Tuesday, April 7, 2020

The Best of Josie and the Pussycats

The Best of Josie and the PussycatsThe Best of Josie and the Pussycats by Archie Superstars
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Best of Josie and the Pussycats is a collection of Josie and the Pussycats stories spanning sixty(!) years.

There were a couple years in junior high that I was hugely into the Archie books, chiefly the digests that were at the checkout in a lot of grocery stores. A few of them contained stories featuring Josie and the Pussycats. This was on sale for $4 at the Archie store a short while before the quarantine began so I snapped it up.

I don't know that this is really a 'Best Of' collection since Archie comics weren't known for their ground-breaking, sophisticated stories for most of their existence. It's more of a sampling of Josie and the Pussycats throughout the years.

All but the last two stories are drawn in the classic Archie/Dan DeCarlo style. It's a minimalist style that's harder than it looks to pull off. I know because I taught myself to draw the characters over a weekend in college. Anyway, I have great affection for the art style. I caught myself ignoring the stories on more than one occasion to look at the background or figure placement or what have you.

The stories are fun in a wholesome way. Josie, Valerie, and Melody, the titular Pussycats, frequently find themselves in a tight spot, usually at the hands of their manager Alexander or his sister Alexandra, and resolve it within their allotted 8-12 pages.

It's fun watching the characters change with the times with little to no character development. Alexandra has some occult powers in the first couple decades then she's gradually phased out for fifteen years, only to return around the turn of the century. There are a couple crossovers with Archie, complete with an alternate timeline where Archie marries Valerie. I have to admit I skipped the last two stories since they were a departure from the classic style. I haven't been brave enough to read modern Archie books outside of their superb horror line.

For nostalgia reasons, I enjoyed this quite a bit. It made me want to take another stab at drawing characters in the Archie style. It's no Alan Moore's Swamp Thing but it was never meant to be.

The Best of Josie and the Pussycats is a good for a few hours of unsophisticated wholesome fun. Three out of five stars.



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