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Mar 10 2024 11:04pm
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/

Mar 03 2024 2:17pm
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/

What comics have you been reading?

Started by irishmoxie, March 30, 2016, 10:49:35 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on October 03, 2018, 03:47:07 PM
Betty and Veronica is the last digest I'm subscribed to and I'm not sure why.  My subscription has another 10 issues or so and I'll probably renew it, assuming they're still publishing it, just to have a digest coming in.  I can't quite cut the cord all the way for some reason even though I've seen most of what's in all of them.

Same for me, I let all the other digest subs expire. I figure it's still worthwhile even if I've read half the stories before. The reason I let my sub for B&V Friends expire was, for some reason I don't quite understand, it seems to be mailed from some place different than the regular B&V digest. I've noticed even the plastic bags and the labels are slightly different. That alone wouldn't cause me to let the sub expire, but for some reason it always seems to arrive a week or more late (probably because it's mailed from somewhere else), and more frequently suffers damage from P.O. handling as a result. The regular B&V digest always seems to arrive on time (or at most a day or two later than comic shops), and if anything, is likely to arrive even earlier than in comic shops. So I just let the B&V Friends sub expire, and now order it through my LCS.

I let all three Archie digest subs expire even earlier (well, Funhouse was just cancelled on me, and I never subbed to Archie and Me), but I'm thinking of maybe starting to get the 1000 Page Comics bricks again. One thing I noticed about those is that they don't reprint any of the non-Archie/B&V/Jughead/Archie & Friends stories, so I feel like I still want to get both B&V digest because of the Sabrina and Josie stories (and possibly Cheryl; I don't know if those make it into the 1000-pagers). But it seems like anything non-Archie (like Wilbur or That Wilkin Boy) had stopped being printed in the three Archie digest titles some while back, so it wouldn't be a concern, and at least that way I'd get to (eventually) read the new lead stories from the Archie digests.

DeCarlo Rules

ARCHIE #699 - So now I know what happened in ARCHIE #1-32. Of those, I'd only read #1, 2, 20-22 and 32 prior to this, and it seems like more pages of this condensed reprint were devoted to that issue #32 than to any other single issue. It was a little "the story so far"/"previously in ARCHIE...", but I bet you could have shrunk the essential stories of those first 32 issues of ARCHIE down to about 8 issues, and they'd have read perfectly fine as normal comics. I already ordered #700 (more to get the Mike Allred variant cover than anything else).

DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES #1 - They're just dropping "Walt" and the possessive 's from the title and renumbering it. Otherwise the same as the previous WDC&S.

ASGARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #2 - Kinda bored with this; it might be my last issue.

    A bunch of this year's Halloween Comic Fest issues (these ship to comic shops weeks in advance of the actual week of Halloween, so I got to read them earlier than most people):

APOSIMZ SAMPLER - HCF 2018 - Not sure if it was enough to convince me totally, but I took a chance and ordered the first volume of the TP collection.

SHIBUYA GOLDFISH #1 - HCF 2018 - I think this is the first horror manga I've read that's drawn in a traditional shonen manga ("boys' comics") style. Most horror manga I've seen has been in the generally less-cartoony/more realistically-drawn seinin manga ("young men's comics") style. It's a weird contrast, with high school sophomores as the main protagonists. The plot is simple enough: on an afternoon daytrip to Shibuya (a trendy shopping district), all of a sudden monstrously huge goldfish appear, swimming in thin air, attacking people and eating them, and talking. A weird premise for sure. Not sure how I feel about this one. The art style is just "okay". May have to think about it a while before ordering the TP collection.

JUNJI ITO'S FRANKENSTEIN - HCF 2018 - I've been a fan of Junji Ito's work for a while now. Already pre-ordered the hardcover collection that this is a preview of. His art style looks a little different here. It might be an earlier work of his, before he quite refined his current style, or maybe it's just that this work is set in the late 1700s, while most of his other horror manga is set in modern-day Japan. And of course, the style of horror (since it's an adaptation of Mary Shelley's book) is different than the type of stories that Ito writes for himself. I must own at least a half-dozen comic adaptations of the original novel, but I never seem to tire of reading the story again, as long as I like the artwork. Each adaptation tends to focus on different things from the original story, to a certain extent, so they're all different to some degree.

