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Archie's Explorers of the Unknown
Monsters! Giant robots! Maniacs and masterminds! When evil rears its ugly head, you can be sure that the Explorers of the Unknown will be there to save the day! This is presented in the new higher-end format of Archie Comics Presents , which offers classic Archie stories at a value while taking a design cue from successful all-ages graphic novels.
Join the team of heroes, who look a lot like our favorite Riverdale teens, as they battle a rogue cyclops, a giant crab monster, and the diabolical Doctor Gloom! Will these soldiers of fortune be able to triumph over the forces of evil? Find out in over 160 pages of action and adventure!
Join the team of heroes, who look a lot like our favorite Riverdale teens, as they battle a rogue cyclops, a giant crab monster, and the diabolical Doctor Gloom! Will these soldiers of fortune be able to triumph over the forces of evil? Find out in over 160 pages of action and adventure!
176 pages, Paperback
Published July 21, 2020
About the author
Archie Superstars
1,562 books51 followersTHE ARCHIE SUPERSTARS are the impressive line-up of talented writers and artists who have brought Archie, his friends and his world to life for more than 70 years, from legends such as Dan DeCarlo, Frank Doyle, Harry Lucey, and Bob Montana to recent greats like Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz, and many more!
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 8, 2020
Archie's Explorers of the Unknown collects Archie Giant Comics #587 and #599 and Archie's Explorers of the Unknown #1-6.
Thanks to the pandemic and the crazy deals at the Archie webstore, I've read more Archie comics in 2020 than the previous 20 years combined.
Archie's Explorers of the Unknown is an adventure comic starring the Archie characters. It's Challengers of the Unknown at first glance but there's a fair amount of Fantastic Four in its lineage as well. The Archie gang play the parts of adventures. Archie is Red Andrews, Betty is Wheels Cooper, you get the idea. The gang take on such menaces as mad scientist Myron Perrydinkle, mad scientist Dr. Crustacean, Doctor Gloom, King Toot, and various monsters.
The stories are adventure stories woven through the Archie framework. Red still can't pick between Angel Lodge and Wheels Cooper, for example. The stories are geared toward younger readers since these are classic Archie comics.
The star of the show is Rex Lindsey for me. His art is in the classic Dan DeCarlo style but he incorporates some Kirby flourishes, like Kirby machines and crazy angles. Rex Lindsey deserves to be in the pantheon of top Archie artists.
As unlikely as it sounds, Archie's Explorers of the Unknown is the closest we'll likely get to a Jack Kirby Archie adventure book. Three out of five giant robots.
Thanks to the pandemic and the crazy deals at the Archie webstore, I've read more Archie comics in 2020 than the previous 20 years combined.
Archie's Explorers of the Unknown is an adventure comic starring the Archie characters. It's Challengers of the Unknown at first glance but there's a fair amount of Fantastic Four in its lineage as well. The Archie gang play the parts of adventures. Archie is Red Andrews, Betty is Wheels Cooper, you get the idea. The gang take on such menaces as mad scientist Myron Perrydinkle, mad scientist Dr. Crustacean, Doctor Gloom, King Toot, and various monsters.
The stories are adventure stories woven through the Archie framework. Red still can't pick between Angel Lodge and Wheels Cooper, for example. The stories are geared toward younger readers since these are classic Archie comics.
The star of the show is Rex Lindsey for me. His art is in the classic Dan DeCarlo style but he incorporates some Kirby flourishes, like Kirby machines and crazy angles. Rex Lindsey deserves to be in the pantheon of top Archie artists.
As unlikely as it sounds, Archie's Explorers of the Unknown is the closest we'll likely get to a Jack Kirby Archie adventure book. Three out of five giant robots.
September 20, 2025
Red Andrews and the Temple of Gloom!
This book was a really fun homage to silver-age comics, most obviously Challengers of the Unknown. Lots of Jack Kirby flourishes and spoofs with the hooded Doctor Gloom and the Red Ghost and Mole Man lookalikes. Another tribute to the old school comics was breaking the stories into cliffhanger-ending chapters with a funny transitionary caption.
The eight stories collected here were all enjoyable. My favorite was the second, "Double Trouble" with guest baddie Doctor Gloom. "Mummy Madness" ran a close second. I didn't have a least favorite, which is a testimony to writer Rich Margopoulos, who kept his solid stories moving briskly and balanced the high adventure with humor. And with one writer masterminding the entire run, there's a welcome continuity of character and plot.
Avoiding spoilers, I will only say the final issue brought to mind the 1966 Batman movie with three of the Explorers' archenemies teaming up. It was a fun and fitting end to the series.
