In only five pages Gladir and artist Harry Lucey (sample art right) deliver the starting dilemma, the escalation, further problems and a neat finish tying into the original idea. Three pages later Archie’s slaving away mass manufacturing as Veronica’s persuaded a local jeweller to stock similar items. His 1975 story ‘Price Control’ begins with Archie too broke to buy Jughead a Christmas present, so instead polishing a round stone and embedding an initial on it. Gladir is the most inventive of the writing staff, frequently steering the plot well away from the standard slapstick. It’s done extremely well, though, and just reading a few sample stories indicates why. There’s a definite line to be drawn between the construction of Archie’s light comedy and the equivalent in US cinema during the 1940s, presenting a wholesome world of good cheer where social reality never intrudes, and the problems and misunderstandings of the middle classes are served as universal. That applies equally to the plots, whether it be Frank Doyle writing in the 1960s or George Gladir twenty years later. Other than the African American Chuck featuring, that’s not really relevant, as beyond the occasional passing nod to fashion the Archie stories are timeless, and the same basic character dynamics have seen them through decades.
This is no even spread, though, as the bulk of the reprints, well over two-thirds of the book, are from the 1970s and 1980s, while 1990 onwards is allocated just thirty pages. The yuletide selections are separated into sections by decade, two at a time, but only beginning in 1959, dispensing with that era quickly. There’s been no massive poll to discover the best among what surely number over a thousand Archie Christmas stories, nor is there any common consensus, so see this instead as a representative sample from the vast Archie back catalogue of festive celebrations stretching back to the late 1950s. Firstly, don’t take that title too seriously.
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