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Tuxedo Mark: My review of "Catnapped!" from Betty and Veronica: Friends Forever: Sleepover: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/03/10/comics-catnapped/

Mar 03 2024 2:17pm
Tuxedo Mark: My review of "Winners and Losers" from Betty and Veronica #103: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/comics-winners-losers/

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Tuxedo Mark: My review of "Winners

Feb 25 2024 6:02pm
Tuxedo Mark: My review of "Girl of His Dreams" from Betty and Veronica #101: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/02/25/comics-girl-of-his-dreams/

Feb 22 2024 5:46pm
Tuxedo Mark: Huh, and apparently World of Betty and Veronica Digest isn't canceled; it just went on a long hiatus: https://archiecomics.com/new-archie-comics-coming-in-may-2024/

Feb 22 2024 5:35pm
Tuxedo Mark: Archie Comics is starting to do $4.99 floppies: https://archiecomics.com/archie-horror-unleashes-apocalyptic-thrills-in-judgment-day/

Feb 17 2024 3:19pm
Tuxedo Mark: My review of "The Big Victory" from Betty and Veronica #99: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/comics-the-big-victory/

Feb 04 2024 4:25pm
Tuxedo Mark: My review of "Makeover for a Moose" from Betty and Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #321: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/02/04/comics-makeover-for-a-moose/

Jan 27 2024 5:44pm
Tuxedo Mark: My review of "Love is a Football Field!" from Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #347: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/01/27/comics-love-is-a-football-field/

Jan 25 2024 4:30pm
Tuxedo Mark: My review of "One Shot Worth a Million" from World of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #136: https://riverdalereviewed.wordpress.com/2024/01/25/comics-one-shot-worth-a-million/

Riverdale TV Series

Started by Imnotmark, April 02, 2016, 10:30:59 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Great Gazoo

Quote from: Oldiesmann on April 10, 2016, 12:51:30 PM
On the subject of used bookstore chains, the only one I know of here in the states (or at least in my part of the country) is Half Price Books, and I've only found Archie Comics there once (I bought a bunch of digests for $1 a pop the one time I did find them there). Most of the time they just have back issues of various DC and Marvel titles (and the like) - all the "popular" titles that people supposedly want to buy these days (I've never gotten into Marvel or DC and don't understand why those have so much more of a following than Archie does).
No Half Price Books in my area or at least I have never come across the store yet.

Fernando Ruiz

#151
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 06:17:04 AM

Raj first appeared in TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #21 in 2008 - in a story written and drawn by Fernando Ruiz. I don't know if he's responsible for creating the character himself... maybe he'll see this and comment on that.

Ahh... Raj...


Archie started noticing that their books enjoyed an exceptional popularity in India. I can't remember exactly when this was but 2008 sounds right.

Victor Gorelick came to me and told me that Archie Comics were popular in India so they wanted to give Archie an Indian friend and they wanted me to create him. I don't know why he chose me for the job. It may have been because I was regularly writing and drawing the new story in Tales From Riverdale at the time and that's where they wanted to introduce the character.

Now since I knew almost nothing about India, I started doing some research and I relied heavily on an Indian student I had at the time. (How ironic! This student was Indian by way of Canada!) I came up with Raj and his family who were going to be new arrivals in Riverdale. Initially, I named Raj "Kiran" after my student and gave him the family name of Singh. I gave him a father who was supposed to run a candy store in Riverdale. Immediately, I was told that this was too stereotypical, but I honestly just wanted to give Riverdale a new landmark and the gang a new place to hang out. This was immediately changed to Raj's dad being a doctor... (which I guess an Indian doctor isn't so stereotypical...?!?) Kiran's mom was supposed to be a scientist who worked for Lodge Industries. She was going to be the source of lots of wacky experiments and sci-fi adventures. Kiran was also supposed to have a sister named Priti, who was younger than Kiran but she was supposed to have skipped a grade in school so she could still be in classes with the Archie gang if needed. I gave Kiran the interest in special effects and film making and the trademark of the Hawaiian shirt. I also drew sketches of all the characters.

My whole proposal was run by someone Archie was doing business with in India. Most of my ideas were left intact except for the afore-mentioned candy store and everyone's names. "Singh" was considered to be too typical so they changed the family name to Patel.

