2021 Winter Sports Recap

This will not be exhaustive in any way, shape, or form.  I’m just writing about whatever caught my interest since the last time I wrote, which was way too long ago.  It’s not my fault the sports world hasn’t been entertaining me. 

 

NFL

I watched a few NFL games, mostly just to hang around my dad on Sundays.  The NFL did get their best possible Superbowl match up with Tom Brady and the Buccaneers against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.  40-something Brady willing his new team to a championship game was triumph in and of itself.  Since I like both teams, I was kind of looking forward to the game. 

 

Unfortunately, I read and watched some of the pregame media propoganda.  A USA Today columnist demanded Brady apologize for being friends with Trump and called him “White” as a pejorative.  Three newspaper reports that I glanced at took shots at Brady, while calling Mahomes a social justice conscious pillar of his community.  I didn’t like having torn loyalties to begin with, much less now having a political angle added to the game.  I just wanted to watch and enjoy a good game, but that was too much to ask for.

 

When the time came, I ended up watching two movies that were on another channel and kept up with the game during the commercials.  All I saw when the Chiefs had the ball was Patrick Mahomes running for his life.  I’ve seldom seen a worse offensive line breakdown.  After the game, I think the stat was that he’d run 500 total yards, but mostly in the wrong direction.  It’s telling that the call of the game was that of a streaker invading the field late in the fourth quarter.   

 

I did find a Fox Sports Radio affiliate at night to listen to commentary about the game (out of Shreveport?  “Home of LSU sports talk”).  They insinuated that the refs had thrown the game for the Bucs.  Looking at the calls, you could make the case, though I think the Chiefs’ offense did a good enough job of losing the game without any help. 

 

There’s also the question of why the fix would favor Brady.  Commissioner Roger Goodell hates him, except for the ratings he gets.  The NFL storyline favored Mahomes taking the mantle of GOAT from Brady with this game.  They wanted Brady playing in the Superbowl, but him winning wasn’t the narrative they wanted.  I have no explanation.  For now, I’m just enjoying Brady shoving the media’s hit job on him right back down their throats, as usual.  This isn’t the first (or second, or third) time they’ve tried to bury him.

 

MLB

It’s been a heck of an offseason for the Padres, who picked up some front line pitching help.  Unfortunately, the Dodgers then picked up Trevor Bauer to regain the preseason division victory.  The Rockies finally dealt unhappy superstar Nolan Arenado.  They sent him to the Cardinals for a bunch of Little Leaguers and actually paid the birds to take him.  I like both teams, but this really hurts.  I talked to my Aunt Judy in Missouri to see if she was happy about the trade.  She’d never heard of Nolan.  If a player doesn’t already play for the Cardinals, she’s never heard of them.  That’s a true homer fan.

 

There have been a bunch of Hall of Famer deaths over the off season.  Tommy Lasorda passed away and reportedly did bleed blue in the hospital.  How do you not love Tommy?  I felt a bit sick over the Dodgers winning the World Series last year, but now I have to admit, I’m glad that Lasorda got to see his team win another one before his passing.  Hank Aaron heroically took the Cold “vaccine” to demonstrate to the black community that it was safe to take.  He then died in his sleep hours after taking the second dosage two weeks later.  At least his passing gave the media yet another opportunity to call everyone a “racist,” for how he was treated while chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record.

 

Aggie Sports

Let’s just move on.  No, no.  There’s good news to report.  The Men’s Basketball team’s governor-imposed exile finally ended having only ruined their entire pre-conference season.  No, of course, they still can’t play in the great state of New Mexico, but thankfully they found a high school in El Paso to host their “home” games.  (No fans allowed, of course.)  What?  It’s Eastwood!  My mortal high school enemies!  Myself being a proud alumni of J.M. Hanks High School, which is like ten minutes down the down from Eastwood, am horrified.  It’s a betrayal.  So far, the Men have managed to win two of their first six WAC games in a conference they were expected to win.  Pshaw, being forced to skip those early season games and doing things like having preseason practicing are obviously overrated.  