BATTLE ANGEL ALITA: HOMECOMING - HCF 2018 - I've already been getting all the ALITA deluxe hardcover collections, so this one is a no-brainer. (I'd already pre-ordered the HC). The full version is also a deluxe HC collection of four stories which haven't previously been translated into English.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS UNIVERSE: GENESIS #0 - HCF 2018 - This one was just sample pages from earlier-published American Mythology ERB comics, no new material.

PELLUCIDAR: FEAR ON FOUR WORLDS #1 (Part 3 of 4)
ZORRO: THE SWORDS OF HELL #1 (of 4)
LONE RANGER VOL 3 #1
NEW LIEUTENANTS OF METAL #4 (of 4)
GAMMA #1 (of 4)
TANK GIRL ALL STARS #4 (of 4)

Other stuff I got which haven't read yet:
THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 03 - I've only had time to skim it quickly. They added more recent reprints of the complete stories from COSMO #1, BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER - AT THE MOVIES #1, and ARCHIE #32 (one of the half-dozen issues I'd actually read before) at the end of the book. Other than that, I can't say exactly what might have been added, or more importantly, omitted,  from the prior Best of Archie Comics Book 3 TP collection just yet, until I do a page-by-page comparison. Full review to follow sometime within a week or so. At any rate, there are few (if any) hardcover collections of comics you can buy with comparable page count, for a cover price of only $20. Similar items from most other publishers can run anywhere in the $40 to $75 cover price range (usually depending on the anticipated number of copies they will sell, and how "deluxe" the book is). Even some of the larger trade paperback collections of older comics now retail for $35-40.

THE COMPLETE COSMO THE MERRY MARTIAN TP and COSMO VOL 01: SPACE ACES TP - I actually got the first of these a while ago when it first came out, but I thought (since I'd already read the whole thing in digital format a few years back) I'd wait until the rebooted COSMO came out in trade collection and review them together. Not sure how long it'll take me to get to these, but I guess it'll depend on which of this stuff I decide to read first. Also, at this writing, I'm about 1/4 of the way through the complete 26XX-page DEATH NOTE, and I'm sure I'll be wanting to read more of that this week as well.

MENAGE A 3 GN VOL 02 (by Dave Lumsden and Gisele Lagace) - Reprinting volumes 3 and 4 of the earlier, smaller-sized paperbacks at about twice the former page size. I like seeing Gisele's art at the larger size.

DeCarlo Rules

#1502
THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS Deluxe Edition HC - The short and dirty (and somewhat peeved) review:

Here's the contents listing of the new HC edition:
key   DECADE   
SOURCE, title, writer, pencil artist
reprints NEW to this edition in BLUE

