Welcome to Archie Comics Fan Forum. Please login or sign up.

March 19, 2024, 05:12:54 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Recent Topics

Shoutbox

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

#1620
Quote from: SAGG on February 02, 2019, 04:53:30 AM
Anyone reads Webtoons? There are some terrific stories on there from South Kore (translated, of course), such as Lookism, True Beauty, Unordinary, and others...

"Adventures of God" looks pretty good. How did THAT not get made into an Adult Swim or Comedy Central animated show?

Oh, and Dean Haspiel (THE FOX) is on there, too -- with his "New Brooklyn" superhero universe that includes The Red Hook (since issued in print as a graphic novel by Image), and the most recent sequel, Warcry.

On the technical side, you can tell Webtoons is aimed squarely at tablet and smartphone readers, because the reader interface works pretty crappy on a landscape-mode screen on a laptop or desktop (I can't even view a full panel vertically top-to-bottom without reducing it in size). Webtoons' vertical scrolling of panels might be fine for swiping in portrait mode on a smaller screen, but I find it annoying to have to keep scrolling, because it's a mouse button I have to keep holding down to keep moving the slider bar. Left-to-right horizontal panel progression with simple back-and-forward buttons to click would make the reading experience a lot less tedious. And THAT makes me not want to spend much time on the site.

SAGG

I prefer reading it on a smartphone. Much better for me...  :smitten:

DeCarlo Rules

#1622
Quote from: SAGG on February 02, 2019, 08:09:27 PM
I prefer reading it on a smartphone. Much better for me...  :smitten:

It's kind of an Apple design/control philosophy though... that sort of thinking of "let's reduce the number of user options or controls; we're not worried about flexibility or offering different choices for different users, let's just make a one-size-fits-all thing that fits the profile of the majority of users". If that doesn't happen to fit your preferences or type of use, too bad. It's obvious that the user interface is designed to fit a portrait mode screen, as opposed to a landscape mode one. So they're automatically dismissing potential readers using laptops or PCs as a statistically negligible audience. The print comic analog to this reading experience is... a roll of toilet paper, where the panels can take up any number of sheets. Okay then, there are other webcomics sites, too.

DeCarlo Rules

#1623
I've been spending a lot of time over the past week or so sifting through scans of Golden Age, public-domain comic books. In this specific instance, it's the comics published by Harvey Comics between the years 1941 and 1951. I can't recall what started me on this little project, but somehow I was on the ComicBookPlus website, and I happened to notice that they had scans of the entire run of Harvey Comics' GREEN HORNET title. A few years back, all that was posted was the covers and the "backup features" of each issue of Green Hornet. I should mention that GREEN HORNET was not a title that consisted entirely of stories about the Green Hornet. Instead, it had between 16 and 24 pages (more often on the lower side) of GH stories, and some of those were text stories of from 1 to 3 pages. It was a 52-page comic (64 pages during WWII), yet less than half those pages were devoted to Green Hornet. I'd always wanted to read all those Golden Age Green Hornet comics, but there was no way I could afford to collect that run of 47 issues (the first 6 were actually published by a different publisher than Harvey Comics). They're reasonably-priced compared to DC or Marvel Golden Age comic books, but there's just so few pages of Green Hornet in each issue. Anyway, I guess The Green Hornet Incorporated (which owns the rights to the character) had formerly objected to sites like Digital Comic Museum and ComicBookPlus posting scans of the Green Hornet comic books, even though (legally speaking) the copyrights on those comics were never renewed and had expired. Those sites just don't want to piss off the rights-holders and get involved in some legal contentiousness, even if they're completely within their rights in posting those scans. Anyway... maybe it had something to do with Dynamite Entertainment's active license in publishing Green Hornet comic books. Activity on that character has died down quite a bit now, and maybe GH Inc had a change of heart and relented. SO here was an opportunity to finally read (and own digital copies of) all those stories. I like to sift through each book individually, saving only the specific pages I'm interested in, and sorting them all into file folders by character. To make a long story short, not only did I sift through issues 7 through 47 of Harvey's GH title, saving just the Green Hornet stories, but I decided to take the opportunity to do the same with another long-running Harvey superhero title, BLACK CAT (which ran 29 issues as a superhero title before changing to BLACK CAT MYSTIC, a horror/suspense comic which no longer featured the title character). Then I went on to research other Harvey anthology titles of the Golden Age like SPEED Comics, CHAMP Comics, ALL-NEW Comics, and others that had a variety of different characters in each issue, some of the features being superhero stories. I made a list of the superheroes and which issues they appeared in, and then saved all those stories in their own folders, a complete archival collection for each character. At least, aside from Black Cat and Green Hornet, all the superhero characters who made less than twenty or so appearances, which amounted to less than 20 characters. That leaves only half-a-dozen relatively long-running characters for me to sort through issues of SPEED and GREEN HORNET and save copies of their stories in their own folders: Shock Gibson and Captain Freedom from SPEED Comics, and Spirit of '76 & The Zebra (both of whom continued from the first 4 issues of POCKET Comics), and Blonde Bomber from GREEN HORNET. I'm not trying to save every feature that ran in every title, not even every non-humor feature. Just the superheroes, which account for maybe 20 to 25 percent of the story pages of a typical Harvey comic from the 1940s. There were a LOT of short-running superhero features, a few medium-length runs, and very few long-running superheroes -- just the six I mentioned, plus Blonde Bomber which wasn't really a superhero feature, but I can make up my own rules about what to save, so I'm doing it!

