News:

We're back! Unfortunately all data was lost. Please re-register to continue posting!

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

March 28, 2024, 11:25:16 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

SCOOTER GIRL #1, 3 & 6 (Because those were the only issues I could find.) This was originally published by Oni Press in the early 2000s (in black & white). It's supposed to be coming out as a TP from Image next month (and, IIRC, in color - at least I hope so). I kinda feel bad that I read the ending (#6) before reading the entire series. I don't know if I was quite satisfied with the way it ended, but I'm not sure if it was the actual ending itself, or the fact that I'd missed issues #2, 4, and 5 that made me feel that way. I'll give this a proper review once I get the chance to read the whole thing in trade (already ordered a copy).

BettyReggie

#886
I'll probably read in a little while.
I read
Archie #14-Eisma
Archie #15-Eisma
Reggie & Me #1-Blank issue

BettyReggie

#887
I'm going catch up on reading all the comics that Gisele did. So I'll be back in a while.
I read
Archie Meets Ramones-Dan Parent's Cover
Archie Vs Predtor #3-Gisele's cover
Archie #635 -Gisele's Occupy RiverDale cover
Archie #636-Gisele's Cover with Archie & Veronica fighting
Archie #637-Gisele's Christmas Cover
Archie #646-Gisele's Cover with Archie's face in The Moon.
I still have few more to read which I'll do tomorrow



BettyReggie

#888
I'll probably read some digital comics in bed later. I read each of these for 12 minutes
Betty's Garden Variety
Jughead's Time Police
Jughead Baby Tales
Archie At The Chocklit Shoppe

DeCarlo Rules

#889
Holly G's SCHOOL BITES: NIGHT CLASSES Part 1 - "Just Desserts" (digital) - Completed (after more than a year) back in 2014, this 22 page story is the final SB story has done to date (and also the only story she did that was printed as a floppy comic book). Doesn't look as though there will be any continuation at this point, I'm guessing. So many unresolved plot threads left hanging. It feels like the readers had barely gotten to know the large cast of characters, and it makes me wonder where (if she'd even planned it out that much in advance) Holly G thought she was heading with the story. She drew around 380 pages of this webcomic before abandoning it, and there's nothing like a real ending. Ah, well.

I'd like to see her reboot it as a regular print comic, and go for shorter, done-in-one-issue stories (although she could keep the connecting subplot threads), concentrating more on comedy situations. I think she was possibly overly ambitious with this series, and shouldn't have introduced so many new characters, and planted so many plot threads that never came to any sort of fruition - or maybe that's just the nature of an ongoing webcomic that posts new pages once or twice a week. I guess the fact that this last story, a 22-pager, took her so long to complete (where her earlier, and longer, stories had posted new pages far more frequently) was a big hint that she was running out of steam. SCHOOL BITES had been around as early as 2004 in a print digest format (I'm pretty sure it was initially a Kickstarter project) before having the first two printed stories (about 125 pages) serialized as a webcomic (3 times weekly) beginning in 2009, and after which she continued with new stories online (and later funded print versions of the webcomic pages again through Kickstarter). You could tell at one point she couldn't devote the time to it, because she began to frequently post sketches, pin-ups or 1-page gag strips (and even some of those were done by guest artists) instead of new pages of the current storyline, and even began an ongoing once-a-week 'backup feature' on Fridays called "Life With Prince Pangur Ban the Fluffy" (supposedly based on the real-life antics of her cat). Maybe she should have just slowed down and dropped the frequency of posting back, and not wasted her precious energy trying to draw pin-ups or gags, solely to maintain the relentless grind of a 3-times-weekly schedule. Apparently Prince Pangur Ban had his fans though, because that also went on to become a successful Kickstarter campaign that resulted in a collected print edition. It was cute, but I'd rather have seen more pages of SCHOOL BITES to move the story forward with all those plot threads.

Now see, I already spent a couple of hundred words talking about SCHOOL BITES without even giving one hint about the characters, storyline, or... anything, really. But it's weird because the comic has a lot of things I like, and a lot of things I don't like about it -- or rather, let's put it this way... there were some aspects of it that definitely need work and possibly a little re-thinking. I can't help but feel that some of those latter problems had a lot to do with the fact that it was being created as a webcomic though, as opposed to the normal sort of schedule that a writer/artist needs to maintain to create a regularly-published comic book.