   1940s
PEP 36   The 3-11 Club   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
ARCHIE 4   Spring Fever   Ed Goggin   Harry Sahle
ARCHIE 16   Monkey Shines   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
ARCHIE 7   Time for Trouble   Harry Sahle   Harry Sahle
PEP 48   Camera Bugs   Ed Goggin   Harry Sahle
   1950s
LITTLE ARCHIE 2   The Cook-Off   Bob Bolling   Bob Bolling
JUGHEAD'S FOLLY 1   no title   Joe Edwards   Joe Edwards
   1960s
LIFE WITH ARCHIE 16 Hi-Jinx and Deep Divers   Sy Reit   Bob White
ARCHIE'S PALS N GALS 29   Beetlemania   Frank Doyle   Samm Schwartz
JOSIE 19   The Hold Up   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
JUGHEAD 119   Pardon My Computer   George Gladir   Samm Schwartz
EVERYTHING'S ARCHIE   Visit to a Small Panic   George Gladir   Harry Lucey
   1970s
LAUGH 276   The Bye Bye Blues   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
RIVERDALE HIGH 18   Kong Phoo   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
ARCHIE 264   Minding a Star   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
REGGIE AND ME 104   Costume Caper   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
B&V v1 277   Melvin's Angels   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
   1980s
ARCHIE 292   Verve to Conserve   George Gladir   Dan DeCarlo Jr.
ARCHIE 331   Saturday's Child   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo Jr.
BETTY'S DIARY 1   The Art Lesson   Kathleen Webb   Dan DeCarlo
GIANT SERIES 590   Back From the Future   Rich Margopoulis   Rex Lindsey
   1990s
NEW ARCHIES DIGEST 10   Mystery of the Mummy's Curse   Mike Pellowski   Henry Scarpelli
CHERYL BLOSSOM 15   Cheryl's Beach Bash   Dan Parent   Dan Parent
   2000s
ARCHIE'S WEIRD MYSTERIES 6   A Familiar Old Haunt   Paul Castiglia   Fernando Ruiz
SABRINA 70   Spell It Out   Tania Del Rio   Tania Del Rio
   2010s
JUGHEAD 200   Something Ventured, Something Gained   Tom Root   Rex Lindsey
ARCHIE 636   The Great Switcheroo!   Tania Del Rio   Gisele Lagace
COSMO 1   no title   Ian Flynn   Tracy Yardley
BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER - AT THE MOVIES 1
   Riot on the Set!   Bill Golliher   Dan Parent
   Movie Mix-Up!   Bill Golliher   Dan Parent
ARCHIE v2 32   no title   Mark Waid & Ian Flynn   Audrey Mok


And now, the BURN -
(Stories from the 2013 Best of Archie Comics TP edition which were dropped from the new HC edition in order to make way for those reprinted stories listed above in blue)
ARCHIE 2    Sir Archibald of the Round Table   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
PEP 37   Oscar   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
ARCHIE ANNUAL 8   Poor Little Rich Whirl   George Frese   George Frese
ARCHIE 123   Over-Joyed   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
JUGHEAD 120   Voice Control   Frank Doyle   Samm Schwartz
ARCHIE 178   Stick With It   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
TV LAUGH-OUT 86   (JOSIE in) Scratch One Clown   unknown   Dan DeCarlo Jr.
ARCHIE AND ME 144      Plight of the Perilous Pike   Bob Bolling   Bob Bolling


Well, they sacrificed quite a few GOOD stories in there in order to utilize the newly-added pages as an advertising tool. And not just those pages, either. There were several other stories that WERE included again, that COULD have been dropped because they appear in other collections like Archie Americana, etc. But no... if ACP still has those TPs in stock, then the stories still might function to sell some dusty old copies of Sabrina manga collections or something. In other words, what's included or not included in this "Deluxe Edition" isn't being determined on a basis of what is best or NOT best, but what best functions to sell you other Archie Comics trade collections. That's how "The BEST of Archie Comics" is determined by ACP. So when it came to cutting stories from the older edition, rather than keep in reprints that were unique to that volume and appear in no other collections, they left in stories like "Kong Phoo" (recently reprinted in the ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH TP collection), and "Costume Caper" (which also appears in ARCHIE AMERICANA: THE BRONZE AGE - along with "Kong Phoo" again). And you know, even before the cutting began, THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS 3 was not as strong a collection of stories as the previous two books. Now, they've made it even worse. And I DID expect them to include recent reprints at the end (no gripes about COSMO or B&V), but an issue of ARCHIE (#32) from two months ago, plus the same 5-page preview of ARCHIE 1941 #1 that we've already seen in ALL their floppy comics? >:(  >:(  >:(

Keep your old TP edition, if you have it.  I'm not inclined to buy a Deluxe Edition Vol. 4 HC, if there ever is one.

