Comics Review: She’s Josie

 

I was ordering something online and decided to check out the Archie website to see if there was anything interesting.  I tempted by their “Mystery Box” bundle offer, which was 10 classic trades for $20.  It’s a great deal, but I was concerned I was going to get a couple books I already had.  There was only one trade I was really interested in, She’s Josie, I which I settled on getting.  If this title had been in the bundle, I would have gotten that instead, but there was no way of knowing.  (I wish their offer would show what’s in the bundle or would allow you to pick the titles.)

 

A major selling point of this book is definitely the cover.  It is an all-time Archie Comics classic.  I’d buy and frame a poster of it, if there were one available.  Unfortunately, it’s a smaller, trimmed version of the comic book cover on the cover of the book.  Also, the issue it comes from, isn’t in the book.  (It’s issue #34.  The trade only goes up to issue #9.)          

 

This brings up another omission—none of the covers for the issues are reproduced.  There are a couple of pinup pages, but no covers.  The back cover blurb calls this “the first of a chronological collection,” which didn’t happen.  If it’s “for the record,” you’d think they’d include the covers. 

 

The introduction to the volume seems a little ambivalent about the material, as well.  These are the Josie stories before she became famous with the Pussycats and with her previous friends that she subsequently got rid of.  That kind of sounds bad, doesn’t it?  There was also a disclaimer about culturally inappropriate material in the stories.  I think this is referring to a story where some guys are dressed as island cannibals at a beach party. 

 

The disclaimer also says that the stories reprinted “without alteration for historical reference.”  This is probably incorrect.  There are several background characters colored “black,” who don’t otherwise seem to be black.  There is a classic Archie style for drawing black characters, who appear more regularly going into the 70’s.  I’ve noticed this “re-coloring” in other current reprints of older material.        

   

I was aware that there had been Josie stories before the Pussycats, but I’d only ever read a couple of them.  They’re pretty rare reprints.  In this volume, I found out why.  Of the nine issues reprinted here, eight are full issue stories, which don’t get reprinted a lot in the digests.  The other issue was a more standard Archie comic with several short stories. 

 

Admittedly, for the most part, classic Archie stories usually work best in short form.  The story premises often don’t have enough depth to carry a full issue.  This volume bears that out.  The best issue reprinted here was the one with the shorts, which was issue #4.  It feels like this title was an editorial experiment in longer stories, as well as introducing a new set of characters.

 

Annoyingly, this volume doesn’t include Josie’s first appearance in an Archie Pals ‘n’ Pals issue, which came out a year before the first issue, as per the introduction.  In a later issue in the series, the Archie gang does a guest appearance to firmly seat Josie in their universe, but that story isn’t here either.  The intro also doesn’t mention that Josie was modeled after Dan DeCarlo’s wife, he being the artist.  There’s also confusion over Josie’s last name.  Here at the beginning, it’s Jones.  Currently, it’s McCoy, which was more-or-less canonized in the Pussycats movie (which I liked).             

I wrote a couple of Archie fan fictions with the Pussycats.  Melody was the beautiful, ditzy one, but I wasn’t sure how to write Josie and Valerie.  Their personalities hadn’t seemed established to me.  In the origin here, Josie’s other friend is the brainy, uptight Pepper.  Josie is still a bit undefined.  She’s kind of sweet and kind of emotional.  I guess she’s your “every-girl” character.

Alexander and Alexandra Cabot make their first appearance early in the series.  You’re looking at the above picture and saying, “Where are they?”  They’re there, you just don’t recognize them in their original form.  They are still rich.

 

The Cabots arrival does bring in some romantic tension.  Alexander is after Josie and Alexandra is after Albert, Josie’s maybe boyfriend.  I don’t know why Albert is wearing cowboy boots at the beach in the above picture.  This has never been the fashion to my knowledge.  Pepper has an admirer in Sock, a big, brawny guy.  Melody . . . Melody is mine!  All mine!  Stay away from her!  Actually in the comics, she seems to be completely unobtainable. 

 

So am I about to give this a bad review?  No!  I got this for the DeCarlo artwork.  I don’t know if this is him at his best, but it’s likely close to it.  This is tremendously appealing to just look at.  I’m loving the mid-60’s fashions as well.  I hope to use this for some drawing practice.  The figure work is excellent.

 

While I see plenty of potential in the characters, the stories could have been better.  It seems more a format problem of the full-issue stories, since the shorter stories worked better.  Longer stories could still work here, but I think you’d want to define the characters more and lean more on drama and romance and some continuity, rather than comedy.  It’d be a real departure from the usual Archie comic.

 

I was going to link this review to my review of the Best of Josie and the Pussycats trade.  Except I never wrote one.  I thought I had, but I keep being surprised by the comics that I have that I didn’t review.  I bought a few more comics the other day (after I’d sworn off buying anymore comics for the hundredth time) that I plan on reviewing first, but I’ll get back to Josie later.  The Best of is over 400 pages, so it’ll require some work.