ARCHIE'S HOLIDAY FUN DIGEST #11 REVIEW

[Blake Petit]

Review by: Blake M. Petit Blake@comixtreme.com
Quick Rating: Good
Title: Holiday Rush and other stories

It’s another Christmas with Archie and the gang!

Writer: Mike Pellowski & others
Pencils: Tim Kennedy & others
Inks: Rich Koslowski & others
Colors: Barry Grossman & others
Letters: Jack Morelli & others
Editor: Nelson Ribeiro & Victor Gorelick
Cover Art: Fernando Ruiz & Frank D’Agostino
Publisher: Archie Comics

It’s the 11th annual edition of Archie’s Holiday Fun Digest, and this year’s package gives us the usual satisfying mixture of new treats and reprinted fare. It’s hard to say for sure (especially since Archie rarely prints credits past the first story in a digest for some reason), but this year it looks like the new content greatly outweighs the reprinted material, which is something even longtime Archie fans will be able to appreciate.

“Holiday Rush,” by Pellowski, Kennedy and Koslowski, is the lead story this year. Betty and Veronica take a quick tour of Riverdale in December, commenting on the meaning of Christmas and the commercialization of it. This short lead is actually one of the weakest stories in the book – high on commentary, low on plot. Fortunately, some of the stuff that comes up later makes up for it. The two-part “Santa’s Helper,” for instance, is a fun little story about Archie getting a job as a shopping mall Santa Claus. The job doesn’t go as planned, though, and the kids reject his rendition of Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick. But some words of advice from an old hand at the game may turn things around. The “twist” ending is as predictable as Christmas stories come, but it’s still cute and the sort of thing you frankly want to see from Archie.

“Decoration Daze” by Pellowski and Ruiz is next, and one of the more interesting stories in the volume. The school board declares “holiday decorations” inappropriate, and against his wishes, Mr. Weatherbee has to order them taken down. Archie and the gang find a clever way out of the dilemma. It’s a clever riff on the rampant political correctness that seems to grip too many people this time of year, and a bit unusual for an Archie comic. It’s slightly ironic, then, that at no point in this story about political correctness does anyone use the word “Christmas.” Even when Reggie shows up wearing a Christmas tree shirt, that word never slips out, making it even more conspicuous by its absence. Then again, maybe that was the point.

There are a lot more stories in this book, including the return of Sugar Plum the Fairy and Jingles the Brownie, stories about trying to get Jughead in the Christmas spirit, the trials of trying to find a gift for Reggie, a nice tale putting Veronica in her place, and a rare Moose/Chuck co-starring story in which they attempt to find Christmas presents for their respective girlfriends.

There’s a lot of fun stuff in here, and at $2.49 for 96 pages of comics, there’s still nothing on the rack that gives you more for your money than an Archie digest. This would be the perfect comic for Santa to slip inside the little ones’ stockings on Christmas morning.

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