I'll also save any work I find (and I'm surprised by how many different companies this guy worked for) by cartoonist Ed Wheelan, simply because I like his style, and there's never EVER been a collection of ANY of his work, to my knowledge. Wheelan's best known (if at all) by collectors for his work on a parody/melodrama strip called Minute Movies (originally "Midget Movies") that seems to have been the prototype that E.C. Segar followed when creating Thimble Theater (which later became just POPEYE). Wheelan was super-talented, easily on a par with Segar, but never seemed to find that magical character to make one of his strips a big hit with the public.

I did something like this once before when I sifted through all the Golden Age MLJ titles and saved all the superhero stories in their own digital collections. It's kind of labor-intensive, but it interests me and I learn a lot about the company and characters in the process. I already started saving a few characters out of Crestwood Publications' PRIZE Comics (Dick Briefer's New Adventures of Frankenstein and Ken Crossen's Green Lama) and I may extend that to all of the other Crestwood superhero characters, too.

Another interesting phenomenon to note is that while many trademarked characters from long-running newspaper strips (like DICK TRACY) are not posted on these scan-sharing sites, many ARE, so you can read newspaper reprints like Milton Caniff's TERRY AND THE PIRATES or Ham Fisher's JOE PALOOKA (both of them published in a long-running series by Harvey Comics) on DCM or CB+. One such strip I found while sifting through Harvey's titles was INVISIBLE SCARLET O'NEIL, Russel Stamm's newspaper strip which I've long wished for a collection of. Now I have (a digital) one, because I made it myself!

irishmoxie

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 31, 2019, 11:21:50 AM
MONICA ADVENTURES VOL. 1 & 2 (PapercutZ/CharmZ)


I'm really intrigued by this. Too bad it doesn't come digitally. Is it similar in tone to B&V or too kiddish? I've read some things from Papercutz. The Barbie series was definitely for kids while I enjoyed Chloe (originally a French comic).

DeCarlo Rules

#1625
Quote from: irishmoxie on February 06, 2019, 11:15:05 AM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 31, 2019, 11:21:50 AM
MONICA ADVENTURES VOL. 1 & 2 (PapercutZ/CharmZ)


I'm really intrigued by this. Too bad it doesn't come digitally. Is it similar in tone to B&V or too kiddish? I've read some things from Papercutz. The Barbie series was definitely for kids while I enjoyed Chloe (originally a French comic).

Huh! Now THAT is weird. According to the Papercutz website, their books are available digitally on ComiXology, Amazon Kindle, iBooks, GooglePlay, Nook, etc. ... BUT no MONICA ADVENTURES to be found among the many other Papercutz titles available. I wonder why?  Monica is distributed by Panini (one of the world's largest publishers of comics internationally) in Brazil, and at one time there was an English-language version of Monica Teen (their preferred title; translation software calls it "Monica's Youth Group" or "Monica's Young Gang" or something like that) being produced by Panini for distribution in South America (*see below*), but apparently that is no longer the case (which may or may not have anything to do with Papercutz acquiring the North American rights). For some reason I'm guessing, digital distribution was not included in the rights granted to Papercutz. Either that or Papercutz does not do same-day-and-date digital releases with the print comic versions of their titles - which I thought was industry standard now, but I could be wrong (?)