As an aside, there's a quote in the book from Victor Gorelick in reference to ARCHIE 1941 as being "... one of the best things Archie Comics has ever done. In fact, it may be the best thing." That is either complete BS snake-oil salesmanship, or jf he really believes that, VG has completely lost it.

rusty

I finished up My Hero Academia 13-15 and My Hero Academia Vigilantes 1-2 earlier this week.  It is a fun series where just about everybody has a superpower (called a quirk), though only some are licensed to use them.
I read Soul Eater Not 1-5 and while it was okay, I decided to pass on reading the regular Soul Eater series after looking through the first volume.
Over the last couple of days, I read Black Butler 1-25.  In Victorian times, a young boy whose parents are slaughtered is kidnapped and tortured.  He escapes by making a deal for his soul with a devil who will help him get revenge.  He also happens to be the heir to an Earldom where the Earl works directly for Queen Victoria.  The devil (Sebastian) becomes the boy's butler and helps him in any number of ways.  I enjoyed this series quite a bit.  I wasn't really sure in reading the description, but the art is decent and the stories have been pretty good for the most part.
I also read Telepathic Wanderers 1-3 today and am waiting on the fourth (and final) book to arrive at my library.  This is an older Tokyopop series, but it has been very good.

DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: rusty on October 05, 2018, 08:01:55 PM
I finished up My Hero Academia 13-15 and My Hero Academia Vigilantes 1-2 earlier this week.  It is a fun series where just about everybody has a superpower (called a quirk), though only some are licensed to use them.

How would you rate those on a scale of 1 to 10? I remember reading one of those FCBD preview books of MHA, back when it had just come out from Viz. My thoughts at the time were that it seemed like a definite reaction to the breakout popularity of One-Punch Man (which began as a webmanga in 2009, and was then remade as a print manga in 2012, a couple of years prior to MHA's debut). I mean that MHA seemed to follow a similar general pattern as far as how its superhero universe was set up (as opposed to most superhero manga, which tend to either follow the Japanese model of the 'henshin hero' genre, or the American superhero model, or some combination of the two). One-Punch Man has nothing to do with the 'hero high'-type training academy trope, but that could easily have been influenced by a lot of earlier things (including the original X-Men, New Mutants, Avengers Academy, or movies like Disney's 2005 film Sky High). The FCBD preview floppy comic was enough to give me the general premise of how the universe worked, but I didn't like the art style (which reminded me a little of Yu-Gi-Oh) anywhere near as much as One-Punch Man, and the FCBD preview comic didn't have nearly enough pages to get a true flavor of it, so I kind of just shrugged MHA off as a One-Punch Man bandwagon jumper, I guess. I never imagined that it would become as successful as it seems to have (and if it gets both an anime adaptation AND a spinoff manga series so soon, it must be pretty popular; then again, I don't always tend to like what's most popular in anime/manga).

Black Butler sounds interesting too, so I'll probably check out the first volume of that, if it's still easy to order a copy through Diamond.

DeCarlo Rules

SPACE PIRATE CAPTAIN HARLOCK: The Classic Collection HC Vol. 2 (of 3) by Leiji Matsumoto - This 1977 manga sounds like it would be a simple space opera adventure, and it is, in part -- but there's a surprising depth to its powerful themes and sometimes-moving characterization.

KAFKAESQUE: Fourteen Stories OGN HC (adapted from Franz Kafka) by Peter Kuper - Didn't realize it at the time I ordered it, but 9 of these stories had been in the earlier Kafka/Kuper collection GIVE IT UP! and Other Short Stories, which I already own. Still, the remaining five new adaptations were definitely worth having, so I guess I would have bought it anyway. Standouts among the newer ones were the longer adaptations of "The Burrow" and "In the Penal Colony".

