Archies Mad House [Hardcover]

Various (Author), Dan DeCarlo (Author), Sam Schwartz (Author), Wally Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 2011 | Series: Archie

Hey Humbugs! Don't Panic! It's madder, it's crazier, it's sicker, it trumps them all! You'll crack up with this lampooning book! Brilliantly combine satire magazines, super-hero send-ups, monster magazines, sexy teenage girls ala Betty and Veronica, surrealism, beatniks, hippies, and wackiness and you've got the inimitable Madhouse. Madhouse was the birthplace of the bewitching Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Captain Sprocket, and the comic host with the most, Clyde Didit. Archie's best artists, Dan "Betty and Veronica" DeCarlo, Sam "Jughead" Schwartz, and even cartoonists like Wally Wood filled Madhouse's pages with the laughs, lunacy, and nutty fun - oh, and hot teenage chicks! Craig Yoe collects the best of the best stories and introduces Madhouse with rare art and behind-the-scenes secrets.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: IDW Publishing (August 23, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600107907
• ISBN-13: 978-1600107900
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #192,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Vice magazine calls Craig Yoe the "Indiana Jones of comics historians." Publishers Weekly says he's the "archivist of the ridiculous and sublime" and calls his work "brilliant." The Onion calls him "the celebrated designer." The Library Journal, "a comics guru." BoingBoing hails him "a fine cartoonist and a comic book historian of the first water." Yoe was Creative Director/Vice President/General Manager of Jim Henson's Muppets, and a Creative Director at Nickelodeon and Disney. Craig has won an Eisner Award and the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mad Treat From The 1960's Resurrected, August 26, 2011

By 

Rudy P - See all my reviews

This review is from: Archies Mad House (Hardcover)

"Archie's Madhouse" is yet another really nifty historical collection assembled by Craig Yoe. This book is a real nostalgic treat for me because, as a very young kid, this comic book, one of many sort-of-imitators of "Mad Magazine" was one of the comics that would entertain and confound me to no end.

See, back in those days it was hard to keep up with comic books. There were no comic book stores, we had to seek out our books at newsstands, drug stores, grocery stores, any place that might carry a magazine usually had a comic book rack, but you couldn't find all the comic books from the various publishers in a single place. Finding consecutive issues of a comic was nearly impossible, especially if you were under six years old.

Some stores got some brands of comic books, and some got others. It was almost impossible to find Marvel Comics locally up until around 1965. Distribution was spotty and erratic, and for a book like Archie's Madhouse, finding one on a comic book spinner rack was a rare treat. For the most part I had to rely on whatever I could sneak and read from my brother and sister's comic stashes.

Compounding the rarity of finding Madhouse on the stands was the fact that the book changed titles frequently. It started out as "Archie's Madhouse," then simply became "Madhouse," then it turned into "Madhouse Ma-ad Joke Book" and quickly into "Madhouse Glads" before reverting to "Madhouse" again, with several other title variations scattered throughout the run of the book.

The contents were even more varied. Originally there were lots of appearances by Archie and his gang, but there were also short little satires and parodies and a healthy dose of "weird humor" featuring monsters and aliens. The hook for me was the superhero parodies that took center stage in the book during the "Batman" boom of the 60s. The book was divided into different sections like the "Teenage Section," the "Monster Section," the "Outer Space Section." It was a smorgasboard of purely silly humor, designed to poke fun at whatever was popular with teens at the moment.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch made her debut in Madhouse, and the book seemed like a place where the veteran Archie artists could cut loose and get a little crazy. Some of the humor seems a little quaint now, since it was middle-aged white guys trying to appeal to hip kids, but it's all well-crafted and executed with enthusiasm.

Yoe, as always, has done a masterful job of curating this book. His informative introduction explains a lot of the mysteries of the title changes and odd publishing shenanigans that were totally confusing to a young kid growing up in the pre-internet dark ages. Some of the behind-the-scenes anecdotes are priceless, too.

