Comics Review: Archie Jumbo Comic Magazine #1

I’d seen this magazine offered on the Archie website and was interested in ordering it, but held off. Because of the format, I assumed I’d be able to find it on the newsstand at Barnes & Noble. It never showed up there. I read it online on an “archive” website. Though it was kind of neat, I didn’t want to go to the trouble of ordering it, especially since you only get free shipping on preorders of new comics. Finally, I found it at Wal-Mart. This happened when I found the magazine rack, which they had moved and virtually hidden in the store. I was lucky to get this.

The magazine is 100+ pages on white, kind of pulpy paper, but decent quality. Priced at $15, it’s all reprints spread out from different decades of Archie. The short stories are interspersed with little articles written in the first person by Archie himself. There are, I think, reprinted Archie encyclopedia entries for the main characters. It is meant to be a commemorative celebration for Archie’s 85-th anniversary.

40’s Archie comics are not often reprinted in modern Archie comics. They look a bit primitive, but are funny.

However, we do have this Sunday page from Bob Montana from the Archie comic strip, which I own (and never reviewed, but its great).  This is absolute peak Archie.

One thing that got my interest was a few stories from the 50’s. The comics had more of a cartoony style. Again, these aren’t heavily reprinted today. I like them, but haven’t seen much of them.

Here’s a pin-up with Veronica from her short hair era in the 60’s. She looks so cute.

Here’s a modern Veronica from the 70’s. She’s not having a good time at the concert with Jughead.

This genuinely surprised me: it’s Archie and friends playing Dungeons & Dragons from the 80’s. This must have come out before the “controversy.” It is somewhat accurate with the polyhedral dice and the boys playing for hours, however, who’s the DM? Also reprinted from the 80’s in this magazine, Archie and Jughead encounter E.T. From the 90’s, Betty experiments with the “grunge” style and her parents think she’s dressed to help them paint the house.

I think this is from maybe the early 2000’s. Veronica gets in an online fight with a teen advice columnist, Jessica Love Hubert. The name sounds like “Jennifer Love Hewitt,” but it doesn’t look like her and I don’t remember her doing a teen advice column. It’s a mystery, but fun. Dan did a nice job designing “Jessica.”

This was a recent new digest story with the Kennedy Brothers’ art showcasing all of the variations of Archie over the years. I’d seen this before, but appreciated seeing the artwork in a larger format.

This is what Archie Comics should be doing instead of their current sort-of digest, which replaced their digest line. That one digest looks lonely on the rack given that there used to be four there at any given time. Using the magazine format would fit in better with the rest of the rack, but it needs to be $10. Maybe they could reduce the page count and print it on cheaper paper. One of the reasons I bought this was to support this format. Hopefully, they’ll consider it.