MÉNAGE À 3 VOL 02 TP (Udon Entertainment) by Gisèle Lagacé & David Lumsdon - I'd love to give this a full critique, both positive and negative, but I can't... here, without discussing its adult themes (if anyone's that interested, just PM me). So I'll just say I have mixed feelings about some aspects of it, but I absolutely adore Gisèle's artwork. (Not to be TOO mysterious about it, but let's just say that if the reader were really clueless, they'd have to conclude upon reading this that most of Montreal's population was bisexual, with a definite leaning in the gay direction, because that's the theme this comedy relies most heavily on.) I only wish it could be in full color, though Gisèle makes great use of spotting her blacks and applying gray tones and patterns.

DEATH NOTE [All-In-One Edition] TP by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata - Chapters 23 to 40 (of 108 + bonus chapter); pages 515 to 900 (of 2398). As I stated earlier, this continues to be a real page-turner, with new plot twists coming at the reader all the time.

DeCarlo Rules

#1506
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 23, 2018, 04:07:22 PM
One other thing I noticed was that ACP had two full-page ads in that issue, but I guess they just love to flush an opportunity to make some money right down the drain. What are the ads for? The New Riverdale trades and the Riverdale TV series. Uh... yeah, thanks for bringing those to our attention, we somehow just spaced out and plain didn't realize they existed.

Apparently they don't bother targeting the ads to the consumer base of the magazine they're advertising in. It's for fans of BRONZE AGE comics, you dummies!!! Instead of trying to target the ads to spotlight the creme-de-la-creme of their existing trade collections of classic Archie material (and oh, as long as they're at it... how about selling some of those Red/Dark Circle trades in a magazine whose usual readership is superhero fans?). What about selling some digest subscriptions and 1000-Page Comics bricks? No, they waste the ad space on something pretty much everyone already knows about. If they care about such things (in itself doubtful), BACK ISSUE's readers have already bought the comics or trades, and watched the show, but what they might NOT be aware of is the digests are still being published (because you don't really SEE them much in comic book stores), and that ACP has an extensive line of material targeted towards readers who already LOVE the old classic stories from the 1970s and 1980s. The Best of Archie Comics Deluxe HCs? "Archie Comics Presents..."? Archie Americana? They could easily have squeezed the covers of 25 different TP collections onto a single magazine-sized ad page. Nah, just toss 'em the same old ads we run in the digests and regular floppy comics we publish. It's not the same audience, you idiots!!

It's funny -- I was just flipping through my copy of COSMO Vol. 1: SPACE ACES trade collection, and there's an ad on the inside back cover for classic Archie trade paperbacks that's nearly exactly what I was picturing in my mind for what ACP should have used for one of those ad pages in BACK ISSUE #107 for. It only pictures 20 collected editions (but this ad is appearing on a page sized 6"x 9", not the larger magazine-size 8.5"x 11" page), but they're almost precisely the ones I'd have chosen to try to sell to readers of a comic book fanzine dedicated to Bronze Age comics.

Pictured were the covers of:
Row 1 - The Best of Archie Comics Deluxe Edition HC Vols. 1 & 2; Archie Americana Vols. 1-3 TP (Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age)
Row 2 - The Best of Archie Comics: BETTY & VERONICA Vols. 1 & 2 TP; Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Complete Collection v1 TP; Betty & Veronica Spectacular TP; Archie at Riverdale High TP
Row 3 - ARCHIE'S BIG BOOK Vols. 1-4 TP; Jughead's Time Police TP
Row 4 - Archie Giant Comics Roll TP; Archie Giant Comics Surprise TP; The Best of JOSIE and the Pussycats TP; Archie's Coloring Book; YOUR PAL ARCHIE TP

I bet they could have sold some of those collections to readers of BACK ISSUE, too.

DeCarlo Rules

#1507
I think I would have replaced the two Archie Giant Comics trades they showed in that COSMO TP ad page with the hardcovers The Art of Betty & Veronica and The Art of Archie Comics: The Covers, and added another row showing the covers of the five most recent Archie 1000 Page Comics digests, but other than that, the collections shown in the COSMO TP ad were the ones I'd have included in an ad aimed at BACK ISSUE's readers. And maybe replace the Archie at Riverdale High TP (I don't think it's really that good a collection, despite the appropriate vintage) with... ARCHIE MEETS KISS. Hey, they're Bronze Age fans, so some of them are bound to like KISS, right?

