I thought that stemming along from the "forgotten title" discussions that I'd do a feature that talks about one specific title, so that fans who have either read the title, or those who know nothing about it can get the opportunity to find out more about these titles.  As well, it might get some discussion going on about stories that people may remember from the series, or even people's favourite covers.

Let's begin with a classic I'm sure a lot of you loved.

THE STATS:

Title:  Little Archie Digest Magazine (originally Little Archie Annual)
Total Issues Published:  48
First Issue:  November 1977
Final Issue:  May 1991
Re-tooled May 14, 1991, and lasted until 1998.
Can still find Little Archie stories in Digest Reprints
Main artists:  Dexter Taylor, Bob Bolling, others.

Little Archie Digests I own:

1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 19-24, 26, 27, 29, 31, 33-44, 46-48
_________________________________________________________________

(I must also add that I'm starting with Little Archie because the very first comic I read of Archie was Little Archie #24)

Anyone else have any memories of Little Archie digest?

Little Archies are great. Besides the great Bob Bolling adventures, I really liked that this was basically before the characters were married to their character traits so you'd have stories where Veronica would go and bond with the poor girl (Audrey?) and the kids could have regular kid activities like fighting with the other, older kids, etc.

You've got a lot of good run of the Digests. Are you looking to actively fill in your runs? Do you collect the regular issues?

Oh yeah!  I'm a major collector of Archie comics, and hope to get a complete set of each title.  I tend to stick with the digest magazines more than the regular comics, only because they tend to last longer.  Any regular 32-page comic I've ever owned has just ended up in really rough shape.

I've actually got a few titles where I own the complete set, and there are a couple of titles where I am only missing one or two issues.  (Jughead's Double Digest for example, I own every single one EXCEPT for issues 70 and 96.)

And, great point about the Archie characters.  Archie was so mean to Little Ambrose and Evelyn Evernever as a kid, and now he's nice to almost everyone.

I remember an Archie story where Ambrose was grown up and was coming back to Riverdale to visit the old gang. If I remember correctly, Archie was really worried because of the way he treated him and Ambrose basically forgave him or said it was when they were younger and didn't know any better. I wish there was more carryover between the Little Archie comics and the Archie comics, but that might be some of the charm of Little Archie because we don't know what became of them.

I had forgotten about Evelyn. What was her phrase for her doll - "boo'ful"?

I like the digests but I didn't really take care of them so they're all brown and old. I still have them though! And dollar for dollar, digests are a better deal but it had gotten to the point where there were more repeats (that I'd already read) in the digests than new stories.

It's funny...I actually talked about that story under another thread...I think it was GWhitmore's list of characters.  If I can find what book it appears in, I'll post a directory of where it can be found!

They did similar reunions with Sue Stringley and Fangs Fogarty.

I'm late to the whole Little Archie mindset. I know fromthe sounds of them -- especially the Bolling stories-- I should like 'em. But I don't see them as part of the Archieverse. I can't get into them and I have no idea why. The whole concept just annoys me for some reason.

I guess it might be because I always see Archie and the gang as teens. Funny I can accept them as cavemen, space men, superheroes, spies, rock stars, etc. but I just can't get into the kids' adventures.

That said I do have some Little Archie Digests. I haven't read 'em yet. Have some of the later issues of Little Archie comics as well... haven't read them yet either.

*SHRUGS*

Gregg

duude how can you not liek Little Archie....

I always picked up every issue of Little Archie Digest that I could find. I always loved Dexter Taylor's work. No one drew a kid getting his face slammed into the sidewalk like he did. Yeah. I know that sounds rough but check the back issues! Mr. Lodge used to spike Little Archie's mug against the sidewalk all the time!

One issue actually had a story of Little Archie as Little Purheart the Powerful.

I'm late to the whole Little Archie mindset. I know fromthe sounds of them -- especially the Bolling stories-- I should like 'em. But I don't see them as part of the Archieverse. I can't get into them and I have no idea why. The whole concept just annoys me for some reason.

I guess it might be because I always see Archie and the gang as teens. Funny I can accept them as cavemen, space men, superheroes, spies, rock stars, etc. but I just can't get into the kids' adventures.

Gregg

I don't actually think of them as the same characters, more like a differen't "form" of them, sort of an alternate universe thing.  Then it becomes understandable that they have the same principal and teacher.   If I had to think that these kids were precursors to the current situation we know, I'd be kind of weirded out.  And I like to believe the characters weren't really close until high school.

So in a separatist mindframe, I like them, but since they have a totally different feeling/atmosphere than the rest of the archieverse it can be annoying to see digests with a BUNCH of little archie stories clumped together in the center with that dreaded page "and now, here's me back when I was little____ !". Argh!!!  I usually skip through all the pages in the middle that have the little archie background color in that issue and only go back to them when I'm really bored.