Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Comics Review: An Archie Christmas Part 2

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.  

No comments:

Post a Comment