"Our women?" Oh, Sixties Archie, you're so...wrong.
I really like the Life With Archie series. I enjoy the long-form stories, and the slightly more serious tone. Don't get me wrong - I love the slapstick comedic Archie stories, but it's cool to see some different kinds of stories being told using the characters. It gives one a sense that there is more to the Archie gang than simply pratfalls and chasing women. Life is also one of the two Archie series that I actively go out of my way to accumulate, though often it's picking up less-than-mint copies of the series in quarter bins. The other one is the Giant Series Magazine, which I enjoy for its holiday issues, and for the variety of themes that are dealt with in the series.
There's another kind of interesting thing about this story. We are introduced to Angel, the son of the Lodge's new gardener, who is a complete jerk, manages to best Moose in a fight, and "steals" Betty and Veronica from Archie and Reggie.
(*sigh*)
However, a few years later, we get a reworking of this story in one of the Giant Series issues, and it's much more comedic. Rather than being played as a bully, Angel is played as more of a joke in the reworking. Apparently this was a thing that happened fairly frequently in older Archies, and it makes sense, given the remarkable amount of output that the company maintained for such a long time.
Other than that, a kind of unremarkable tale, not nearly as interesting as the adventures that would come a little later in the series.
To be continued.
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