Continued from Part 1.
In the Archie Christmas store, they were offering a couple
of Christmas digests for $5.
Unfortunately, the Christmas digest I bought last
month was also listed for $5, which was half price of what I’d bought it for. (For that matter, they were offering a 22%
discount when I made my order, which mostly paid for the shipping. A couple of days later, it was 26%. Right now, it’s 30%.) When I got these digests, I couldn’t help but
notice the prices on the covers. The one
from 2021 was $7.99. The one from 2022
was $8.99. The one I’d just bought was
$9.99. I don’t like where this trend is
going.
The two digests I got were Archie Showcases. At my Barnes & Noble, they stock the four
monthly-ish Archie and Betty & Veronica digests and Archie Milestones
digests, but for some reason, they don’t stock Showcase. This has been too bad, because there have
been several issues I would have liked to have gotten like these two Christmas
issues.
Archie
Showcase Digest #6: Archie’s Christmas Stocking
The first thing I noticed flipping through this digest was
that it looked awfully familiar. It
was. A lot of the material had been in
had been a trade, The Best of Archie Christmas Comics,
that had come out a year before this digest.
That’s pretty lazy effort and this material wasn’t that great to begin
with. That said, this did have some
highlights.
The volume starts off with a classic 50’s story. I wish they’d reprint more of this
material.
There’s a fun Kennedy Brothers illustrated story.
The centerpiece of the digest (literally, it’s in the
middle) was my favorite story out of all of the new comics. Noelle and Sugarplum are fighting over Archie
and he ends up taking a trip to the North Pole.
Its 12 pages of pure fun. Mostly
because of this story (and the nice cover), I’m not completely disappointed in
this digest.
Archie
Showcase Digest #11: Archie’s Christmas Stocking
This was the last comic I read. Thankfully, it features almost all material I
hadn’t seen before. It was generally
pretty good. I’ll hit some highlights.
It starts off with a Harry Lucey drawn story from maybe
the early 60’s and features Jingles.
The first story with Sugarplum.
Jughead macking on Ethel.
Santa (Reggie) macking on Veronica and Betty.
Yet another great panel by the Kennedy Brothers.
Reggie wearing a shirt that might induce blindness in real
life.
A fun little story with Jughead and Santa by Fernando
Ruiz.
Here we go! It’s
the magic battle of the century: Jingles vs. Sabrina.
Finally, a nice Al Hartley Christmas panel.
This was a sort of disappointing order altogether, but with some bright points that I enjoyed. Reading these over two days was probably an overload of Archie Christmas. Given how much of this material I’ve read and how similar a lot of it is, I may not need any more. Just as a practical matter, I suddenly found out afterward I don’t even have room for any more digests.
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