The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 23: Betty & Veronica Double Digest #151, July 2007

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!

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 22: Jughead with Archie plus Betty and Veronica and Reggie, too! #1, March 1974

Yes. That is the title of today's magazine.

I've decided that the Archie digests qualify as magazines, as they're periodicals but they very often follow a less-than-monthly schedule. They're also about the same length as a lot of the magazines I've been reading for the project, so for the time being that's where they'll fall when I decide to read and blog one.

The coolest thing about this issue is that it's dated the same year and month that I was born. Looking at the copy I have (the cover up there is from the GCD) is a sobering fact. It looks on the outside like I feel on the inside some days!

This is a nice collection of old reprint stuff, things that don't get reprinted quite as often anymore as they're starting to seem dated. That said, many of the attempts at looking at the Women's Lib movement still resonate somewhat, though from a contemporary perspective, the resonance is a bit more sinister. I wonder, sometimes, about the attitudes evinced by the boys of Riverdale toward the objects (a word I use purposefully here) of their desires. Sometimes they verge on the unpleasant. Thank goodness the boys seem to have learned a few things in the 40+ years since this comic came out, keeping up with the social and cultural movements that have shaped society. Considering they're fairly one-dimensional comic characters, they show a lot more character these days than a lot of actual people who lived through the same changes. *sigh*

Onward!

The 40 Years fo Comics Project - Day 263: Adventure Comics #492, October 1982

Not quite a random selection. Last night I was continuing to make my way through DC One Million, and I came across the Legionnaires tie-in, and realized that I haven't spent much time at all in my 30 years of comics fandom on the Legion of Super-Heroes. So I pulled out one of the old Adventure digests and got some Legion action. Oh, and Black Canary, Shazam, Aquaman, Spectre, Superboy, Sandman, and Supergirl.

It turns out that the project of this digest-sized version of Adventure was to reprint all of the Legion stories in the order they appeared, so this issue has their third and fourth appearances, one featuring Supergirl and one featuring Superboy. They were so-so superhero stories, very much indicative of the gentle, somewhat neutered story-telling of the early sixties. The Legion are still back-up characters in these tales, but later issues feature them on their own. I must admit that part of the draw of the One Million issue was the fact that Tom Peyer wrote it. He's one of those comics writers that I find mysterious. I've read other comics writers singing his praises, but I know next to nothing about the man himself. Though his run on Hourman was absolutely wonderful.

I may perhaps read a bit more Adventure tomorrow. They're 100 pages each, so it's a bit of a time commitment, but you get a lot of stories for such a little package. The ones in this collection featured such luminaries as Alex Toth, Jim Aparo, Jim Mooney, Gardner Fox, amongst others, which is also kind of a nice draw. I will say, however, that the Spectre story in this issue was completely flat. Did not enjoy it at all. But that's the nice thing about an anthology. There's always something else to read. See you tomorrow.