“Happy Anniversary”
Cover Price: $0.40
Bargain Price: $0.25
Cover Date: May 1980
As with Disney’s duck comics, I have spent pretty much my entire comic reading life ignoring the Archie line. Lately, though, I’ve found myself becoming more and more curious about titles like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats in particular. I also find myself increasingly drawn to Dan DeCarlo’s clean line work and very much enjoyed the recent Jughead #200. So, when I saw another Jughead anniversary issue in the quarter bins, I jumped on it, but I wish I hadn’t. This particular issue exemplifies everything bad about Archie comics. The art is almost unbelievably bad with a group of unnamed artists poorly aping the Archie house style with funky anatomy and half-hearted likenesses of many of the main characters. The main problem with the art, though, is the near complete lack of backgrounds, with panel after panel alternating between complete voids and solid color blocks. As for story, the issue contains four: a surprise party for Jughead, Jughead gets dumber when coach puts him on a diet, Archie and Jughead try to walk on a frozen lake, and Reggie challenges Jug to a pool game. Of these, the pool story is the best, but that isn’t saying much. As you can probably tell from the descriptions, these are hardly riveting narratives, with each story full of hackneyed jokes that, by 1980, were forty years past their prime. Still, I’m not ready to give up on Archie, but this issue isn’t doing the line any favors.
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