World Famous Comics: Archie Americana Series Best Of The Sixties
Archie Americana Series Best Of The Sixties
By: John L. Goldwater Publisher: Archie Comics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Archie Comics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 96 Publication Date: November 14, 2005 Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Product Description: The sensational sixties -- see the girls in slim jims! Experience Beatlemania as it hits Riverdale! Behold flower children, Pop art, mod fashions, surfing and drag racing! Laugh again at the antics of America's #1 teenagers!
Take a ride in the time machine This book is a kid-safe trip to the Sixties, or at least the comics version of that decade.
One writer compared Archie comics to an aquarium. Each fish in the aquarium is distinct & unique, & the fun is watching the combinations & permutations. Each Archie character is distinct, in their own private Riverdale Universe, & the fun is watching them interact.
In this collection, the art is excellent. The whole Riverdale Gang looks terrific. The artists at Archie took great pains to be up-to-date with this era's clothing, & it showed!
And as always, Archie collections are kid-safe, family friendly fare. This collection will go over well with most kids, & with most parents & grandparents.
Great stuff...!! This is one of the strongest entries in this "Archie" reprint series... I do wish they had more stories from the early part of the decade -- the Kennedy-era artwork may be my favorite of all the Archie styles -- but once you get into all the Beatles lampoons and hippie references, the historical hilarity takes over, and artwork (though fine) takes second place to the plot. These old stories make a great cultural history lesson (although they often fall on the conservative side of the Generation Gap...) It's fun stuff, and arguably the creative peak of the whole series.
I'd love to see more collections like this... The fantasy version would be a series of year-by-year best-of reprints: I'd get the ones for 1961, '62 and '63 in a flash. A set of vintage "Jughead" stories might be nice, too... But I'd also settle for a "Sixties Stories, Volume 2" That'd be groovy too, daddy-o! (ReadThatAgain book reviews)
Love it! Again... Love it and that is all that I have to say. Great collector's items to keep for the kiddies.
ARCHIE IN THE EVER-CHANGING 1960'S If there is one era I associate most with Archie comics, it's the 1960's. When I was a kid, my oldest brother, who was seven years older than I, had a huge collection of Archie comics, all from the mid 1960's through the early 1970's. He had them in a big box in his closet and I would go in and read them over and over. More than any other era Archie comic followed all the trends of the 1960's as they briskly came and went. From Elvis and hot-rods to The Beatles, miniskirts, Nehru jackets and flower power. Reading Archie comics in the 1960's is truly a time capsule of that era. This volume begins with an introduction by one of the icons of the 1960's, Frankie Avalon. Frankie's introduction is more an ode to the 1960's than it is about Archie comics, but it's still nice to hear from a guy who is so identified with one particular era. In all this volume has over a dozen stories ranging from 1961 through 1969 and it's so interesting to see how the gang has been transformed from the big-band, bobby-soxer era to the psychedelic 1960's over the course of over twenty years.
My favorite stories in this collection include:
"Too Close for Comfort" Jughead and Archie are making fun of Betty & Veronica's tight fitting Slim-Jim pants until a dunk in a park water fountain finds the boy's pants shrunk to a very uncomfortable level of tightness.
"Bop that Beatle" is a Beatle-era story from 1964 as Beatle mop top wigs are all the rage. When Veronica sends one to Archie as a gift, he and Jughead think it's a pest and try to kill it.
"Board Game" Archie tackles the era of beach parties and surfing. Reggie is showing off his surfer skills to the girls making Archie jealous. Arch tries a crash course at surfing with disastrous results.
"Mini-skirt Madness" Yet another 60's icon is covered as the boys go ga-ga over the girl's new mini-skirts.
"Flower Power" from 1968 has Juggy turning into a hippie. Interesting in that going Hippie was dealt with as almost a monster-like transformation and something to be shown off as Veronica wants to Juggy to the Country Club for all her friends to see.
"The Time of your Life" shows true 60's influence as the gang plans a trip to a park for a picnic, throwing the park guards into a panic over what they think will be a marauding band of rambunctious teens.
"Ding a Ling" from 1969 is yet another fashion-oriented story as Reggie is showing off his new Nehru jacket, beads, and bell he wears around his neck. Archie counters him by showing up to the big dance with a cow bell!
Archie Comics has put out two volumes from both the 40's and 50's and I certainly hope they do so with the 1960's as well. To me it's the era that really reminds me of the comics. The ever-changing fashion styles and events always stayed current with the times. No era saw so many changes as the 1960's did and Archie moved right along and grew up as well.
An interesting transition takes place. An interesting transition takes place during the 1960's run of the 'Archie' comics series, namely a shift in its visual style. In the early 60's the artwork is still very much in the same vein as it was in the 1950's - each frame packed with detail and a overall high-quality, stylized look. From the midpoint of the 1960's and on the artwork seems to take a more economical approach with less detail, etc. that will come to define the look of 'Archie' comics in the 70's, 80's and on. With this point in mind this 1960's volume of the 'Archie Americana' series serves as an intersting example of the gradual loss of detail that the artwork took throughout the decade and on. The stories collected in this volume are also interesting in that for the first time 'Archie' comics refers back to real-life pop culture on a regualr basis. For example, the stories collected in this volume feature such cultural icons as, 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' Beatles wigs, Nehru jackets, the hippie movement, etc.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