You can browse the past editions (in Portuguese) in the Monica Teen series (Turma da Mônica Jovem in Portuguese) at Panini's Brazilian website (just ask your browser to translate the page; it seems to work fine in Chrome) at https://loja.panini.com.br//panini/vitrines/msp-revistas-turma-da-monica-jovem.aspx  just to get some idea of what the series is like. It seems there have been three separate series of Turma da Mônica Jovem in Brazil since 2008; the first series is now simply called "First series", and it was followed by a "Series 1" and a "Series 2". I don't know if that means that there was a little bit of a reboot after the initial series, but I can see that the character designs changed somewhat between "First series" and "Series 1". The characters seem to be extremely adaptable to either the standard high-school life/rom-com situations, or to more 'fantasy adventure'-type stories. Some issues are standalone stories, while others are part of multipart story arcs (and there does seem to be some continuity within each series that leads me to think the stories should be read in the order published). The crossover with the Justice League happened because Panini also distributes Portuguese-language versions of DC Comics (and Marvel's too... not surprising since they were once OWNED by Marvel -- long story). The Monica's Gang-related titles (kid version, teen version, and several individual character spinoff titles) had 8 separate titles or issues crossing over with the DC characters.


And oh yeah -- THAT happened, too.

DeCarlo Rules

#1626
Out this week:

ARCHIE & FRIENDS MUSIC JAM #1

Apparently (I didn't think too hard about it at first, since I'm used to seeing seasonal one-shots for Xmas and Halloween) this is the start of a companion "ongoing" series of one shots, analogous to BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER, where they reprint 4 recent stories (this time from the ARCHIE digests instead of the B&V ones) of Archie & Friends, each issue having a different theme. All four stories in the first #1 issue are written & drawn by Dan Parent, but there is a teaser ad at the back of the book for the next forthcoming Archie & Friends one-shot, so I'd say it looks like another ongoing series (if people buy them) of one-shots. The stories all seemed mighty familiar (not surprisingly, since I read them all quite recently in the ARCHIE MODERN CLASSICS VOL. 1 TP), but presumably future issues in this series would be released before the "best of year" TP compilation.

I can't recall seeing any subscription ads anywhere for BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER, but they might just be waiting a while until the 'ongoing' status of these "one-shots" is firmly established before putting that option out there. Or maybe at $2.99 cover price, they can't really make a subscription price that seems attractive and still allow a decent profit, what with mailing costs for overhead. Then again, where are they going to place the ads... not in the digests, since that would tend to point out the obvious... that these stories are in fact recycled from VERY recent new digest lead stories. No, they should probably only advertise subscriptions for these titles in their floppy-format comics. It's a dilemma, but a subscription to the B&V FRIENDS FOREVER and ARCHIE & FRIENDS one-shots would solve the problem for those who like classic Archie stories, specifically in the floppy comic-book format, but don't necessarily care to spend $7 per issue on a reprint digest title, just to get ONE new 5-page story.



DeCarlo Rules

#1627
Here's some classic early Dan DeCarlo, from KATHY #10 (Feb. 1952, Standard Comics). The basic formula for all teen humor gags is the same. "Janey" could be Veronica, and "Leroy" could be Archie, and "Jasper" could be Reggie.



BettyReggie

I read each of the books for 12 minutes each
Banana Fish Volume #2
Egg Cream - Volume #1
The Prince & The Dressmaker


rusty

Anne Bonnie #7-9 - This pirate series from Blue Juice is fun.  A young girl with farsight is the main character.

Catalyst: Summit 10-12 - This continues to be a nice science fiction mystery series.  I've read a few other Catalyst books, but this is my favorite.

Nancy Drew: The Case of the Cold Case 1-5 - I liked this a lot more than the crossover with the Hardy Boys. I'd like to see more in the same vein.

Princeless vol. 1-7 - Adrienne Ashe is the youngest of King Ashe's seven daughters.  All of the daughters have been locked in towers with creatures to guard them until a prince comes along to rescue them.  Adrienne doesn't want to be there and eventually decides to rescue herself.  She befriends the dragon that guards her and also befriends a half human/half dwarf girl who is a master smith and sets out to rescue all of her older sisters.  Lots of stuff happens along the way and it is a nice series.

Raven the Pirate Princess vol. 1-5 - This is a spinoff of Princeless and deals with Raven, the daughter of the Pirate King who was talked into locking her in a tower by her two older brothers.  She initially teams up with Adrienne who helps her capture a pirate ship.  She then crews it with an all female crew and they set sail to take down her older brothers.  This is also a pretty good series.  Some may be turned off by the LGBT themes, but it doesn't bother me.

Sword of Ages 1-5 - Gabriel Rodriguez's new fantasy/sf series is pretty cool.  The art is excellent of course and the story is nice as well.  There are a variety of races, talking animals, battles and Arthurian aspects as well.

