Still uncertain which edition of Archie Meets Kiss I need to buy—the trade paperback for a reasonable $10, of the hardcover with the bonus 30 pages of what-exactly for 20 bucks more. I am not of the Kiss Army; on the contrary, I am a charter member of the ever-growing civilian “Kiss Was Never Cool” brigade. But I do think the band is well suited to comic books, from the Marvel ones in the ‘80s to this one now.

In its original conventional comic-book form, the Archie/Kiss match-up was so popular that I missed an entire issue of the four-part series and was unable to find it anywhere. The storyline is full of missed opportunities—The Archies and Kiss are both in it, plus there’s even a panel showing Josie & The Pussycats turned into zombies, yet there’s almost no mention of music. Instead, it’s one of those far-out interplanetary adventures which don’t sit very well in the Archie universe, even with Sabrina the Teenage Witch as conduit. I would much rather have seen a battle of the bands, with “Sugar Sugar” finally getting its due as the spiritual forebear of “Christine Sixteen.”