Quote from: Ottawagrant on August 26, 2016, 07:17:40 PM

Some of them have classics from the 50's such as Super Duck, Wilbur, Suzie, etc.

But mostly NOT. It hasn't escaped my notice that the content of the digests is no longer as varied as it once was. The "From the Vault" section seems to have disappeared from Annual and Jumbo digests entirely. There are very few non-Archie sections that still appear with any regularity (Little Archie, Sabrina, Josie, Cheryl Blossom, Li'l Jinx, and Archie 1). It has been a year or so since I've seen any of the ones you've mentioned, or Ginger, Archie's Madhouse, Madhouse Glads, That Wilkin Boy, Katy Keene, Pat the Brat, etc.

To further clarify, the new Archie's 75th Anniversary Jumbo Comics Digest is supposed to be monthly for exactly one year (12 issues). Of the regular digests, Archie, World of Archie, and Betty and Veronica are issued 10 times per year. B&V Friends, Jughead and Archie, and Archie's Funhouse are either 5 or 6 times a year (I've been tracking the release dates only since the beginning of the year, but I've yet to determine which is the correct frequency). Less than a year ago, Archie's Funhouse and Jughead and Archie were also still at the 10 times per year frequency, so it remains to be seen how many issues total of these titles are released by year's end.

I'm not sure of the exact math used to determine how many issues of a particular title are Annuals or Jumbo Comics editions in any given year either, other than to state that "Annuals" for each title occur several times in any year, sometimes with a seasonal theme like Winter Annual, Spring Annual, Summer Annual, Fall Annual, Easter Annual, Back To School Annual, Halloween Annual, Christmas Annual  -- and sometimes just plain "Annual". Obviously no one title will have ALL of those themed/seasonal Annuals, even of those titles published 10 times per year. The only thing I can say for certain is that the frequency with which Annual and Jumbo Comics editions of the digests have been appearing has been increasing over the last 2 years, to the point where the number of Annual and Jumbo Comics digest issues (which follow the same numbering as the Double Digest issues of any given title) over the course of a year is nearly equal to the number of Double Digest issues, which would indicate a consumer preference for a larger digest with more pages.

Double Digests are 160 pages, with a cover price of $4.99; Annual digests are 192 pages with a cover price of $5.99; and Jumbo Comics digests are 288 pages with a cover price of $6.99 (all prices in US dollars). The Archie 75th Anniversary Jumbo Comics Digest would be the anomaly here, with 224 pages for the same $6.99 cover price as the other Jumbo Comics editions -- one would hope that the content (quality of stories chosen) here would be more than enough to make up for the loss of 64 pages. Either that, or it represents an experiment to see if the market will bear the reduction of page count at that price point, with the aim that if accepted by consumers, the other Jumbo Comics digests would follow suit with a reduction to the same page count. The other consideration to bear in mind is that the experiment here is aiming to discover whether ACP can successfully target a market demographic of older, more discriminating readers to whom the quality, age and rarity of the stories chosen far outweighs any considerations of quantity, and in so doing, redress the balance of that diminishing lack of variety in digest content that I mentioned earlier.