In all of those years of roaming through stacks of comic books during the Golden Age of my just-pre-pubes years I never recall coming across this short-lived Archie Comics title! Not that I think that YOUNG DR. MASTERS woulda been flying off the shelves at the same rate that those in-demand by me Marvel superhero titles were but hey, who out there would have thought that a comic like this was gonna appeal to the model car skateboard 'n glue sniffin' suburbanite teenbos the same way that the latest Stan Lee creation would. Sheesh, I don't even think that said kiddo's acne-laden ugly cyster holed up in her room with Ringo pics splattered all over the place woulda gone for it so like, where exactly was the market for this particular attempt at combining action, drama and romance or something like that (I'm sure even the folk at the former MLJ were confused!) considering the convolutedness of it all.
Yeah, there's the adventure angle (Masters rushing to save everyone from trapped construction workers to a shady businessman and his companions who survived an airplane crash) to the inner turmoil between Masters and his father (daddy wanting him to concentrate on doctoring while Our Hero's more content diddling with his test tubes) not forgetting the gushy romance angle custom made for the gurls (Masters' fiancée is a bitch while sweet Nurse Redmond worships him from afar --- a new variant on the old Archie Betty 'n Veronica angle). Put 'em all together and whaddaya got but a muddle that was guaranteed not only to last but two issues but one that not even yer typical Saturday Afternoon Barbershop Kid's siblings of the femme persuasion wouldn't wanna pick up on a bet!
In some ways YOUNG DR. MASTERS reminds me a tad bit of M.D., that "New Directions" EC title that lasted a few issues under the tutelage of the Comics Code which saw the entire EC comic book line do a rather undramatic tailspin. Y'know, one of those "toned down" EC entries that featured knights of yore, fearless newspaper editors, heavily edited science-fiction and, as if you hadn't gotten the gist of it, doctors going out of their way to save mankind in the noblest ways possible. Of course M.D. had great art, class and wasn't gonna make you feel creepy the same way I did when my dad caught me reading MILLIE THE MODEL and began casting dispersions about my manhood (I tried to explain to him that these late-sixties MILLIEs were but ARCHIE swipes right down to the Jughead stand-in but that didn't do any convincin'!). But still, if indeed MASTERS was a take on the long-forgotten EC title dontcha think it was kinda funny how Archie Pubs had the perhaps not-so-strange habit of swiping ideas from their arch enemy EC what with titles not only like this 'un but ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE and of course the MAD HOUSE MADS which actually earned the former MLJ a lawsuit from Bill Gaines himself! Boy what these comic book people would do to get each other's goats I'll tell ya!
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