While this 400 page digest size volume most certainly does not live up to its title, it is the best anthology Archie Comics has managed to publish in as long as we can remember – and possibly ever, considering how poor their track record is in this particular department – and it is especially significant in that the publishers have finally recognized the bare minimum of their responsibility to the people who built their business and has in this book published artist and writer credits for all the stories.   Beginning in 1941 with the very first Archie story by Bob Montana and Vic Bloom from Pep Comics #22, The Best of Archie Comics continues on, decade by decade, through the subsequent seventy years, taking us all the way up to 2011.  For us here at Copacetic HQ, the glory days of Archie Comics will always be the 1950s through the early 1970s, when Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo ruled the roost, and, for a few years at least, Bob Bolling and Bill Woggon were given free reign on Little Archie and Katy Keene, respectively.  There is a generous selection of both Lucey and DeCarlo here, along with what is reputed to be Bolling's own personal favorite Little Archie tale, "The Long Walk," from Little Archie #20, and a modest sampling of Woggon's work, and so we won't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who would like to be introduced to the world of Archie Comics.

OK, here it is: the most Harry Lucey art for your hard earned dollar that you're likely to find.  This 416 page digest includes 18 great Lucey stories, most from his strongest period during the 60s, and most, if not all, scripted by Frank Doyle – plus a dozen classic Lucey covers to boot!  Not only that, the rest of the material on hand is well worth while as well, including close to a dozen DeCarlo stories.  These comics, in addition to being highly entertaining, offer a sociologically meaningful window through which to view the decades of the '60s and '70s, and, from an art history perspective, include many excellent examples of the short form of comics that can be quite instructive to comics creators of all stripes in their concise, compact conveyance of (occasionally calamitous) narrative content. 

RECOMMENDED

And, while you're waiting, take a moment to check out a Harry Lucey pantomime comics classic, HERE.