BettyReggie

#1508
I read each of these digests for 12 minutes each
Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #292
Betty & Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #260 & #262
B & V Friends Jumbo Comics Digest #260 & #264
World Of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #82

rusty

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on October 06, 2018, 01:16:31 AM
Quote from: rusty on October 05, 2018, 08:01:55 PM
I finished up My Hero Academia 13-15 and My Hero Academia Vigilantes 1-2 earlier this week.  It is a fun series where just about everybody has a superpower (called a quirk), though only some are licensed to use them.

How would you rate those on a scale of 1 to 10? I remember reading one of those FCBD preview books of MHA, back when it had just come out from Viz. My thoughts at the time were that it seemed like a definite reaction to the breakout popularity of One-Punch Man (which began as a webmanga in 2009, and was then remade as a print manga in 2012, a couple of years prior to MHA's debut).
Black Butler sounds interesting too, so I'll probably check out the first volume of that, if it's still easy to order a copy through Diamond.
I've enjoyed My Hero Academia quite a bit.  I had two friends recommend the series to me within the last couple of months.  I also helped out at a graphic novel booth part time at the Chicago Comic Con in August and the My Hero Academia volumes were very popular.  MHA does have a focus of the training academy plus there is a tournament or two mixed in, but they are done in a pretty interesting way and the tournament doesn't drag on as many tend to do.  There is also a mentoring aspect involved with the main character being mentored by the hero who gave him his powers.  Students at the academy also end up interning at superhero agencies.  All in all, I would give the series 8/10 and I think it is worth checking out.
There are actually two spinoff series.  Vigilantes is the first one and it focuses on several people who hunt down bad guys and do other good deeds while outside the law since they are not licensed heroes.  It crosses over with the main series tangentially, but can be read on its own.  I've enjoyed the first two volumes as much as the main series.  The second spinoff is due in the U.S. next spring.
I haven't read One Punch Man yet, though I do have a copy of the first volume and plan to give it a try.
If you do give Black Butler a try, let me know what you think.

DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: rusty on October 08, 2018, 09:35:09 PM
I've enjoyed My Hero Academia quite a bit.  I had two friends recommend the series to me within the last couple of months.  I also helped out at a graphic novel booth part time at the Chicago Comic Con in August and the My Hero Academia volumes were very popular.  MHA does have a focus of the training academy plus there is a tournament or two mixed in, but they are done in a pretty interesting way and the tournament doesn't drag on as many tend to do.  There is also a mentoring aspect involved with the main character being mentored by the hero who gave him his powers.  Students at the academy also end up interning at superhero agencies.  All in all, I would give the series 8/10 and I think it is worth checking out.
There are actually two spinoff series.  Vigilantes is the first one and it focuses on several people who hunt down bad guys and do other good deeds while outside the law since they are not licensed heroes.  It crosses over with the main series tangentially, but can be read on its own.  I've enjoyed the first two volumes as much as the main series.  The second spinoff is due in the U.S. next spring.
I haven't read One Punch Man yet, though I do have a copy of the first volume and plan to give it a try.
If you do give Black Butler a try, let me know what you think.

Thanks, rusty!  I was actually thinking I might start with the MHA Vigilantes spinoff because it would be easier to catch up on that one sooner, then proceed back to the main series, if I liked the spinoff well enough. I'll definitely do that now.

