Somehow I completely missed this album when it was released last October in the middle of the whole COVID epidemic... which is still happening, somehow... I don't want to talk about it.

It's a major release for fans of The Archies. While the first disc represents sort of a "Ron Dante's Greatest Hits", with four tracks from The Archies (three familiar tracks, plus the all-new recording "Sugar Sugar 2020 Euro Dance Remix"), three taken from The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, two from the 1972 vinyl album The Amazing Spider-Man: A Rockomic!, plus five of Dante's commercial jingles, a couple of singles from Ron and the Cufflinks, and a few cover tunes.

The second disc is the big surprise, though. It contains previously unreleased songs from ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE -- 9 full-length tunes (meaning more than two minutes running time), plus the Funhouse opening and closing themes, and 18 short recordings (meaning between 29 and 53 seconds) taken from the Funhouse "Dance of the Week" segment.

PLUS cover art from Dan Parent featuring Betty and Veronica dancing in the background, which is a neat touch.

It is a little weird that they are only doing audio versions of comics published in 2009 (Archie Marries) and 2015 (Archie reboot) in 2021. Vampironica (2018) is at least a little more recent.

I wish they still published an ongoing Jughead digest, or some collections. As far as I know, this is the only classic Jughead collection Archie Comic Productions ever put out:


Fortunately, Dark Horse Comics published these two hardcovers of the earliest JUGHEAD comics:


But at least there's this one-shot Jughead digest coming out:

QuoteWe're continuing Archie Comics' landmark 80th Anniversary celebration with another special showcase digest! This time, we revisit the hilarious never-before-reprinted 'A Jughead in the Family' storyline: Jughead gets into a fight with his dad and moves out-but who's willing to take him in? Join in on the hilarity as Jughead moves from place to place, living with the families of Archie, Ethel, Moose, Trula Twyst, and even Reggie!

That was one of only a couple major story arcs (in this case, six issues) JUGHEAD ever had.

Probably because it's a Mill Creek Entertainment product. They are legendarily low-budget, no-frills on all their DVD releases.

"Archie Marries Valerie" was in ARCHIE #631-634... and later reprinted in the trade paperback ARCHIE: A Rock'n'Roll Romance (2014). That was strictly Dan Parent's idea. Neither Michael Uslan or Paul Kupperberg were involved.

I think the 10th Anniversary series was unfortunately named, since it should have been more accurately titled ARCHIE MARRIES 10th Anniversary to avoid confusing potential readers about what, exactly, it was a sequel to. Nevertheless, it seems like The Married Life from LIFE WITH ARCHIE was more likely to be a stronger draw, sales-wise, than Archie Marries as a title, and ACP chose it deliberately.

It would probably make sense for someone who hasn't read any of this to start with ARCHIE MARRIES..., then the 10th Anniversary story. Then they could read the whole THE MARRIED LIFE for an alternate take if they were still interested. Oh, and the thing with Valerie marrying Archie, too. Seems like a lot more pathways diverged in the woods than just the original two.

They have rarely made any mention of it in decades, but in the early stories Midge was supposed to be one of THE most attractive girls at Riverdale High, more so than even Betty and Veronica. If you look back to stories of the fifties even into the early sixties, not only Reggie, but Archie too will try to date Midge if either of them thinks they can get away with it and escape the wrath of Big Moose. A big reason that makes Midge even more attractive than she already is physically is the idea that she's the "forbidden fruit".

To answer Pennylane's question about the small-sized trade paperback vs. the deluxe slipcased hardcover...


These two books both collect the same original story that began in ARCHIE 600...
But ironically, the cheaper paperback is the more complete version!
Both collect ARCHIE 600-602 ("Archie Marries Veronica") and ARCHIE 603-605 ("Archie Marries Betty"), but...
There was an Epilogue to BOTH parallel timelines in ARCHIE 606, and that issue is ONLY reprinted in the small TP collection "Will You Marry Me?", not in the expensive hardcover!


And yes, as mentioned by Beatman10, the confusingly-titled Archie: The Married Life 10th Anniversary is a sequel to ARCHIE MARRIES... and was published 10 years after that storyline from ARCHIE 600-606. Why it is confusing is that it was NOT the 10th Anniversary of "THE MARRIED LIFE" -- which was an earlier sequel that ran in LIFE WITH ARCHIE MAGAZINE from 2010-2014 (and was later collected in six thick trade paperbacks).

