Archie Meets the Punisher Annotations

Hopefully this won’t happen too often, but I don’t have much to say today and nothing backlogged, so I’m going to copy and paste material from an old website which is still online but which I still have access to. In this case, here are annotations to the one shot comic Archie Meets the Punisher (aka The Punisher Meets Archie). Annotations written in 1998 and updated in 1999 and a little bit again just now (2011)

Archie version looked at. Aside from covers, interior contents identical for Punisher Meets Archie
Outer front cover: Archie style; Typical Archie style joke; seen (left to right): Betty Cooper, Reggie Mantle, Archie Andrews, Veronica Lodge, a black couple (Chuck with bad haircut and girlfriend?), above the couple, the Pussycats (Josie, Valerie, Melody), Punisher
Inner front cover: Archie subscription info. As per recent Marvel tradition, pages are unnumbered. Numbering below is mine
Page 1: Credits page
Page 2: Intro from Archie comics (Victor Gorelick)
Page 3: Intro from Marvel Comics (Tom DeFalco)
Page 4: Background info for Archie and Punisher
Pages 5-7: Marvel style; Firefight between Punisher and an Archie look alike in New York
Page 7: Newspaper: "Punisher at War With Czar" (ref?); bus depot locations: Glendale (ref: ?) Archie, Archie Bunker, a Glendale resident), Ivy Town (Atom II's home; Atom had around this time been regressed into a teenager), Happy Harbor (Snapper Carr's home town), Riverdale (Archie's home town), Sail Port (ref?), Gotham (Batman's home town obviously, as well as Green Lantern Alan Scott, Demon, Hitman, and various Batman related heroes), Hartston (ref?)
Pages 8-9: Archie style; Archie loses a date with Veronica
Page 9: Leroy (cousin of Veronica) appears
Pages 10-11: Marvel style; Punisher learns quarry's location
Page 10: Comedy Club: Pep (ref: Pep Comics, debut title for Shield, Comet, and Archie and most of his supporting cast; notably the comedy club sells comics); sign reads "Flip Mason Tribute" (ref: Flip Mason was a stand-up comic seen in Marvel’s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD#1; he died in that story); first War Journal entry
Page 11: Quarry revealed to be Archie look-alike Mel Jay (play on MLJ, the original name for
Archie Comics) aka Montana Bob (ref: Bob Montana, creator of Archie) aka Freckles (ref: star of Freckles and His Friends (1947-56), a teen comic by Standard/Argo) aka "Red" Fever (I'm not sure about the Fever part, but Red was the name of a character in Explorers of the Unknown, who looked identical to Archie); only appearance to date of the villain; proprietor named Pinky (ref; probably Pinky Pinkerton, member of the Howling Commandoes from Marvel’s Sgt. Fury series; probably not a reference to Pinky & the Brain since there are other Sgt/Nick Fury references herein)
also: Microchip (Punisher's then partner) appears; war journal entry does not follow numerically from entry on previous page
Pages 12-13:Archie style; Veronica agrees to date the villain, who is using Melvin Jay alias; Hiram Lodge, Veronica's father also appears for first time this issue
Pages 14-15: Marvel style (even for the most part a panel with Archie and Jughead) Punisher arrives in Riverdale; reminisces, then cut on page 15 to Pop Tate's shop
Page 14: family either resembles Punisher's family or is intended to be image from his past
Page 15: We learn Melvin also uses alias Babyface (ref?); Jughead Jones and malt shop owner Pop Tate first seen in story, as are two thugs in shadows
Page 16: Both styles used; one of the thugs revealed to be Binky (named after DC teen from Leave it to Binky/Binky (1948-71, 1977 and Binky's Buddies (1969-71) Archie & Jughead head to car with thugs Page 17: Archie style; Outside sock hop; Betty and Reggie seen for first time in story
Page 18-19: Both styles: Punisher attacks thugs' car; both page 18 and page 41 suggest that Archie and Jughead have heard of the Punisher before this story
Page 19: Other thug named Buzzy (ref: star of own DC series 1948-58; also appeared in All Funny Comics)
Pages 20-21: Sock hop; style kind of in the middle between Marvel and Archie
