Betty and Veronica Comics Double Digest #230 features an old Dick Malmgren-drawn Sabrina the Teenage Witch story, “Super Duper Party Pooper,” in which Aunt Hilda is ruining Sabrina’s party with her withering distaste for the younger generation, until Cousin Ambrose “whammies” her into youthful exuberance. She picks up a guitar and plays the Archie song “You Make Me Wanna Dance” solo, then sings lead on “Bang-Shang-a-Lang.”
That early ‘70s story is immediately followed in the digest by an earlier Sabrina tale, “The Matchmaker, drawn by Harry Lucey. (Both stories are written by George Gladir.) Here, Sabrina resembles a young, white (and white-haired) Earth Kitt, while Aunt Hilda is at her most monstrously witchy, with a wart on her nose and beard stubble. I’m not generally a Dick Malmgren fan (his people are too static, one-dimensional and rectangular) and consider Harry Lucey one of the greatest artists in the history of comic books period, but I have to say that Malmgren has the better approach to Sabrina. Lucey’s work is so detailed it’s distracting. Malmgren plays up the absurdity and cartoonishness of the witchiness. However perfectly composed a Lucey panel can be—the coquettish Sabrina dashing upstairs while Hilda tells herself “Sabrina’s not too much in the good looks department,” or passersby Betty & Veronica zapped into fighting over an unwitting Harvey—there’s a lightness required here, and Lucey is acting like Sabrina’s Chilling Adventures is already a thing.