 

On the other hand, tell that to Coach Mike Jordan and the Volleyball team.  They went over to Tucson cold and untrained and beat Arizona in a scrimmage in five sets.  So far, they’ve also won their first six conference games too.  UTEP has been nice enough to let them use Memorial Gym to play their home games at.  It helps that Jordan’s former assistant coach is currently the UTEP head coach.  All this, and star Juliana Salnoa isn’t even playing, because she has to pursue her nursing degree this semester.  The coach has apparently brought in some explosive freshman talent and excellent transfers.  I almost get the impression he’s having trouble deciding which great player to start from set to set.  And, I can’t watch my girls play.  Damn it.

 

Baseball is starting the season on the road, much like all of the northeastern teams who come here at the beginning of the season, since their home fields are covered in the snow.  The Softball team is relocating to Florida to play their pre-conference games.  Neither team has a place to play their home games yet.  The Women’s Basketball team may as well be on the back of a milk carton; they’ve disappeared.  I heard that the Soccer team beat UTEP recently, but I don’t know where they’re playing home games either.

 

ESPN Radio

Oh, I must make a special note here of the “Worldwide leader in Woke.”  Until the day after the Superbowl, when I wanted to hear some sports talk about the game, I suddenly realized I hadn’t listened to national sports radio in a couple of months.  (I have been regularly listening to local sports talk in the afternoon.)  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one not listening.  ESPN Radio’s ratings have been down 50% during this time. 

 

What a shock.  They fired all the big name (and big salaried) SWJ talent that had been eroding their ratings for the last several years and replaced them with no name (and dirt cheap) SWJ talent a couple of months ago.  Every time I scan past their local station, they’re talking about the NBA, whose ratings have also taken a big drop this season.  So the network is talking about unpopular political opinions and about an unpopular sport using subpar talent.  It’s inexplicable that ratings have continued to go down.   

 

What can you do to change directions if you’re ESPN Radio?  Start charging people for your bad opinions, of course!  I nearly hit my head on the floor as doubled over laughing as one of the no name hosts was promoting their new podcast service.  They’re promising commentary on the intersection of sports, social justice, and politics for a small monthly fee.  Even the guy reading the copy was having trouble making himself believe somebody might actually want to buy this.  It’s so pitiful, it’s kind of sad in a way. 

 

I don’t know how much longer sports as we know them are going to be around.  I really don’t.  Between political nonsense, a lack of paying customers in the stands, and declining ratings (the NFL’s have gone down too), there’s got to be culling.  My antipathy may turn to apathy here shortly and I’ll just watch WWE.   

On to NASCAR

Holiday Comics Review Part 5 Nexus

Continued from Part 4

 

This is stretching the term “Holiday” a bit, since I bought these comics in January.  I returned to Zia Comics looking for the Chris Claremont celebration issue, which had gotten good reviews.  And it was gone.  That’s what I get for going on Friday, instead of Wednesday, when it came out.  The long boxes of bargain bin comics had also disappeared, so there wouldn’t be any further searching in them.  I didn’t even see anything else to get until I stumbled on this in the graphic novel section.

 

Nexus Omnibus #3

I’m a big Nexus fan.  I’d had a choice between this and Volume #2.  Both were sealed, so I couldn’t look at the contents.  I picked this one because Kreed and Sinclair were on the cover.  I’d actually read much of the material inside, but generally it’s all excellent.  I’d figured that the Rampage issue featuring the four-armed Quatros was inside.  I consider that my favorite issue and maybe a high-water mark of the whole series.

 

Nexus is a sci-fi superhero.  He’s essentially Space Ghost recast as an executioner of mass murderers.  Mike Barron makes this concept a whole lot messier than that simple description.  Horatio is tormented by his actions and the dreams that compel him to kill.  He involves himself in planetary uprisings and against totalitarian regimes out of compassion, only to look on in horror at the carnage he inadvertently causes in reaction. 

