Today's periodical ("The Friday Periodical"? I kind of like that!) an interesting experiment that was the precursor in a lot of ways to the relaunch of the Archie titles a couple of years back. Within, the introduction claims "for years people have wondered what the Archie universe would look like if our characters were drawn in a realistic style." Have they? Or had they? I'm not too sure about that, because the experiment of the "dynamic new look" that starts in this issue of the digest lasts a very, very short time.
Even if we look to the new iteration of Archie comics, the designs are hardly realistic. They're more mature, perhaps, but definitely not realistic. And there's s difference. Scott McCloud calls it "iconic abstraction," the idea that we can relate more easily to a character is more abstract - that's the magic of Archie comics. Though there's definitely defining features to the characters, they're little more than happy faces with hair. They're capable of simple yet exaggerated expression that we can readily identify and understand. The more realistic a comic gets, the less one experiences this.
The rest of the digest is pretty good. I often wonder how much of the content of these new ones is new stuff, and how much reprint. You can tell the old reprints, of course, but I'm never sure about the newer stuff.
Onward!
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