The above book is a DIFFERENT sequel, which (again, as previously mentioned by Beatman10) picks up again after ARCHIE 600-605, ignoring the events of the earlier sequel "The Married Life". The above image is from the cover of the TP collection of that six-issue miniseries.

Hope that clears up everything.

The trouble is that with plots like those, I could have read one of those stories less than a month ago somewhere, and I still couldn't tell you exactly where, even if I was sure I read it. I've got boxes full of Archie Double Digests, Jumbo Comics Digests, Giant Comics Digests, and 1000-Page Comics Digests. Plus just about every classic Archie TP and HC collection, but none of those are indexed in any way that I could find something even if I was looking for it myself, unless I read it REALLY recently and was going strictly on hunches as to where.

Someone's got to have an absolutely phenomenal memory to be able to remember all the plots of the (probably hundreds, if not thousands) of Archie stories they've read, and then exactly where they read it. In fact I'd say that the main reason ACP gets away with reprinting so many stories over and over again ("Oh, this one I know I've read before.") is that you don't remember them until you actually start re-reading one again... THEN it rings a bell. But even then you probably won't remember exactly WHERE you read it before... just that you have read it.

When I see questions like this it always makes me wonder "WHY are THOSE stories important to someone?" They seem just like regular Archie story plots - it's not like Betty all of a sudden fell in love with Jughead or something really unusual. The answer is probably something simple like "Those are a couple of the first Archie stories I can ever remember reading." But it always leaves me feeling curious what it was about the story that motivated someone to try so hard to track it down.

For sure that's an Al Hartley-drawn story (probably early '70s), so a good guess might be to look for it in BETTY AND ME. Kind of hard to tell by only one page, though.

DAMN! 

Nope, it's only the first issues of the WORLD OF BETTY & VERONICA and ARCHIE 80th ANNIVERSARY digests that have the 10-page stories. After that it's back to the standard 5-pagers.

"Hundreds of Possibilities!" was a good story, but it could have been even better if it were 20 pages. Heck, the concept is strong enough that it could have been a whole miniseries. I was hoping for a glimpse of January McAndrews but no such luck.

... and hey, what do you know? "Editor's Notebook" is back after a decade or so MIA (now written by Mike Pellerito); He says (unless I misinterpreted) that both World of B&V Jumbo Digest and Archie 80th Anniversary Jumbo Digest will be featuring new 10-page lead stories. That's a good sign, as is the fact that they printed an address for letters and fan art -- almost as if they WANT to hear from readers all of a sudden.

Huh. That was a surprise. Since it was 10 pages I thought they were going to do the version of B&V (by Rotante & Williams) that they've been pushing so hard with previews of the OGN in the back pages of both B&V digests for the last few months.

But no, this is just a regular "Archie classic"-style story written by Rotante and drawn by good 'ol reliable Bill Galvan. Nothing different about it except that it's 10 pages instead of the usual 5. But, you know... it wouldn't hurt to start making all the new lead stories in the digests 10 pages, since they're not really publishing much new in the floppy comics.

It's inconsistent, just like Pureheart the Powerful. As far as I know, the magic ponytail-twisting thing is only mentioned once, in the story "Superteen Strikes Again" from BETTY AND ME #3.

In the origin story "It All Began..." in that same issue, she doesn't need to twist her ponytail to first turn into Superteen. She's already trying to save Archie (and has her hands full trying to hold on to him) when her ponytail gets caught in a small bush, and it's the only thing keeping both her and Archie from plunging to their deaths on a teetering rock ledge sticking out from the face of a cliff. A caption in a panel where she strains to hold on to Archie suggests "Maybe it was the superhuman desire and determination to save the one she loved, ...but suddenly..." In fact, a close reading of that story seems to suggest that it's really Betty's purity of heart and unselfish desire to protect Archie that calls up superpower somewhere from deep within her. On page 2 it was mentioned in a caption that "The yearning to hold and protect kept building and building...'

In stories from before BETTY AND ME #3 like "Just Imagine" (B&V 118) and "The Consumer" (B&V 119) she just changes into Superteen without doing anything special, and the suggestion seems to be she just changes from her street clothes into her superhero costume, but "It All Began..." seems to be presented as a flashback story.

BUT will we ever see the Betty Cooper SUPERTEEN one-shot, the ARCHIE MEETS FLASH GORDON one-shot, or the conclusion to the all-new all-different SUPER DUCK miniseries? 

Somehow despite everything happening, that MADAM SATAN one-shot managed to squeak out (it was good). C'mon guys!!