Barron found the ultimate foil for his storytelling in artist, Steve Rude.  His dynamic and loving character drawings are perfectly paired with his almost Dr. Seuss-like sci-fi renderings.  The characters have an animation to them that makes scenes come alive.  Rude makes it look easy, which is really annoying to me and my own sketching.

OMG!  I just looked at the page count on these posts.  This has gone 14 pages!  I hadn’t realized how badly I’d missed writing in the last couple of months.  The stories inside sort of go all over the place, but also follow along a continuing storyline.  Rude maybe does a bit more than half of the issues in the volume.  There’s a bunch of fill in artists of varying quality.  I’ve seen much better Paul Smith artwork doing the X-Men.  Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez’s art is definitely the highlight.  Most of the issues of Nexus also had a backup feature.  The misadventures of Clonezone would give way to adventures of Judah the Hammer.  These are okay, but are pretty much filler. 

 

There are several volumes in this series.  At $25 apiece (not fully comic book-sized but bigger than digest-sized), this would be an expensive collection, but at least through issue #50, it’d be worth with.  After that point, they’re not so great from what I’ve read.  This volume is a definite recommend though.

 

Bad Idea Promo

I was also given this while checking out.  It was a promotional pamphlet for a new comic company.  They have several titles scheduled to come out this year.  None of them really appeal to me, but I wish them luck.  I’m amazed anybody is still trying to publish comics, much less a new company.

 

Before going to the comic book store, I did swing by Coas Books first.  I’d meant to see their bargain bins of comics and trade paperbacks and hopefully find plenty to read.  A couple of their bins were surprisingly cleaned out.  I only found two issues that interested me.  A couple of the Crossgen trades that I keep looking at every time I go there, I again decided not to buy.  There wasn’t anything else there.  I felt kind of embarrassed going to the register with like a $1 in purchase after using store credit.

                   

Daredevil #51

I’d heard about David Mack’s run on Daredevil.  A reviewer described the artwork as a teenaged girl’s diary with mixed media montages and a bunch of scribbles.  It’s Mack; what did you expect?  I’m actually a big fan of David Mack from his run on Kabuki.  This issue is very reminiscent of some of the issues of his later Alchemy series. 

The above page is exactly representative of the rest of the issue.  It looks nothing like a typical superhero comic.  If this isn’t to your taste or expectations, I won’t hold it against you.  I found it a fascinating character study.  The story asks absurd, yet philosophical, Zen-like questions along the way.  You really get into Echo’s head.  I think she’s the villain, but it’s hard to say without seeing other issues.  I have a hard time even calling her a “villain” after getting this intimate with her.  I’d love to see some more of this run.

Grimjack #30

I’d heard of the First publishing character, Grimjack, while I was reading Nexus.  I somehow read one issue a long time ago.  I didn’t know what to make of it at the time.  I have a read a few issues of Dynamo Joe, whom GJ crosses over with in this issue.  I learned from a narrative box at the beginning that GJ works at junction between all dimensions, so he could theoretically meet up with anybody in comics.  This issue is pretty much a filler-like promo/crossover to promote DJ, so I still don’t know really feel very enlightened about Grimjack, but I’d be willing to try some more.

 

I’ll sum up my haul.  The gift comics went over well, so that was a plus.  The Conan comic I went looking for was good.  The Nexus Omnibus was excellent.  The Zia Comics bargain bin comics were in the bin for a reason and it wasn’t quality.  I think I struck out on all of those.  Everything else sort of drifted in the middle.  Either they were just okay or incomplete in some fashion.  Okay, I’m caught up in reviewing, so obviously I need more comics.  

Holiday Comics Review Part 4 Fantasy Comics

Continued from Part 3

 

King-Size Conan #1

I read this last out of the stack, though I actually went to the comic store to get this, but I’m putting it first for this post because the cover looks cooler than the rest.  I saw Zack’s video review before reading and it didn’t spoil anything.  It also confirmed my own opinion: this was a really good comic.  For $7 freaking dollars, it better be!  It is double-sized on slick paper with minimal ad intrusion (though there should have been none for the price).  This was put out to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Marvel Conan comics. 

