Too bad Archie management never reads here. 

Part of the problem with assessing Archie Eras is that we tend to only get the GOOD stuff from older eras, much like how TV & Music always looks better in the old times... We tend to only read the very best stories from the '50s & '60s these days, skipping over all the "filler" and lesser works. Especially if you're not old enough to remember the era yourself, and can only read old Digests.

Part of the problem with assessing Archie Eras is that we tend to only get the GOOD stuff from older eras, much like how TV & Music always looks better in the old times... We tend to only read the very best stories from the '50s & '60s these days, skipping over all the "filler" and lesser works. Especially if you're not old enough to remember the era yourself, and can only read old Digests.

It's a little hard to make the comparison though because Archie (like most companies) turns out so many fewer comics than it used to. When Archie was really popular, in the '50s and '60s and early '70s, they were turning out an insane amount of product, and naturally some stuff was going to be better than others. Still, one reason the late '50s and early '60s are often considered the best era for Archie is that they were turning out so much product and most of it was pretty good, whereas their work has been more uneven since then.