We did a couple of Raj stories. I don't remember how many. One day, I received a phone call from Michael Silberkleit himself. This was VERY rare. I think the man called me TWICE in all the years I worked for him. He told me that Raj was getting some popularity in India and that the Indian press my try to get a hold of me. He said he really thought Raj was something "special" and he "really needed to be handled right" so if I received any calls from the press I should direct them to him. I told him I would but I never got any calls until years later when I was called for an interview and I handled it myself. I don't remember if Michael was still living when I did that. The entire fiasco with Dan DeCarlo was a public relations trauma and still very fresh in everyone's memory at that point so I suspect Michael was very interested in not associating me as a "creator" of Raj Patel and locking up the public perception of that property as completely Archie-owned with no room for doubt whatsoever. I always thought that was pretty shady.

That's my Raj story.

HarryLuceyFan

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on April 10, 2016, 01:00:44 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 06:17:04 AM

Raj first appeared in TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #21 in 2008 - in a story written and drawn by Fernando Ruiz. I don't know if he's responsible for creating the character himself... maybe he'll see this and comment on that.

Ahh... Raj...


Archie started noticing that their books enjoyed an exceptional popularity in India. I can't remember exactly when this was but 2008 sounds right.

Victor Gorelick came to me and told me that Archie Comics were popular in India so they wanted to give Archie an Indian friend and they wanted me to create him. I don't know why he chose me for the job. It may have been because I was regularly writing and drawing the new story in Tales From Riverdale at the time and that's where they wanted to introduce the character.

Now since I knew almost nothing about India, I started doing some research and I relied heavily on an Indian student I had at the time. (How ironic! This student was Indian by way of Canada!) I came up with Raj and his family who were going to be new arrivals in Riverdale. Initially, I named Raj "Kiran" after my student and gave him the family name of Singh. I gave him a father who was supposed to run a candy store in Riverdale. Immediately, I was told that this was too stereotypical, but I honestly just wanted to give Riverdale a new landmark and the gang a new place to hang out. This was immediately changed to Raj's dad being a doctor... (which I guess an Indian doctor isn't so stereotypical...?!?) Kiran's mom was supposed to be a scientist who worked for Lodge Industries. She was going to be the source of lots of wacky experiments and sci-fi adventures. Kiran was also supposed to have a sister named Priti, who was younger than Kiran but she was supposed to have skipped a grade in school so she could still be in classes with the Archie gang if needed. I gave Kiran the interest in special effects and film making and the trademark of the Hawaiian shirt. I also drew sketches of all the characters.

My whole proposal was run by someone Archie was doing business with in India. Most of my ideas were left intact except for the afore-mentioned candy store and everyone's names. "Singh" was considered to be too typical so they changed the family name to Patel.

WE did a couple of Ray stories. I don't remember how many. One day, I received a phone call from Michael Silberkleit himself. This was VERY rare. I think the man called me TWICE in all the years I worked for him. He told me that Raj was getting some popularity in India and that the Indian press my try to get a hold of me. He said he really thought Raj was something "special" and he "really needed to be handled right" so if I received any calls from the press I should direct them to him. I told him I would but I never got any calls until years later when I was called for an interview and I handled it myself. I don't remember if Michael was still living when I did that. The entire fiasco with Dan DeCarlo was a public relations trauma and still very fresh in everyone's memory at that point so I suspect Michael was very interested in not associating me as a "creator" of Raj Patel and locking up the public perception of that property as completely Archie-owned with no room for doubt whatsoever. I always thought that was pretty shady.

That's my Raj story.

Fernando, should you ever choose to write an autobiography, I'll be first in line to buy it.

Fernando Ruiz

Quote from: HarryLuceyFan on April 10, 2016, 01:06:54 PM


Fernando, should you ever choose to write an autobiography, I'll be first in line to buy it.

It would be the saddest, least remarkable autobiography of all time, Harry... but I got stories. Boy! Do I got stories!


DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on April 10, 2016, 01:00:44 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 06:17:04 AM

Raj first appeared in TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #21 in 2008 - in a story written and drawn by Fernando Ruiz. I don't know if he's responsible for creating the character himself... maybe he'll see this and comment on that.

Ahh... Raj...

[...]

That's my Raj story.


Thank you for that long and very detailed reply, Fernando. I hesitated to just say you were the "creator" of Raj (as one would mostly assume with a story written and drawn by the same artist), because I suspected some degree of editorial input there on that particular character (although I couldn't be sure how much). The story behind the story was fascinating.


TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST, once I discovered it, turned out to be one of the most interesting digest titles (IMHO) that ACP ever published, along with JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST, both of which were published concurrently for nearly 40 issues -- a fact that I attribute largely to your involvement in contributing new stories to each issue (or most issues, at any rate -- I've yet to read all of them), and to the fact that you were throwing new characters in there, like Raj and Wendy Weatherbee (I need to find all the stories beyond those two digests where she had a co-starring, as opposed to merely a supporting role in the story), and occasionally even featuring Bingo Wilkin (a personal favorite) in new stories.


JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST is the best of all the various Jughead digests I've read, not only because of the inclusion of the regular Wilkin Boy reprints, but because nearly every issue had a perfect blend of Jughead stories by Samm Schwartz (classic era), Boldman & Lindsay (late 1990s-2000s), and you (the new story in each issue, plus some other reprints of yours that seemed fairly recent). I'm currently working my way through those, and enjoying the heck out of each one.

Fernando Ruiz

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 04:32:05 PM


TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST, once I discovered it, turned out to be one of the most interesting digest titles (IMHO) that ACP ever published, along with JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST, both of which were published concurrently for nearly 40 issues -- a fact that I attribute largely to your involvement in contributing new stories to each issue (or most issues, at any rate -- I've yet to read all of them), and to the fact that you were throwing new characters in there, like Raj and Wendy Weatherbee (I need to find all the stories beyond those two digests where she had a co-starring, as opposed to merely a supporting role in the story), and occasionally even featuring Bingo Wilkin (a personal favorite) in new stories.


JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST is the best of all the various Jughead digests I've read, not only because of the inclusion of the regular Wilkin Boy reprints, but because nearly every issue had a perfect blend of Jughead stories by Samm Schwartz (classic era), Boldman & Lindsay (late 1990s-2000s), and you (the new story in each issue, plus some other reprints of yours that seemed fairly recent). I'm currently working my way through those, and enjoying the heck out of each one.

Thanks. To me, those two titles, Tales From Riverdale and Jughead & Friends, were the Golden Age of my work on the digests. I especially loved Tales From Riverdale where I really tried my best to experiment. Probably my favorite character of the ones that I created was Wendy Weatherbee. I thought she had a ton of potential and I was looking forward to developing her more. Alas...

Sadly, it seems both Tales and J&F were the lowest selling digests of their time. This led Archie Comics to conclude that digests, other than the Betty & Veronica digests, HAD to have Archie's name in the title. This led to Jughead & Friends to be replaced by Jughead & Archie. Tales From Riverdale was replaced either by World Of Archie or Archie's Funhouse.

There was a very, very brief moment where ALL the digests were going to be replaced by "Super Digests." (I swear that's what they were going to be called! Very quickly, though, someone got cold feet about using the word "super" in a title so they were going to be called something else at one point.) These were going to be larger, bigger digests. It actually sounded like a bold idea, but as I said this was a very brief moment. For reasons I never learned, the "Super Digests" idea was scrapped and the digests remained the size they are.




DeCarlo Rules

#156
Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on April 10, 2016, 05:05:20 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 04:32:05 PM

TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST, once I discovered it, turned out to be one of the most interesting digest titles (IMHO) that ACP ever published, along with JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST, both of which were published concurrently for nearly 40 issues -- a fact that I attribute largely to your involvement in contributing new stories to each issue (or most issues, at any rate -- I've yet to read all of them), and to the fact that you were throwing new characters in there, like Raj and Wendy Weatherbee (I need to find all the stories beyond those two digests where she had a co-starring, as opposed to merely a supporting role in the story), and occasionally even featuring Bingo Wilkin (a personal favorite) in new stories.

JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST is the best of all the various Jughead digests I've read, not only because of the inclusion of the regular Wilkin Boy reprints, but because nearly every issue had a perfect blend of Jughead stories by Samm Schwartz (classic era), Boldman & Lindsay (late 1990s-2000s), and you (the new story in each issue, plus some other reprints of yours that seemed fairly recent). I'm currently working my way through those, and enjoying the heck out of each one.

Thanks. To me, those two titles, Tales From Riverdale and Jughead & Friends, were the Golden Age of my work on the digests. I especially loved Tales From Riverdale where I really tried my best to experiment. Probably my favorite character of the ones that I created was Wendy Weatherbee. I thought she had a ton of potential and I was looking forward to developing her more. Alas...

I loved her character! A breath of fresh air... although I would have been curious to see how she'd wind up evolving beyond the roadblock of "The Bee"s long shadow hanging over her. Surely that situation couldn't have continued to fuel the plot of her every appearance as time went on?

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on April 10, 2016, 05:05:20 PM
Sadly, it seems both Tales and J&F were the lowest selling digests of their time. This led Archie Comics to conclude that digests, other than the Betty & Veronica digests, HAD to have Archie's name in the title. This led to Jughead & Friends to be replaced by Jughead & Archie. Tales From Riverdale was replaced either by World Of Archie or Archie's Funhouse.