The issue is supposed to show Conan in his different careers, like barbarian and thief.  For being called “King-size,” it doesn’t show Conan as the king of Aquilonia.  The artwork is excellent, except for the Kevin Eastman segment.  (I hate to just single someone out, but it sticks out like sore thumb.)  All of the stories are pretty well written.  I’ll pick the Thief story as my favorite. 

 

I’m not sure about that price, but out of the stack of comics I got, this was easily the best of the bunch.

 

Vertigo Essentials: Fables #1

I picked this one up as an afterthought, after getting the Conan and the two gift comics.  Since it comes so highly recommended, I couldn’t resist trying Fables as a $1 sampler of the first issue.  The main problem with Fables is that it’s been co-opted by other works before and after, such as Into the Woods and Once Upon a Time.  This is a much more thoughtful work with a highly developed mythos.

    

 

I think.  It’s hard to tell a lot from the first issue of a series that ran for (let me look at the checklist provided with the issue) over 25 volumes.  I know there’s a whole bunch more to the story and setting, but a serial killer investigation featuring fairy tale characters didn’t really grab me.  I will say that the artwork certainly did.  I’m already in love with Snow White.  For the art alone, I’d probably at least want to get (rechecking the checklist) Volume 1. 

 

This is a double-sized comic, though the comic itself is only normal-sized.  The rest of the pages are a catalogue of DC trades.  There’s some interesting-looking stuff in there.

           

Arion #’s 1, 13, 17

None of the comics being reviewed here are decompressed quick reads, by the way.  I have to give credit for that at least.  It’s nice to get into a meaty comic.  I’ve mentioned Arion before as an intriguing backup feature in Warlord.  These comics were the truly happy finds in the bargain bin.  I’d wanted to see what a full issue would look like.

Issue #1 unfortunately picks up right where the backup storyline ended.  I say, “unfortunately,” because anyone picking this up off a grocery store spinner rack in the 80’s would have been hopelessly confused by it.  Even having read what directly led to this issue, I was lost.  The story starts with Arion in a celestial metaphysical battle with cosmic entities.  It’s not entirely relatable . . . for anybody.  I would have started with some sort of recap of the setting and characters first before resuming the ongoing storyline.  On the other hand, the artwork is magnificent and thoroughly compelling.  As a reader in the 80’s, I would have given this comic another chance next month.  I suppose I should scan more examples, but, really, need you see more than the above picture? 

 

Issue #13 was a bit water damaged and I can’t believe that before they put in the bin, the store was selling this as a collector’s item.  It mostly featured the barbarian/Indian supporting character, Wyynde.  #17 featured Arion mostly wallowing in angst-y spiritual conflict.  Artist and co-creator Jan Duursema seems to be really torn in fascination between frail pretty boys and muscular he-men.  In any case, the art’s really good. 

 

It’s not so much the story that falls flat, it’s the characters, especially the main character.  (Grognardia also made this observation.)  The character takes a lot of inspiration from Elric I’m told, but he’s not any sort of anti-hero.  He feels more like a victim than a hero for some reason.  I guess because he’s continuously suffering.  Wyynde feels like he should be main protagonist, but that might be a little too Conan-ish. 

 

So, Arion is basically a heroic derivative of Elric, who was the complete opposite of Conan, and also pairs him up with a derivative of Conan.  Not to say this couldn’t have worked.  It should have!  Certainly with this artwork!  This comic is a frustrating enigma.  If I find any more classic issues, I’ll pick them up, but my expectations have been diminished.  The worst of it is that this character has been thoroughly mangled by all of the DC universal reboots.  (I think he was Power Girl’s dad at one point, or something like that.)  Arion would certainly be worth a coherent relaunch if somebody can figure out what’s wrong with the concept. 

