The last time I bought an Archie digest was a few years' back when they reprinted the first issue of Jughead in Jughead's Double Digest, circa 1949. The comic was 192 pages, double 96. When I grew out of Archic comics the company had just down-sized the digests from 128 and 256 pages to 96 and 192 pages. The 128 pages were down from the original size of the digests, 144 pages. You can further track the shrinking size at that point where they started putting in ads in their packages.

I gravitated on over to picking something off the grocery store newstands. Apparently World of Archie Double Digest is reprinting the early Frank Doyle and Dan Decarlo Josie comic books, perhaps issue by issue. Fantastic! Also apparently they're printing other material of interest to some people -- Madhouse Comics (saw some reprinting by Dark Horse comics -- either the comic has real cachet or the comic book industry has shrunk to a size where such a thing now has cachet.)

As of now, the comics covers suggest a somewhat tedious new story. I waver ... until this issue, #5.

Huh.

The story begins with Archie's Mom and Batman's butler at the laundromat, getting each other's mixed up clothes. So Archis is stuck wearing Robin's suit and Robin Archie's sweater.
The story ends, a bit perplexingly but under the natural logic of this series -- with everyone wearing Jughead's hat, the Josie and the Pussycat's costumes, and the Joker's make-up.

The publishing of some roughs are pretty interesting, first as a sign that the cartoonist behind "Tiny Titans" thought this a pretty neat project he wanted to show-case, and second for looking over some changes made in the creative process. "Hey Archie, you want to meet Batman?" was originally "You like Bats?", and the creator of Tiny Titans apparently scuttled "My dad's a demon".

Anyway, this takes up the first 80 pages. The first half of the comic book. The double digests are now 160 pages -- 32 pages more than the original digest propers.

The Josie story reprinted isn't the greatest, and I suspect the evolution wasn't "there yet" for the comic reprinted. But it's as well scripted -- Frank Doyle -- and well drawn -- Dan Decarlo-- as a plot-line that would've been on Scooby Doo can be.
The rest of the comic is basically crap. I will say the identified George Glaider story was not as embarrassing as George Glaider usually was. (Though the last story, I believe unidentified Glaider -- was embarrassing.) I tend to wish the company would completely scuttle their "Archie at Riverdale High" comic for reprinting purpose -- kid with ESP foils diamond thieves -- we'll never see this kid with ESP again -- huh. Looking at the cover for the next issue, and an odd focal point of a kind of awkwardly done "adventure" story, I worry that the only good material it'll have is some Josie material. We'll see.

But buy this comic book. The "Tiny Titans" team up and Josie comic are definitely worth it, even if the remainder is throw-away.