There was a very, very brief moment where ALL the digests were going to be replaced by "Super Digests." (I swear that's what they were going to be called! Very quickly, though, someone got cold feet about using the word "super" in a title so they were going to be called something else at one point.) These were going to be larger, bigger digests. It actually sounded like a bold idea, but as I said this was a very brief moment. For reasons I never learned, the "Super Digests" idea was scrapped and the digests remained the size they are.

"Super Digests"... I wonder if that's what later turned out to be called DOUBLE DOUBLE (ever so briefly) and currently are known as JUMBO COMICS digests? Or perhaps more logically at that point in time (2010), "Super Digests" was briefly considered as the name to replace "Double Digests" for branding purposes, since they were then on the verge of discontinuing all 96-page digests, and that made the word "double" somewhat irrelevant.

I'm glad you brought up what replaced what digest, as I actually spent some time researching that to figure out how the various different digest titles evolved. TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST replaced LAUGH DIGEST, which ended a couple of months before with #200 (Apr 2005). JUGHEAD & FRIENDS replaced the previous (96 page) JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST the following month, when it also ended with issue #200. I'm guessing the two earlier digest titles were among the lowest-selling to begin with, and they just chose to end them as long as they were reaching a nice round milestone number. When TALES and JUGHEAD & FRIENDS finally did end their runs with issues 38 and 39 respectively (July & Aug 2010), it was because ACP chose at that point to discontinue all the 96-page digests in the latter part of 2010, so those two titles weren't actually replaced by anything. Although sales may have been low, I doubt that they were any lower than they'd been when they were publishing LAUGH DIGEST or JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST, so don't blame yourself. Apparently consumers just overwhelmingly preferred the Double Digests at that point in time, so that was the end of the 96-pagers.

Around the same time, ARCHIE COMICS DIGEST was cancelled (with issue #267, Sept 2010) and replaced by WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST, followed by the long-running ARCHIE'S PALS 'n' GALS DOUBLE DIGEST (begun in 1992) ending with the Nov 2010 issue (#146) and being replaced by the new ARCHIE & FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #1, while BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #208 simply changed its name to B & V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST, picking up the previous digest's numbering with issue #209 (Jan 2011, and continuing to present). ARCHIE & FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST ran 33 issues (Dec 2010 through Jan 2014) before being cancelled and replaced by ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #1 (Mar 2014). The current Jughead digest title, JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST, replaced JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST (which had begun back in 1989); #200 (Feb 2014) was the last, as with LAUGH and JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE digests. I guess ACP just liked cancelling things when they reached nice round numbers (the original LAUGH comic book was cancelled with issue #400).

Here's a spreadsheet showing the complete history of Archie's various digest titles (TMNT and SONIC excluded). Short run titles are in RED, while digest titles still ongoing today are in BOLD.
Archie Digest History (as of 2016)

nuageo

Happy #NationalSiblingDay from the Blossoms! #Riverdale



nuageo

ATTENTION SPOILERS !!!!

10 April 2016 (new info)
Riverdale (The CW) pilot preview: THE teen soap of the late 2010s?
http://season-zero.com/riverdale-the-cw-pilot-preview/

Great Gazoo

Quote from: nuageo on April 10, 2016, 09:09:53 PM
ATTENTION SPOILERS !!!!

10 April 2016 (new info)
Riverdale (The CW) pilot preview: THE teen soap of the late 2010s?
http://season-zero.com/riverdale-the-cw-pilot-preview/
The last paragraph says This modernized, energized, darkened, and respectful version has everything..... 

I can somewhat agree with modernized, energized, and darkened, but it is so far from respecting the original Archie comics line it is not even funny.

old_jughead

Being compared to Desperate Housewives is promising, but the lack of trashiness is worrying.

DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: old_jughead on April 11, 2016, 03:08:26 AM
Being compared to Desperate Housewives is promising, but the lack of trashiness is worrying.

Do you think it might benefit by a title change from "Riverdale" to "Desperate Comic Book Publishers"...?  :2funny:

nuageo

Greg Berlanti on #Riverdale + Archie and Jughead's relationship!


Great Gazoo

Quote from: nuageo on April 11, 2016, 02:44:17 PM
Greg Berlanti on #Riverdale + Archie and Jughead's relationship!


Just another kick in the face to the comics. Archie and Jughead's friendship went way back to their childhood days. Just another reason to say that this show is just the names of the comic characters and nothing else.

old_jughead

I think they were still childhood friends but they had a recent falling out and won't be friends again until near the end of the season.

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