 

Part 5

Holiday Comics Review Part 3 Gaming Comics

Continued from Part 2

The Collected Adventures of Phil and Dixie What’s New #1

I’m a fan of Phil Foglio’s work.  I used to have his Myth Adventures adaptation.  (What did I do with that?  I continually shocked remembering the cool things I got rid of and the crap I’ve kept.)  I haven’t kept up with his latest online strip, Girl Genius, but it’s very good-looking.  Of course, one of the highlights of old issues of Dragon magazine, was Phil’s What’s New comic.

 

I’d seen this album advertised somewhere long ago and desperately wished I could obtain it.  And here it was!  It was just ran into it in a dollar box amongst a bunch of random recent independent titles.  I could scarcely believe I was holding this unicorn in my hands.  This might have been the first thing I pulled out from those 12 boxes of comics I was thumbing through, which no doubt influenced me to keep going through them. 

 

This is a normal-sized comic, square bound, 48 pages, and printed on rather thick paper with a very durable cover.  It was $6 when released and printed in 1991.  This surprised me, because all of the material inside is from the 80’s and I’m sure I saw this advertised before the 90’s.  In any case, this would have been an expensive buy back then.  These comics were originally published in a magazine.  I’d sort of imagined this was in an old graphic novel-sized album format.

As for the comics, it starts with a new eight-page color story that shows Phil and Dixie’s origin story, which is very cute.  It then goes into a short black and white section, which was how the comic was originally published.  The rest of the strips are in color.

 

And I’m kind of dancing around it here.  The comics aren’t that great.  I have a feeling Foglio himself would say, “Yeah, the comedy is a bit rough here.  I’ve done much better writing and visual storytelling since.”  The artwork is fine for comedy, but other than the Sex and D&D running gag (which always teased, but never paid off), the jokes aren’t that great.  Part of this comes from Phil himself saying on the back page that he was making up the strips without actually playing the game.  It shows at times. 

 

What’s New did set the standard for comics in Dragon magazine.  It was always pretty funny and looked good.  I assume Volume 2 of this would have some of the better material that I remember.  At some point, Phil must have at least cracked open a D&D book for new ideas.  The most inspired running gag was the evil Dixie storyline where she changed alignments.  Those strips were classic.

 

In sum, this was a disappointment.  Don’t purchase this at collector’s prices, but it’s worth it at much less than the cover price, at least for historical value.           

 

Munchkin #8

Munchkin is a popular fantasy card game, which I haven’t played, but I’d be more willing to try it than getting involved with the cardboard crack that is Magic: The Gathering.  (And I have way too much pride to ever be caught dead playing Pokemon.  Well, unless Dizzykitten wants me to play with her, but I think she only collects the cards.  I don’t think she plays.)

 

In any case, I decided to try the comic, thinking it might be kind of light-hearted fun in a fantasy vein.  The artwork was appropriately cartoony and reasonably appealing.  Unfortunately, the two stories (one continuing, one standalone) were really simplistic and not that funny.  There’s only two characters and neither are developed well enough to provide much comedy by themselves.       

  

On the back page, there’s an actual card for game use, Baby Boomer.  If you bought another issue, you might get a different card.  At $4 an issue, that would be pretty expensive.  I also like the ad for the figure.  It’s pretty well done.  If card series artist, John Kovalic (of Dork Tower), were doing this series, I’m pretty sure it would be great, but he’s a busy guy.      

 

Pathfinder Worldscape #5

Paizo’s Pathfinder made a conscious effort to create iconic characters to represent their RPG line.  They created the notion of iconics during their stewardship of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, but they never named them or statted them out.  Now, they have characters can be used in various media to promote the game, including comic books. 

This issue was part of a mini-series featuring the Pathfinder iconics along with Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan.  I’m still trying to figure out why or how Marvel didn’t reacquire the rights to Red Sonja when they got Conan back.  Unlike their own superhero comics, Marvel has done a good job making Conan comics.  (I’ll be reviewing a Conan comic in the next part of this Holiday review.)  Dynamite is nonetheless the current publisher of the warrior redhead.  I haven’t noticed any Tarzan comics from them, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.  I also haven’t seen any John Carter comics, but it’s hard to miss the Dejah Thoris comics they’ve been putting out.

