discussing the mystery of Jughead. It was carefully set up in a previous story
with an innocuous remark by Veronica.
And here we have the reveal. “I can’t kiss you because I’ll poke your eye
out, kid.” Who knew? That is just so Christmas. I think we’ve all learned something here.
Seriously though, it’s hard to critically review a comic
book that I really enjoyed. It’s much easier
to rip on bad material. Of course there
are some clunkers, but overall, it’s a lot of Christmas-y fun. I hope the other stuff I ordered is this
good.
No comments:
Post a Comment