DeCarlo Rules

SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH #1 - Well, what do you know. It's just a different version of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, by a different creative team. Still a horror comic, though. I guess it's one way to get out of the fact that they've got a hit Netflix Sabrina series, based on a comic book that they no longer publish. They can't publish it unless Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa makes the time to actually write it (and let's face it, if he's going to do work, that's the least profitable use of his time, for him). So ACP gives us someone else's alternate take on a horror version of Sabrina, because they can't afford to pass up the opportunity to cash in on the profile-raising character-awareness the video (almost said "TV" there) series is generating. Maybe I'd have liked it better if this one had come first.

SAGG

I think the Netflix series is fantastic. I binged on season two when it came out... 😏

rusty

I've been reading the Treasure Chest series that ran from 1946-1972 in 27 volumes.  It was available at Catholic schools and features a lot of historical and religious content, but also has two adventure serials in each issue that aren't bad.  I just finished vol.16 and plan to finish the rest over the next couple of weeks.

DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: rusty on April 28, 2019, 11:50:21 PMI've been reading the Treasure Chest series that ran from 1946-1972 in 27 volumes.  It was available at Catholic schools and features a lot of historical and religious content, but also has two adventure serials in each issue that aren't bad.  I just finished vol.16 and plan to finish the rest over the next couple of weeks.

I vaguely remember reading those growing up. Was there some sort of science fiction comic strip that ran in it fo a while? Or maybe I'm confabulating... recently I've been reading (online) old back issues of Boys' Life magazine. Well, not really reading it, per se... more like scouring through the run of issues from 1952 to the late 1990s. It had a comic strip (sometimes a single page, sometimes only half a page) called "Space Conquerors!" by Al Stenzl (actually ghosted for the most part by diverse hands) that ran in most issues between October 1952 and September 1972. I was able to save all of those pages and then read all 20 years worth of the strip. It was followed up on different occasions between the late 1970s and mid-1990s by some much shorter science fiction adaptations of stories by Robert Heinlein (Between Planets), James Blish (The Star Dwellers), John Christopher (the Tripods trilogy), and Janet & Isaac Asimov (Norby the Mixed-Up Robot). I seem to vaguely recall some adaptation (possibly of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds) from Treasure Chest... this would have been somewhere in the mid-to-late 1960s issues.

rusty

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 29, 2019, 10:35:14 AM
Quote from: rusty on April 28, 2019, 11:50:21 PMI've been reading the Treasure Chest series that ran from 1946-1972 in 27 volumes.  It was available at Catholic schools and features a lot of historical and religious content, but also has two adventure serials in each issue that aren't bad.  I just finished vol.16 and plan to finish the rest over the next couple of weeks.

I vaguely remember reading those growing up. Was there some sort of science fiction comic strip that ran in it fo a while? Or maybe I'm confabulating... recently I've been reading (online) old back issues of Boys' Life magazine. Well, not really reading it, per se... more like scouring through the run of issues from 1952 to the late 1990s. It had a comic strip (sometimes a single page, sometimes only half a page) called "Space Conquerors!" by Al Stenzl (actually ghosted for the most part by diverse hands) that ran in most issues between October 1952 and September 1972. I was able to save all of those pages and then read all 20 years worth of the strip. It was followed up on different occasions between the late 1970s and mid-1990s by some much shorter science fiction adaptations of stories by Robert Heinlein (Between Planets), James Blish (The Star Dwellers), John Christopher (the Tripods trilogy), and Janet & Isaac Asimov (Norby the Mixed-Up Robot). I seem to vaguely recall some adaptation (possibly of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds) from Treasure Chest... this would have been somewhere in the mid-to-late 1960s issues.
I'm up to around 1962 at the moment in my reading.  Chuck White has been in every issue and usually runs 6-8 pages.  There are 20 issues in each year and there is usually a second 6-8 page strip that runs for 10 issues with another story taking its place after that.  Occasionally there will be one that runs only 5 issues or so.  Other strips, stories and jokes fill out the issue.  A couple of these shorter stories have featured a science fiction theme.  One of them involved a new interplanetary spaceship that is stolen by the creator who was going to be left off of the first voyage.  A family is accidentally onboard when he steals it.  There are probably others later in the run.

It would be nice if the Boys' Life science fiction stories were collected in print.  I love the Heinlein juveniles and enjoyed the Norby books.  It would be nice to see adaptations of these and other stories.  The stories from 1952-1972 appear to be available online to read, though that isn't quite the same to me.

The Archie character names and likenesses are covered by the registered trademarks/copyrights of Archie Comic Publications, Inc. and are used with permission by this site. The Official Archie Comics website can be visited at www.archiecomics.com.