This issue does contain a battle map with a poster on the reverse, neither of which are all that great, if not worthless.  The inside artwork isn’t as good as the cover.  I do not appreciate the artistic choice of Red Sonja’s appearance in the pages.  She has this wild-haired Irish berserker look.  While Sonja is a Robert E. Howard character, the look of the character was developed by Marvel (and had pretty much nothing to do with Howard’s original character).  I’m kind of surprised Dynamite can still use the chain mail bikini.  I’d almost say the big hair look was done to make her 25% different to avoid copyright issues, but she has the classic look on the cover.

Coming in with Issue #5, I have no idea what the story is.  It wasn’t very engaging, in spite of the all-star cast (though Tarzan doesn’t really show up in this issue).  Two of the female iconics are lesbians apparently, as is the villain.  Well, that’s all I got out of this.  There are stats for Tar Tarkas, the Green Martian, in the back.  That would be for the previous version of Pathfinder now, and I seriously doubt any DM would let you bring this character to their table to play with.

 

That’s three more strikes.  Let’s see what’s next.

 

Part 4 

Holiday Comics Review Part 2 Archie Comics

 Continued from Part 1.

 

The Best of Archie Christmas Comics

I guess I’ll do the reviews in the more-or-less order that I read them.  This 250-page digest-sized trade that my dad gave me for Christmas was actually the first of the holiday comics that I read, though I nearly finished it last.  It was printed on white newsprint and was $10. 

Dad had a gotten it for me because he’d seen me reading it when we were at Barnes & Noble shopping together earlier in the month.  I wish he’d instead noticed me reading that treasury-sized $40 Prince Valiant reprint book.  I noticed the Archie book on his shopping list that he’d left lying out the week after.  I hadn’t asked for anything for Christmas.  I broke down and asked for a Chase Elliot die cast car, hoping he’d drop the Archie book.  (Suddenly, I remember it’s been months since I’ve written a sports report.  I’ll probably do something in the near future.  Congrats on that championship, Chase!)  I ended up getting both gifts for Christmas, so thanks, pop.  That was generous.

Really, I didn’t need another Archie Christmas book and this one didn’t look like anything special.  I used to have an album-sized book with material mostly from the 40’s and 50’s.  I’ve still got a Christmas digest and several individual Christmas issues.  This book starts with material from the 50’s.  I’d say most of the stories in the volume come from the 70’s and 80’s and feature Betty and Veronica.  There was a small 90’s and 2000’s section.  The 2010’s only had two entries, one of which was the only one story that I’d read elsewhere.  I even reviewed it in 2019.         

I started reading the book while was waiting to eat lunch on Christmas Day.  I didn’t get back to reading it until after I’d finished most of the other comics that I’d gotten on Christmas Eve.  It wasn’t that what I’d read was bad, but I was more interested in the other stuff.  Having finished it, I’ll say that it is pretty decent Archie material.  There were only one or two clunkers out of a large number of stories.  However, nothing stands out.  There’s some off-and-on good house-style Archie artwork, but nothing spectacular.  Given that all but one story inside was new to me, this book was a pretty good deal at the price.  It also gives a good idea of how much Christmas material they’ve produced over the years, because I’ve read quite a bit.

 

It’s a recommend for a Christmas stocking stuffer for an Archie fan or a kid.  It’s not “essential” otherwise.  I will point out two stories that got an honest chuckle out of me.  The two pages above are from a Moose-centric story.  I’m surprised there wasn’t a current day disclaimer for this one.  I love old stories that couldn’t be published today.

The punch line for this story probably speaks for itself.

 

There are no words.

Archie #11

I didn’t actually read these next Archie comics next, but we’ll stay with the theme.  These next five comics came from the batch of bargain bin comics I picked up on Christmas Eve.  I haven’t read much of the modern Archie comics since they restarted the line.  This one was an easy grab with this great cover.  This new series does call back to the original Archie/Betty/Veronica triangle (and actually I can't find my review of it, maybe it was on an site) with Betty wanting Archie and Archie wanting Veronica.  However, it misses the critical comedic aspect of the triangle: Veronica wants to play the field and is stringing Archie along.  (Not to mention the other elements: Betty is crazy in going after Archie and Archie is clueless.) 