DeCarlo Rules

DEATH NOTE [All-In-One Edition] TP by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata - Chapters 41 to 80 (of 108 + bonus chapter); pages 901 to 1762 (of 2398). There are so many rules for humans using the Death Note that I'm starting to get confused about whether some of those rules were already broken prior to being made known to the reader. I wasn't originally thinking of it as such, but it occurs to me that this is a supervillain story. A guy who gets supernatural powers and uses them to kill and manipulate people through fear, whose true identity is kept secret, and whose ultimate goal is to rule the world is a supervillain story, right? Even if he is a young, good-looking guy whose goal is to murder criminals in order to make the world a better place, he's a just a cunning sociopath. And he's the main protagonist. If the main antagonist opposing him (whose true identity is also secret) had superpowers as well, then I guess this would be a superhero story, but a supervillain story isn't so different.

BettyReggie

I read each of these for 12 minutes .
Betty & Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #260
Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #292
World Of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #82
B & V Friends Jumbo Comics Digest #264

DeCarlo Rules

#1513
DEATH NOTE [All-In-One Edition] TP by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata - Chapters 81 to 108+bonus chapter (of 108 + bonus chapter); pages 1763 to 2398 (of 2398). That was ONE long read! ... but interesting all the way through. It ended just how it HAD to end, because we know almost from the beginning of the story how it was going to end -- the shinigami (Japanese death god) Ryuk told Light Yagami (the protagonist-villain of the story) how it would end, and indeed that's exactly how it ends. Hope that's not too big of a spoiler, because it's in there almost from the start. I really enjoyed this.

This was originally published as 12 tankobon (regular-sized paperback books) which would have cost $9.99 per volume SRP, so $119.88 total before any discount. Or I could have purchased a complete boxed set of all 12 original volumes for $114.99 SRP, that included a special 13th volume, "Death Note: How To Read" which contains all of the shinigami rules for humans using the Death Note, plus a character guide and detailed plot summary of the series. It's not strictly needed as part of the main story, but it did originally contain the bonus chapter which was later reprinted in the All-In-One Edition. The All-In-One Edition had a SRP of $39.99, so it was a huge savings over buying each of the individual tankobon volumes separately, or buying the boxed set. The "How To Read" extra Volume 13 is also available separately, and I was interested enough in the series as a whole to order a copy of that (SRP $14.99). So as a result of having 'missed the boat' when the series was first running and kind of a hot item (manga-wise), I wind up paying less than half what it would have cost me otherwise to read the whole series -- and I think it was probably better as a result of my having read it over a very short period of time. This is one time where the old saying "you snooze you lose" proved to be untrue. I guess my next move is to buy (or watch streaming somewhere online) the anime adaptation (not so interested in the live-action films) of Death Note which spun off from the manga.

The downside of saving money in reading the All-In-One Edition of Death Note was that at 2400 (5"x7") pages, the book was over 3 inches thick, and rather heavy (I didn't actually weigh it), and to try to hold it in your hands for any length of time at a comfortable enough distance for optimal viewing was somewhat awkward and tiring. I found myself, on several occasions of prolonged reading sessions, propping the book up on a small empty box on a desk (or on a lap desk) so I wouldn't need to actually hold it up close enough to read the pages for hours on end. The extreme thickness of the book also tends to make it want to close itself unless your thumb is inserted between the pages you're reading or you have some heavier piece of cardboard to lie across the top or bottom of both pages to keep it from closing. I wouldn't want to own another book of this size, I think. It's somewhat of a problem already with the Archie 1000 Page Comics collections, although those are more easily viewable from a somewhat greater distance and are less than half the number of pages -- plus they're much faster to read than 1000 pages of something like Death Note. The Archie Giant Comics collections are actually more of the ideal digest-sized format in terms of thickness and page count, but when you compare them to the 1000-pagers in terms of cost-per-page, nowhere near as good of a bang-for-your-buck bargain... so it's a trade off, sacrificing the ease-of-reading experience for getting more for your dollar. The Giant Comics digest format recently reduced its original page-count without reducing the cover price, while it seems that the 1000 Page Comics are pretty much locked into the page count they have -- they'd have to change the title, which would be too obvious. I suppose they could increase the cover price, but people tend to notice things like that immediately, while page-count is something you wouldn't probably notice before making the decision to purchase.

