I saw this book, sold for $40, at Powell's the other day:

Art Out of Time : Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969.

Is "Yowza" the proper word? Leafing through it, I was familiar with most of them. There was a selection of Milt Gross comic book stories, subpar to his comic strips it seems -- but what are you going to do? There was Herbie, a great comic by any standards. There was this crude comic book I once saw featured in "Oddball Comics" whose schtik was that it was supposedly drawn by a child -- looks delightful enough. There was that "Colorama" story I actually do have in a different reprint -- seemingly the only Bob Powell comic that anyone will ever get around to reprinting.

Um. Yes. Yowza indeed.

I regularly leaf through Archie digests, see if there are any digests that go above the standard ratio of 1:1 in terms of dreck to good ratio. I can say almost authoritatively that the title that concerns Archie is the worst of the lot. The best bet is always either Jughead or Betty and Veronica, which makes some sort of sense: it's Samm Schwartz; it's Dan Decarlo. Generally the best way to get me is to reprint as many early 1960s tales as possible in the Betty and Veronica digests, and for Jughead there's the early 1960s and there seemed to be a curious renaissance for Samm Schwartz in the 1980s when he discovered that you can pretty easily blow up a page, and where he was well served with a good inker.

Of interest, sort of:

Tales from Riverdale Digest #12 -- Reprints one of those Josie stories that was just an excuse for Dan DeCarlo to draw Melody bending over!

That's about one out of every three, wasn't it? Speaking as a pre-Pussycat Josie fan (and I'm not the only one), I can never tell if that was brilliant or sad.

Marvel has announced that they will release a Marvel Milestones of Mille the Model and Patsy Walker this month. I am not too familer with Miss. Walker.