Thursday, December 17, 2020

Archie Christmas Spectacular 2020 #1

Since Marvel hasn't released a holiday special in over 3 years and DC's quality has dipped deeper than that Russia mine, the Christmas special I look forward to the most nowadays is this one!

Archie Comics must have taken pity on us- what with how crappy this year has been. I usually think that the Archie Holiday books are way too short. But this one had an amount of detail that was fulfilling. 

The opening story involves a mysterious Scrooge, who has been buying up all of Riverdale's Christmas trees... to make toothpicks! I thought that this story was pretty goofy to try to make toothpicks out of Christmas trees. I figured that the sap would be too toxic for humans. But it turns out that pine trees are actually used to make them. So, the writers at Archie did their research. 

But when it came to a plot line in which there's a coded message- things didn't add up. The code didn't have repeating letters. Yet, the message decodes to a phrase with several letters that are the same. I'm no philologist. But this just didn't sit right with me at all!

Then Archie and his pals try to make a viral video of Santa with Mr. Andrews playing Kris Kringle. It's a comedy of errors. But it has a magical ending. 

Rounding things up is a nearly annual appearance by Jingles the Elf. Jingles has had it with the work conditions over at the North Pole. Having quit his toy shop job, Jingles decides to move in with Archie- until he gets on his feet. Give or take 6 months. Only an emergency meeting of the kids of Riverdale High might be the answer to keeping Archie from gaining a pesky new roommate!

Normally, this is how an Archie Holiday book ends. But this year, us readers were gifted with several shorts. One of which looked like a Sunday paper strip. Very cool!

I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun and festive distraction from the crappy COVID-19 year of 2020!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.


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