Modern Archie is more of a dramedy, so they don’t care about making the premise funny.  They’re going for romance in the premise.  The comedy comes from the characters and the situations.  Archie is also borrowing from Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell in directly addressing the audience.  (Sabrina star, Melissa Joan Hart, also did this in her previous show, Clarissa Explains it All.) 

 

You can see that the internal artwork is expressive, but not entirely appealing.  The story is okay for a teen drama with a little wacky comedy.  What there isn’t, is a lot of story.  It takes up half of the issue plus four pages.  Since this is a story about Archie and music, there’s a text piece about The Archies and a short 60’s reprint featuring the group. 

 

Jughead #15

Continuing the music theme, this issue of Modern Jughead is about him getting into a Josie and the Pussycats concert.  This version of Jughead hasn’t gotten great reviews.  I’ve read at least one story and I thought it was okay (Jughead’sTime Police).  Sept 2018.  The character is at least definitively Jughead and basically unchanged.  At some point, he was paired up with Sabrina for some reason.  I think they wanted her in the main Archie comics, but reserved her solo books for continuities without the Archie gang. 

 

The team up somehow oddly works.  Weird things happening to Jughead isn’t unprecedented.  In continuity, Juggy does know that Sabrina is a witch.  Them being friends works, even if it’s a bit forced.  (Sabrina goes on to date Archie in other Archie issues.  Who could blame Archie for going for the darling witch girl?  However, this relationship is definitely forced.  Who has he not dated?  Josie might be Archie’s cousin, so she’s off limits.  Why isn’t he going after Melody?  Why isn’t every guy in Archie Comics going after Melody?)

 

The inside artwork is aimed at kids for sure.  The story is cute with the magical element and Jughead caught up in the unintended consequences.  It’s also continued as it is in the decompressed style, so I don’t know how it resolves.  Like the Archie comic above, it’s half the issue, then there’s a Big Moose one-shot preview.  Both comics are also ephemeral quick-reads for $4 comics. 

 

Archie Meets Batman ’66 1-3

It’s a six-issue mini-series if you’re wondering.  I was lucky to find three consecutive issues in those 12 long boxes I was rummaging through.  Maybe the other three issues were in there somewhere, or maybe the store adjusted their orders and sold out of the rest of the series. 

Certainly this team up makes more sense than Archie meeting the Punisher or the Predator.  The characters’ universes share certain sensibilities that make them easily compatible.  Dan Parent’s artwork is fun and well-done for this event.  The first issue alone is worth getting just for seeing Veronica and her fabulous changes in hairstyle and wardrobe.  (Not to mention, Cheryl Blossom is looking good.)  The story respects all of the characters and works with them.  It’s fun.

Here’s the downside.  Just like those other two Archie Comics reviewed, there’s only content for a bit more than half of the issue.  There’s no backup feature.  So, these are even quicker reads.  While the story carefully works out the characters’ stories, three issues in, Archie still hasn’t met Batman!  What the hell!  Reggie is working for the bad guys, and the Joker is trying to tempt Jughead into changing sides.  Betty is after Dick Grayson, and Archie has latched on to Barbara Gordon.  (Robin and Batgirl have infiltrated Riverdale in their civilian identities.)  But, Batman is still in freaking Gotham City! 

 

I wouldn’t get the individual issues of this, unless you can get them at a deep discount like I did.  The trade may be worthwhile, but I haven’t read the whole story.  Frankly, it seems a bit dragged out so that they could get six issues out of it.  Honestly from what I’ve seen here, these Modern Archie comics are mostly not worth it.  I can still recommend the new Sabrina trade paperback (December2019) and the Classic Archie stuff like the Christmas Comics. 

 

Part 3