Yoe's design work mimics the silliness of the original book, with the full page section intros, and backwards and upside-down text dropped in for cheap laughs. His selection and restoration of the comics is top-notch. We get a healthy dose of primo Dan Decarlo art (he was the creator of Sabrina, and was known as the artist who drew the hottest Betty and Veronica back in the 1960s), plus some surprisingly sharp work by Archie veterans like Samm Schwartz, Bob White and Joe Edwards. Yoe even presents a rare story published by Archie Comics that was drawn by the legendary Wally Wood (Mad Magazine, Weird Science, Witzend).Some of the other reviews here are a bit puzzling to me, because Yoe is considered a master at compiling vintage comics, and this book is no exception.

"Archie's Madhouse" is a groovy artifact of how bizarre mainstream humor could be back in the 1960s. Aficionados of the era will love the "Beatnik" and "Hippie" humor, while fans of the weird will love the monsters and sci-fi bits. Add in a good amount of Archie and Sabrina, and you have great time capsule of offbeat humor.Archies Mad House

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a Mad House, August 27, 2011

By 

Gord Wilson "alivingdog.com" (Bellingham, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Archies Mad House (Hardcover)

Archie's Mad House was always my favorite Archie comic, although that title series hit high points repeatedly, such as Archie as Pureheart the Powerful, and I would read any Archie comic at the drop of a hat. Perusing this collection, I'd say I started reading MH in 1962, as the reprint bits in Craig Yoe's volume from that year on are the first ones I remember well. I've managed to find a few ratty issues again and stuff them in my current comics collection, but it's great to have this hardback volume. Since there were 130 issues of the comic, this 200 page, full-color, hardback, library-quality labor of love is only the tip of the iceberg (I wanted to say Dave Berg, but that's Mad, not Madhouse). Yoe notes that that number doesn't include the Mad House Annuals, which were the best, but promises more volumes should we fans so demand.

What most readers know about MH is that it marked the first appearance of Sabrina the Teen Age Witch, the wildly successful Archie spinoff that led to Melissa Joan Hart's live-action show, the Filmation Archie Show spinoff cartoon, and the DIC cartoon series from Savage Steve Holland known for cult classic, "Eek the Cat" (still not on DVD, I note). But there was so much more. I absolutely loved the sci-fi pages introduced in most issues by the Pink Martian, and the way the artists drew space ships and robots. Since Yoe gives the artist credits, I now see that they were mostly done by Don DeCarlo, Bob White and Joe Edwards. MH was my most reread comic, since, like most kids, I reread my comics everyday, and when I got a new one went and read old ones in my stash of the same title.

This worked phenomenally well because along with the Pink Martian, MH had many recurring characters, who came and went at the whim of the writers, artists, or whoever was calling the shots that day. One of the best was Lester Cool and Chester Square, also a favorite of Yoe's. The artists were truly amazing. Dan DeCarlo's work rivals the consistently high standard on Betty and Veronica and the Archie Gang. A masterpiece like "The Discovery of Sleep" by Bob White from 1961 (included in this volume) shows his ability to draw characters in various angles and poses, and get cartoony action in a few strokes with economy of line. The result is very likable characters you want to look at again and again. I did, every day.

With his comics/ animation pedigree at Nick, Disney, and Jim Henson Productions, to name a few places that bear his stamp. Yoe has a big reach and can navigate the copyright nightmare, as seen by the many volumes of classic comics he has introduced, compiled and edited for IDW Books and elsewhere. This is significant because for many readers, this is their first exposure to these comics and artists. It's also a contender to the unchallenged supremacy of graphic novels in comics shops and their obligatory servings of nihilism, angst, "adult" humor and content, and "realistic" story lines. Believe me, I am as cynical and angst-ridden as anyone. That's why I like light, upbeat comics books, cartoons and retro TV. Why would I want more cynicism and angst? I greatly hope they take over the comic shops and show aspiring writers, readers, and artists how great comics once were and could be again.

If that should happen, and TV producers and writers, animators, comic book artists, storyboarders, critics, reviewers, readers, and viewers should ever put the shades up, and let the first tiny cracks of dawn into the present age of mediocre media, I will give a shout out to the man who set rumbling the first tremors: "Yoe!"

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Love this book!, August 26, 2011

By 

Rebecca Sevrin "Rebecca7" (LA CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Archies Mad House (Hardcover)

I LOVE this book! I couldn't wait to tear into it. The cover is slick, I love the art it is so jazzy. I lost most of my original comics and I was happy to see all my favorites in one volume. Some body must have read my mind.