DeCarlo Rules

#1514


THE COMPLETE COSMO THE MERRY MARTIAN TP by Sy Reit and Bob White - This was a fun six issue series (the trade collection also includes "Good Guys of the Galaxy", a Tom DeFalco/Fernando Ruiz semiparody of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy from ARCHIE 655, which happens to be my personal favorite of their collaborations, and a 5-page ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST story written & drawn by Fernando, both stories featuring guest appearances by Cosmo, plus a couple more only-tangentially-related 5-pagers written by Dan Parent, and a complete reprint of the 1st issue of the new COSMO series). The Sy Reit/Bob White collaboration on COSMO, which originally appeared in 1958-59, was unusual in style, as well as in being essentially one long (if episodic) story, continued from issue to issue. It's hard to think of any other standard comic books that were doing that at the time. Absurdity and gags are the main focus here, plus just a teensy amount of actual factual science educating readers on the basics of what was known about the Moon, Mars, Venus and Saturn at the time. Characterization is fairly minimal, with the standout character being Orbi, a likeable but devout coward, who's always getting into trouble (and thus helping drive the plot, such as it is, forward). The basic plot of the series is a travelogue around the solar system, discovering what life exists on other worlds. It has a certain goofy nostalgic charm that amuses me, however, particularly in the way it's drawn. Martians as drawn by Bob White look a lot like Al Capp's schmoos (from Li'l Abner) or slightly overweight bowling pins. The body proportions vary a little otherwise, as drawn by Fernando Ruiz in the two more modern stories.





COSMO VOL 01: SPACE ACES TP by Ian Flynn and Tracy Yardley - I really liked this reboot, despite its lack of strict adherence to the earlier versions of the characters by Reit & White. Given that there wasn't a lot of characterization in the original to begin with, that was probably a good decision. I'm not sure a straight-up modern version of the earlier Cosmo would have really worked. The character that survives the transition mostly intact is Orbi, who retains his character as a dedicated coward but a nice guy. Cosmo is somewhat younger, more of an adventurous/heroic sort of space explorer, and Astra (Cosmo's girlfriend and sometimes damsel-in-distress in the original series) is given a more active role as the pilot of Cosmo's spaceship, the "Ufo" (pronounced "You-foe"), and there's a friendly rivalry/romantic tension between her and Cosmo. Orbi's doglike Martian pet Jojo in the original series becomes a metamorphic alien pet, giving him in effect a superpower the rest of the crew don't have, and making him very useful to have around. The elderly bearded Martian scientist-inventor Prof. Thimk from the original series is missing from the rebooted version altogether, replaced by the much younger female Martian scientist-inventor Dr. Medulla. It was a good idea to add more (and more proactive) female characters to the updated COSMO. The final new addition to the cast is Max Strongjaw, an American astronaut of the near future who is rescued by Cosmo & Co. when his ship has technical difficulties on the first earth-mission to Mars. Max is more or less a parody of the usual square-jawed, typical American space-hero type. Not too bright, and more than a little xenophobic, but with a heart-of-gold, who gradually comes to a grudging friendship/rivalry of sorts with Cosmo and his crew. This was a good cast, and the series as a whole was a valiant attempt to launch a new series which would have been a ACP-owned IP replacement for the loss of the SONIC and MEGA MAN Archie Action imprint titles. At least they were willing to give this a shot, for which I applaud them. Who knows, maybe the graphic novel could be discovered by someone interested in turning the characters into an animated series. Tracy Yardley is a very talented artist, working in a pleasant, attractive modern style that would not be out of place among cartoons aired somewhere like Nickelodeon (or is it just Nick now?) or Cartoon Network (or is it just CN now?). One could but hope. The collection also includes all of the variant covers of the floppy comic from issues #1-5, along with character profile pages offering more background tidbits of information, and some sketch pages showing Yardley's design development for the series. At least you should buy the trade collection, if you didn't give the 5 individual issues of the floppy comic version a try.

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