Now this is what I call a Betty & Veronica comic book!!!  It is "spectacular" indeed!  The cover by Dan DeCarlo and Alison Flood features the girls showing off their 26 year-old supermodel bodies on the beach, and a blurb tells us that this is a "Special Swimsuit Issue!" 

The main story is a two-parter, "Wiener Wars" with stunning art by DeCarlo, Parent, and Flood.  Archie and Betty get a job for Pop Tate selling hotdogs from a cart on the beach.  They aren't having any luck until Archie spills mustard all over Betty's cover-up.  She takes it off, revealing her bikini and her luscious self underrneath.  Of course, all the guys on the beach drool, go ape, have hearts flying around their heads, etc., and line up for food.  Reggie, leering at Betty and wearing an expression of pure male animal lust, says he is suddenly overtaken with hunger.  (That's an understatement, and an example of the type of double-entendres that the Archie Comics used to frequently employ.  I miss them!)  But Veronica enlists his help to get their own cart fronm a gourmet restaurant and compete.  The competition consists of Betty and Veronica trying to outdo each other by wearing stylish, increasingly skimpy bikinis and by striking sexy poses.  Some of Veronica's outfits and poses more than justify my claim that she is the most gorgeous, sexiest female comic book character of all time!!!   But girl readers don't need to feel left out of this issue.  Reggie strips down to a skimpy, all most non-existent swimsuit, too, showing off his own spectacular twenty-something male body.  When Veronica finally wears a suit that leaves almost nothing to the imagination, Betty believes that there's only one way to retaliate - go all natural!!!  She begins to undress and the boys go crazy.  but that little tease is wearing an all natural cotton tropical print.   Finally both teams lose out to Jughead and Ethel whose hotdogs actually taste good.
Archie Comics rarely get better than this!!

In the second story,  Betty is sewing the most impossibly small bikini imaginable for the "Miss Sunshine" Contest.  While Veronica gets jealous, all the boys in town are beside themselves waiting for the contest in order to see Betty in that bikini.  Reggie won't even help Veronica scheme because he says that, "...seeing Betty in that suit could be enough to end my life of crime." But it turns out that the contest is for 8-10 year-olds, and Betty was making the suit for her little cousin, Jenny.  Clever and teasing script by Parent and Golliher.

The last story has Betty and Verionica strangely and suddenly becoming tired of being sex objects, even though they enjoyed their status during the rest of the issue!  So they cover up and begin to catcall the boys.  The boys feel demeaned and then they cover up, too.  Betty, Veronica, Archie, and  Reggie go to the beach in sweaters, coats, scarves, and hats.  But they are still noticed because all the girls on the beach believe that Veronica Lodge is startng a new fashion trend.

Even though this issue is from the '90s, it definitely has that old-time Archie feel and magic.  I highly recommend it to you, particularly if you are a heterosexual guy, or if you enjoy "Good Girl Art."  The plots and the dialog are fun, too!

I don't think I ever read this issue, though I saw and read many stories similar to these in the early 90s, when I was in my early teens.  I think it's so strange how when you are young you can totally miss all the sexul undercurrents in these stories.  As a child I read countless stories about the boys admiring the girls in skimpy bikinis and read it so innocently somehow; I guess I thought they were admiring the "beauty" of the girls in the swimsuits in much the same way they would admire a woman in a tasteful evening gown!  I never imagined then that a "heterosexual guy" could get more or different enjoyment out of those stories than I was getting.  And even looking over those stories now, I can still read them in that childish way if I choose to.  It's a strange phenomenon. 

I think that's part of the strange magic of the Archie Comics, particularly in past decades - they can be read on a level a child can enjoy, but also be read on an adult level as well.  They literally were appropriate for "all ages."

(adds it to the ever-growing buying list...)

thanks guys!

Gregg