The Adventures of Little Archie, Volume 2

Catching Up With Archie Week chugs along with a look back at Archie's younger days. This is the second collection of Little Archie adventures, and I reviewed the first one here. This book expands on the first in that it covers stories by Dexter Taylor as well as Bob Bolling. Bolling is the originator on Little Archie and he shows off that he has not lost any of his storytelling chops in an original story produced just for this volume.

Oooh, look out for the frazzle beam!

This new plot by the Mad Doctor Doom is delicately yet fulsomely rendered, and in general, I find his stories to be more personable, full of adventure, human, and unique. For example, the verve of young Veronica is absolutely palpable in this panel from a story where Archie poses as a private eye.

Meanwhile, Taylor's stories lean more toward sitcom-style plots. His stories are frequently about Archie annoying Mr. Lodge

or full of pratfalls such as when the girls decide to teach Archie a lesson when he denigrates their abilities to play baseball.

These tendencies also pervade his more fantastical tales, such as the one where Jughead gets an alien for a pet, and the pet can grant wishes.

Still, Taylor's art style captures a lot of the energy and whimsy of youth. I find the art by both to be absolutely charming, and I like being able to appreciate and compare each artists' work here. Although I prefer one's stories to another, they are both entertaining. Taylor's stories are just more on the side of broad comedy while Bolling's seem more detailed and fleshed out adventure plots. One can do far worse than to check out this book for some wonderful art and delightful stories that young people will appreciate.

The book is available for purchase here.

The Adventures of Little Archie, Volume 1

Boy, have I been reading a bunch of violent superhero comics lately. I need to cleanse my reading palate , and luckily I happened upon this volume at my local used bookstore a couple of weeks ago.

Many people are familiar with Archie Comics, and for decades they have been popular with younger and teen readers. This book reprints some classic stories from 1961 to 1965 from a series based on the childhood exploits of one of America's favorite redheads. Instead of just being tales about teen romance and antics, the ones in this book show much more range, from zany science fiction action to nature tales to fantasy adventures. Here are some sample images:

Little Archie with Abercrombie. Or is it Stitch?

The supervillainous Mad Doctor Doom - (no relation)

Manly adventure tales!

Riffs on popular fantasy adventures

These stories are not all that deep, but they are fine adventure stories that are funny and very human. They depict and define Archie's hometown Riverdale in ways unseen in other comics. They also range in great sweeps from silly robot humor to slapstick tumbles to high adventure. There are some amazing sights in this book including a huge gorilla, an alien world, a giant crumbling dam, pirates, dinosaurs, and Little Archie wearing a bushy mustache as a disguise. Personally, I liked the nature adventures best, but there are no clunkers in this volume.

These stories were notable in the 1960s for their artistry, and even though credits were not given as often in those days, readers did take note of the craft and style of Bob Bolling, who was allowed to sign his name to these comics. He was a notable and influential artist, as you can read about here. He had a long career at Archie writing and drawing stories about him as a child and a teen. A great appreciation of Bolling, his stories, and his art from Jaime Weinman can be found here. A couple of Bolling's Little Archie stories can be found here.

The Adventures of Little Archie is published by (who else?) Archie.