But for the rest of December, I'll be doing a hodge-podge of different Archie topics that will lead us right into 2019. For this week, I'll be looking at some of the various experiments that Archie comics tried out over the years. Some of these experiments turned out to be successful and set the stage for years of stories to come. Others were a flash in the pan and fizzled out after just a few issues.
Today, I'll be taking a look at one of these experiments that I would consider to be a huge bomb. And of course, I'll explain why that is the case as we proceed.
Today's case study is "The New Little Archie Digest". A digest that debuted in the spring of 1991, smack dab in between the 50th anniversary celebrations. It was meant to be a revamped version of the classic Little Archie tales peppered with a modern twist, modernized art, and the company's effort to make the series more hip and radical.
Unfortunately, it was one of those "why fix it if it wasn't broken" deals where the series became completely unrecognizable as a result of the retooling.
The revamped Little Archie Digest came just two months after the original Little Archie Digest released its 48th and final issue. At that time, I was about to turn ten years old, and Little Archie had been one of my favourite titles in the digest library. Considering that it was a Little Archie Digest that kicked off my love of Archie comics in the late 1980s, I always had a soft spot for the title. And with artwork predominately done by both Dexter Taylor and Bob Bolling since Little Archie debuted in the 1950s, there didn't seem to be a shortage of artwork from the original series to reprint. However, I realize that not everybody shared my love of Little Archie back in the day, and I think the dwindling sales of the Little Archie Digest prompted Archie comics to make some changes to attract a newer demographic to the title. And as I was a kid in 1991, I was supposed to be one of the ones that the new digest was targeting.
Unfortunately, the company alienated the older fans of the title by making it TOO hip.
So, first off, I'm going to talk about the pros of The New Little Archie Digest. One obvious plus was that there were zero reprints to be found. Since the company went with all new artists, every story that appeared was an original creation. And to be fair, I didn't have too much issue with the stories found in Little Archie. They were well-written, made sense, and certainly were modern enough to fit the early 1990s mood.
However, look at the way the pages were designed. The table of contents page kind of looks like it took every single font that was available in Microsoft Word and went nuts with it. And, I didn't and STILL don't understand why they turned away Bob Bolling and Dexter Taylor and went with artists who made the characters look so awkward that they appeared to be drawn by a twelve year old who was doodling in the margins of his 7th grade math notebook. I'm not saying that it was the artists' fault...they were probably following the directions that the company told them to take. But the stories could have easily kept the original artists and had them update Little Archie's style. I mean, if Dan DeCarlo managed to keep the Archie crew modern for five decades, certainly they could have tried with the Little Archie crew.
Going back to the pluses, I really liked how the new Little Archie incorporated craft ideas to make the book seem more interactive. This page on how to build a spaceship out of household items was a great idea, and the construction of these arts and crafts were simple enough that an elementary school student could do them.
I also liked the Little Betty recipe pages. The recipes weren't too complicated. If anything, many of them didn't even require the use of an oven. Most of them were cool treats that with a grown-up's help, you could easily replicate, like this one for "Cherry Freeze". I added this recipe in because I've tried it and liked it, and now you can try it out for yourselves.
Of course, that's not to say that ALL the pages were useful.
I can see why it might have been a good idea at the time to include Hot and Not pages which did a spotlight on current events and pop culture at the time. But aside from "The Simpsons", all of these other things haven't been on the air in years. And what's up with having two Greatest Hits records under the HOT section? I mean, yeah, Madonna's "Immaculate Collection" was immaculate back in 1991, but now it's considered oldies music to some radio stations! And the Go-Go's broke up years before this digest was released!!!
I also don't understand the logic of including makeup tips in a digest that is targeted for kids. Most kids I knew in 1991 only used makeup for Halloween. And if they did, I don't even think they'd understand the beauty tips. This would have worked fine for one of the teen Betty and Veronica titles, but not for a Little Archie Digest. And since I have no clue about anything to do with makeup, are these makeup tips even right? And do they still apply some twenty-seven years later? Inquiring minds want to know.
The New Little Archie trudged along for nine issues from 1991-1992, and each issue followed the same format. Each one had a table of contents, several stories, and the signature art style that featured the Archie characters with beady little eyes and caterpillar eyebrows. The new style of Little Archie even began appearing in all of the other digests in the Archie library (most usually in the Laugh Digests or the Archie's Story and Game Digests). But after the ninth issue in 1992, the series took a bit of a hiatus and disappeared for almost a whole year.
And when it came back in the summer of 1993, we were all in for a bit of a shock.
When it returned for the tenth issue, the "New" title was stripped, and the cover art was now being done by Bob Bolling. And inside the comic were a mixture of old and new stories illustrated by Bolling and Dexter Taylor - with zero reference to the revamped style.
So, ultimately the New Little Archie title was a massive bomb. Not only did the revamp only run for a little over a year, but it was completely retooled to...look exactly the same as the classic style of Little Archie Digest. Of course, that was much to the benefit of the older fans who appreciated the old-fashioned look of Little Archie over the flash in the pan attempt to make the series more modern.
Of course, one could argue that the move to go back to Classic Little Archie was ultimately a failure as well, as the last issue of the series was printed over twenty years ago, and no Little Archie Digest has been printed since. In fact, I think that had they left the series alone, it very well could have survived longer.
That's my take on "The New Little Archie". What are your thoughts?
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