Red Andrews began as a spoof of Indiana Jones, but by the end of the collection was just a generic adventurer. Blaze Blossom was their CIA contact for the first three issues then disappeared. The fourth issue introduced F/X Clayton, an homage to Ditko's Doctor Strange in his floor-length cape trimmed with microcircuits.
The government built the Explorers a high-tech headquarters nestled in a cave, which stirred up memories of early Justice League of America and Super Friends with the team sitting around a large conference table and Jughead--I mean Squint, daredevil escape artist--manning the TroubAlert.
Readers in my aging demographic will also appreciate Red's appearance on Johnny Carson with Ed McMahon chortling "Hohohoho!" Those couple pages at the start of the book took me right back to the '80s and won me over. (Archie with a mullet took me back too, albeit wincingly.)
Amazing artwork all the way through. Rex Lindsey penciled every issue, and the layouts are imaginative and the art detailed. It's an appealing book all 'round and I was sorry to see it end. I paced myself, reading only one issue every couple/few nights but with only eight stories they quickly dwindled down to a precious few and then it was all over much too quickly.
My one complaint is that the original comics' covers were not included.
There are a lot of comics in this deceptively thin 176-page book (which is a larger than a digest but smaller than a comic book): Two feature-length try-out stories from Archie Giant Comics dating to 1988 and '89, then all six issues of the 1990-91 series Archie's Explorers of the Unknown. All in color for $8.99? Whatta deal!
This book was a really fun homage to silver-age comics, most obviously Challengers of the Unknown. Lots of Jack Kirby flourishes and spoofs with the hooded Doctor Gloom and the Red Ghost and Mole Man lookalikes. Another tribute to the old school comics was breaking the stories into cliffhanger-ending chapters with a funny transitionary caption.
The eight stories collected here were all enjoyable. My favorite was the second, "Double Trouble" with guest baddie Doctor Gloom. "Mummy Madness" ran a close second. I didn't have a least favorite, which is a testimony to writer Rich Margopoulos, who kept his solid stories moving briskly and balanced the high adventure with humor. And with one writer masterminding the entire run, there's a welcome continuity of character and plot.
Avoiding spoilers, I will only say the final issue brought to mind the 1966 Batman movie with three of the Explorers' archenemies teaming up. It was a fun and fitting end to the series.
Red Andrews began as a spoof of Indiana Jones, but by the end of the collection was just a generic adventurer. Blaze Blossom was their CIA contact for the first three issues then disappeared. The fourth issue introduced F/X Clayton, an homage to Ditko's Doctor Strange in his floor-length cape trimmed with microcircuits.
The government built the Explorers a high-tech headquarters nestled in a cave, which stirred up memories of early Justice League of America and Super Friends with the team sitting around a large conference table and Jughead--I mean Squint, daredevil escape artist--manning the TroubAlert.
Readers in my aging demographic will also appreciate Red's appearance on Johnny Carson with Ed McMahon chortling "Hohohoho!" Those couple pages at the start of the book took me right back to the '80s and won me over. (Archie with a mullet took me back too, albeit wincingly.)
Amazing artwork all the way through. Rex Lindsey penciled every issue, and the layouts are imaginative and the art detailed. It's an appealing book all 'round and I was sorry to see it end. I paced myself, reading only one issue every couple/few nights but with only eight stories they quickly dwindled down to a precious few and then it was all over much too quickly.
My one complaint is that the original comics' covers were not included.
There are a lot of comics in this deceptively thin 176-page book (which is a larger than a digest but smaller than a comic book): Two feature-length try-out stories from Archie Giant Comics dating to 1988 and '89, then all six issues of the 1990-91 series Archie's Explorers of the Unknown. All in color for $8.99? Whatta deal!
June 27, 2021
I remember reading Explorers of the Unknown when the issues were originally published in the late 80s/ early 90s (?). I had fond memories of the short-lived series, but I have to honestly say I liked them a lot less this time around. The premise of the Riverdale gang as a team of adventurers ala G.I. Joe sounds good on paper (everyone has a codename and a specialty like mechanic or demolitions; and like M.A.S.K. each character has a civilian gig and gets summoned at inopportune times by a beeper alerting them they're needed for a dangerous mission). But the characters are dismally underdeveloped, even for an Archie comic. Especially the girls, who are more concerned with who sits by Archie or stays with Archie or smooches Archie than saving the world - and Archie as a less roguish Indiana Jones gun-for-hire type isn't even all that likable here either. I love that Archie Comics took a chance on an adventure book, but the landing gear on the jokes seems to stick more often than not. Disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews