As a kid, the magical places that sold comics were neighborhood grocery stores. We didn’t call them convenience stores back then, but that’s kind of what they were.  Every Sunday, after we had our big Italian dinner at my grandmother’s house, my dad would take me and my brother to Pauline’s.  The rule was we could each buy one thing. Usually my brother would choose one of those cheap little toys, but I would always choose a comic book.

And then one day – a comic book store opened in town. It was one of those first wave of very early comic shops. The very pragmatic name was Kim’s Collectible Comics & Records.   My brain exploded!  I sure did enjoy going there every week.  I actually went several times a week, always thinking up some excuse to drop in.

(And for the record, Kim is leading a panel about those early days of comics shop retailing this year at ITHACON. Tix are on sale now – swing by if you can.)

But for a more recent generation of fans, their comic memories stared with the grocery store checkout lane and Archie Comics.  For years and years, Archie created digest sized comics and found a way to get the best distribution ever: the checkout lane of major grocery chains across the US.  It was brilliant! As a Dad, I’d take my kids to the comics store, but I would often buy my kids an Archie Digest in the grocery store too.

<Disney Adventures had the same format and distribution plan, but that’s a different can of worms that I’ll dive into another time.>

Anyways, it’s nice to see Archie back in the grocery store checkout lane. It looks like they are jumping on the book-a-zine trend. You’ve seen these book-a-zines magazine that are sturdier that most magazines and command a book-like price.

I just snagged Archie Jumbo Comic Magazine #1 from a local Wegman’s grocery story. This 100 pager pulls in treasures from various points of Archie’s publishing history. I just love flipping through a collection like this and enjoying the really old stuff—like a story from the 40’s—and then bouncing into a Dan DeCarlo or even a (more recent) Dan Parent story.

Well done, Archie! I hope a bunch of folks, both young and old, buy and enjoy this comic.  Or at least they flip through