Customer Reviews

Archies Mad House

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"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

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!"

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.

I will confess that I was never the world's biggest Archie fan growing up--I was more of a Disney & Mad Magazine kid--but Craig Yoe has managed to put together exactly the kind of Archie collection a guy like me would want! This is ABSOLUTELY the comic book collection your place needs to make you and your home more attractive to potential love interests! For that reason alone you should fork over the moolah and grab this tome PRONTO!!

It's tempting to lump in Archie's Madhouse with comics like Mad and its imitators. Madhouse is really a different animal, though. While there's an element of satire, the humor is always geared to teenagers and their strange behavior, including lots of references to going on dates and eating pizzas. Like the other titles from Archie Comics, the target audience for these stories seems to be pre-teens. Since kids are always looking ahead, nine- and ten-year-olds like to read stories about 16- and 17-year olds. `Twas ever thus.

What makes these stories so charming is that they were written for kids, about teens, by adults. So we're not necessarily getting an accurate portrayal of teen-age life in the Sixties, but a middle-aged man's idea of what teenagers might be like, filtered through the limits of children's comics. Beatniks and hippies, monsters and Martians, as seen by grown men who want to appeal to little kids. It's really a fun read!

I had a handful of Madhouse comics as a kid and I must have read them over and over again. It was interesting to compare a story I'd never seen before with one I'd read as a child. In those familiar stories I knew every drawing, every word, almost to the point where I could recite them! They fascinated me as a kid. I think it comes down to the process of growing up. As children we're looking at everything around us and trying to figure out how the world works. Was there really a fad of teenagers locking themselves in a deep freeze? I don't remember hearing anything about this on the news, but it was the premise of the Snowboy story included here. As a child, reading stories about Lester Cool and Chester Square gave my growing brain important cues about how to behave as a teen. (Of course, once I actually became a teenager, all of this was pretty useless because by then kids didn't drive jalopies and hang out at the Chocklit Shop. Hmm. Did they ever?)

If for no other reason, this book is worth it for the story introducing Sabrina, the Teen-Age Witch. Based on how familiar each panel was to me, I must have read this a hundred times as a kid.

As usual, Craig Yoe does a super job of designing and packaging this vintage material, with an introduction full of rare art, silver foil stamping and spot varnish on the cover, sturdy binding, excellent reproduction, and so forth. There are even subtle gags like [spoiler alert!] having the page numbers printed upside down. You might not even notice it at first, and then you discover it with a "Hey, what the--?" It reminds you that you're in a Madhouse world where everything is mixed up.

This is a great book if you're an Archie fan, a connoisseur of comics, or just struggling to figure out teenagers. Granted, Archie's Madhouse might not help you understand teenagers, but it's comforting to know that they didn't either.

Back in the mid-1950s, Mad Magazine was fresh and new, doing satire in comics form in a way that hadn't been done before.

So of course it spawned a million imitators, of which Archie's Madhouse was not only one of the most unlikely but also one of the most long-lived. While imitators like Nuts!, Get Lost, and Eh! flashed in the pan and then folded, Archie's Madhouse lasted from 1959 to 1982, albeit with numerous changes in its content and title.

This book collects some comics, house ads, and single-page gags from the first decade of the magazine's existence. Archie's Madhouse originally ran comics that featured the standard cast of characters--Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, and the long-suffering Mr. Weatherbee and Miss Grundy--but after 18 issues, the Riverdale gang left and were replaced with one-off stories and a few recurring characters. All the stories are heavier on gags than plot, with bad puns and references to pop culture carrying most of the humor.

Like the magazine itself, the book is divided into sections: Teenagers, Monsters, the Way Out Section, Outer Space, and Good Guys. Naturally, given the provenance of the comic, Teenagers is the biggest section and has some of the funniest work. In addition to the Riverdale gang, we get to see Ronald the Rubber Boy, Lippy the Hippy, medieval teenagers, and my favorite pair, Chester Square and Lester Cool, who are sort of the Goofus and Gallant of hip. The book also includes the first appearance of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (but she's in the monster section), a few stories featuring the superhero manqué Captain Sprocket, and a parody of secret agent shows.

The artists include the classic Archie artists Dan DeCarlo, Bob White, and Joe Edwards, among others, and there's even a monster story by Wally Wood. Unfortunately, no writers are credited, so the minds behind the gags must remain anonymous. The earliest comics do have a bit of a Mad Magazine feel to them, but the comic quickly evolved into a collection of random goofiness.

Because they satirized popular culture, the comics may seem dated to modern readers, but they are sort of a cleaned-up time capsule: Archie explains how to become a rock 'n' roll singer, Frankenstein turns out to be a hippie, and Agent X-48 is more interested in sales and gossip than stopping a supervillain. In one surreal Joe Edwards story, creatures called Blips explain how they morphed from blips on a radar screen to spies who hide out in abstract paintings, paisley patterns, and gag greeting cards to spy on Earthlings. It's as good an explanation as any for mid-1960s design.

Archie's Madhouse is more silly than biting; as Yoe says in the introduction, "The counter-culture aspect of Madhouse was as older white guys from the suburbs saw it." There's no sex or drugs, and the rock 'n' roll is closer to the Monkees than the Rolling Stones. It's still good fun, though, and a great way for kids or adults to kill a couple of hours.

Reviewed by Brigid Alverson

Once upon a time, Archie Andrews outsold Batman.

And in this era, Archie Comics wanted to challenge Mad Magazine for the wacky humor magazine market.

And thus, Archie's Mad House was born.

Funny, even today, it also features great comics art, including a remarkable sexy Sabrina The Teenage Witch, in her first appearance, drawn by the amazing Dan De Carlo.

The Hipster gives it a THUMBS UP!

Craig Yoe has done it again with a lovingly produced collection of stories and wackiness from Archie Comics' weirdest title! Some of my well-known favorites are here (Sabrina, the Blips) and there is plenty of stuff that I missed the first time around.

Slickly produced, great paper and eye-popping graphics! Yoe nailed it big time with this one!! Bring on Volume 2!!

I remember the Archie Comics comic book series "Archie's Madhouse" from years ago.

In looking through this book, it occurred to me that Archie comics seems to possibly have been trying to do an Archie version of "Mad Comics."

This book also contains humorous stories that do not include Archie and the gang.

For you superhero MLJ Comics (early name for the company that publishes Archie Comics), there is a humorous story in which The Shield and The Fly (AKA Fly-Man) make a very brief cameo appearance in it.

This book is also okay for young readers.

There appears to be no quality control in Craig Yoe's reprints. It's probably not Craig Yoe's fault. His Ditko reprint book had one complete page missing from a story. This Madhouse book has all the page numbers printed upside down. There may be more errors. These kinds of problems are created by the book designer.