Page 20: seen: Josie and Valerie of the Pussycats (the Pussycats normally don't interact with the Archie Universe proper though are published by Archie; Josie's series She's Josie/Josie/Josie & the Pussycats published 1963-82; new title 1993-94), Veronica, Betty, Melvin, Scooter (ref: star of DC's teen book Swing With Scooter 1966-72), Big Ethel, Dilton Doiley, Patsy Walker (from Marvel's Patsy Walker 1945-65 and other titles; in main Marvel continuity now Hellcat), Patsy's best friend Hedy Wolfe (from Patsy & Hedy 1952-67, her own one-shot 1957, and the Patsy titles), Chuck? (the black kid from the cover with the bad haircut; he's the only black character in the core Archie titles I know of but it doesn't look like him), Svenson (the janitor), principal Mr Weatherbee; also Bingo Wilkin (from That Wilkin Boy, Archie 1969-82) is mentioned but does not actually appear
Page 21: Scooter speaks on phone to Ernie (ref: teen comic Ernie Comics, Current/Ace 1948-49)
Pages 22-24: Punisher confronts Archie; both styles Page 25: Archie style; Archie & Jughead visit Sgt Pansky; flashbacks (unsure if to actual Archie titles or to random events); Archie's dad seen in one flashback; Officer Burland mentioned (ref: Kip Burland; the two Archie heroes called the Black Hood)
Pages 26-1st 2/3 of 28: Punisher learns from listening in to conversation between thugs about sock hop
Page 26: Thugs seen: Binky, Buzzy, Ernie, Willie (ref: Marvel teen seen in Willie Comics/L'il Willie 1948-50 among other titles), Algie (star of own teen title by Timor 1953-54), Andy (ref: star of Current/Ace's Andy Comics 1948, which becomes Ernie Comics)
Page 27: old woman seems familiar but I can't remember her name
Last third of Page 28-Page 30: Archie style except for last panel of 30; Archie and Jughead arrive at sock hop
Last panel 30-31: Marvel style; Punisher sneaks into school; Betty's locker has carved heart: BC+AA (obvious ref)
Pages 32-39 Punisher vs. Red and other thugs at sock hop, resulting in Veronica being kidnapped; mostly Archie style with some Marvel
Page 32: Seen for first time: Midge (I think that's her; girlfriend of brawny student Moose) Mrs. Beasley (teacher), Coach Kleats, and Flutesnoot (all Archie Universe characters), Katy Keene (an Archie character who I think normally exists outside the main Archie canon; various titles including her titular series 1949-61, 1983-90), Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch (ditto; own titles 1971-83, 1996 one shot, 1997- plus her own show 1997-), Melody of the Pussycats as well as Marvel teen Millie (numerous titles, including Millie the Model 1945-73); Sabrina mentions asking a doctor "if the Hosts of Hoggoth were really hoary" (ref: Dr. Strange, who sometimes exclaims, "By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!"); Dino Manelli (one of Marvel's Howling Commandos/SHIELD agents) is mentioned
Page 33: Dino appears and mentions fellow Howler Junior Juniper; unnamed thug disguised as cook appears
Page 34: Unnamed physical education teacher the Punisher is impersonating appears, as does unidentified black kid's unidentified girlfriend
Page 35: Moose first seen in story
&Page 40: Archie style; at police station
Pages 41-42:Archie style; Archie and Punisher team up
Page 41: Archie has first entry in his own war journal; as Archie fantasizes how tough he is, he thinks "It's clobberin' time" (ref. Marvel hero the Thing) as well as Punisher'isms
Page 43: In-between style; Red psyches out Veronica; balloons seen: Ms Lion (canine supporting character in cartoon Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends - one commenter thinks it might be Jughead's dog Hot Dog instead), Spider-Man (obvious), Sonic the Hedgehog (computer game character with an Archie series plus spin-offs 1993-), Shield I (the first Archie superhero; also comic's first patriotic motif superhero)
Pages 44-47 (2/3 down) Both styles; final battle
Page 47: War Journal entry number again random; Betty's Diary also given a random number; Archie suggest Punisher give him a signal watch (ref. Jimmy Olsen)
Pages 47 (final third)-48 Both styles; concluding scenes
Page 48: Punisher's comment to heading to Gotham relates to two crossovers with Batman published around the same time; Marvel hero Wolverine appears (claws/voice only), planning to go after unidentified Jughead look-alike
inside back cover: Marvel's subscription info
outside back cover: Archie style; poster art with Archie in foreground, his face converted into the Punisher's skull in the background
Sources: Archie Meets the Punisher#1; Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide 1998 ed.