And you might be asking what does Holly G do all day that she can't find the time to draw 3 finished pages of a webcomic in a week, since she isn't committed to drawing any other comics? Well, the answer there is that her "day job" is helping her husband, Jim Balent, run his little self-publishing comic book company, Broadsword Comics. Balent publishes his own title, TAROT: Witch of the Black Rose (not really my cup of tea, but just to put Holly's world in context here), and Holly is not only his wife, she's his VP of operations, which means she deals with the business and production end of running a one-comic-book publishing operation, while Jim spends the majority of his time doing the writing and drawing of TAROT (which is how the couple really pay their rent). Plus, of course, Holly has her own fanbase and takes on commission work for her own fans, and always seems to be putting together another Kickstarter project, some sort of ancilliary merchandising (prints, limited edition variant covers, buttons, magnets, stickers, etc.), either for TAROT or for SCHOOL BITES, and of course, they both maintain a heavy convention appearance schedule, because it's all about promotion, keeping in touch with their fans, and selling that ancilliary merchandise and getting new private commissions work. Ya gotta hustle to be a self-employed entrepreneur. Holly also maintains a bunch of other interests like cosplay, glamor photography, and burlesque. What I'm leading up to here though is that I think she put a lot of energy into promoting SCHOOL BITES at first, hoping that it would get a little more well-known, and thus generate a lot more income for the couple, but for whatever reason, when that didn't happen and it didn't really "take off", as it were, for her (she was doing it for ten years, believe it or not), she got a little burnt out on it, as I think the energy she was putting into it was taking more out of her than it was really worth. I think at one point she had hoped it might be optioned for animation or something. I can see why there weren't any takers, because it's not (in its current form) an all-ages property. It could be re-worked that way, or at least as a PG-rated thing, but maybe she isn't interested in doing it that way as a webcomic or a print comic. There's a few mild adult situations and some minor nudity, but that's about it. In its current form it would have to have a fairly narrow audience range, because it's reflective of Holly's tastes and not really "mainstream".

Anyway, I think what it is, is that for Holly to really focus her energy on SCHOOL BITES and address some of the weaknesses I mentioned, she'd need to be free to spend the majority of her time "in the zone" of creating that comic, which is what her husband needs to do to get TAROT (which is supporting the both of them) done on a timely basis and make it a consistent product. And he can only focus on that because he has her there to support him and do a lot of the grunt work of running a one-comic-book publishing operation. And it's equally true that she'd need someone to do all the same stuff for her that needs getting done, for her to really put the same level of energy into SCHOOL BITES and make that something that generates a living wage for her, but I don't think she can do it. It's kind of like a Catch-22 thing, where they'd need to be successful enough each on their own comics that they could afford to hire someone else to free up both of their time, knowing that all the important stuff was still getting done while the two of them were spending most of their time just writing and drawing comic books.

BettyReggie


BettyReggie

#891
I read
Archie #15-Zullo's
Jughead #12-Charm's
Reggie & Me #2-Jarelll's & Zdarsky's

BettyReggie

#892
I finished Betty & Veronica Comics Annual #240
And read these for 12 minutes each
Blankets
World Of Archie Winter Annual #56
B & V Friends Comics Double Digest #243

irishmoxie

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 15, 2017, 02:35:55 PM
Holly G's SCHOOL BITES: NIGHT CLASSES Part 1 - "Just Desserts" (digital) - Completed (after more than a year) back in 2014, this 22 page story is the final SB story has done to date (and also the only story she did that was printed as a floppy comic book). Doesn't look as though there will be any continuation at this point, I'm guessing. So many unresolved plot threads left hanging. It feels like the readers had barely gotten to know the large cast of characters, and it makes me wonder where (if she'd even planned it out that much in advance) Holly G thought she was heading with the story. She drew around 380 pages of this webcomic before abandoning it, and there's nothing like a real ending. Ah, well.

I'd like to see her reboot it as a regular print comic, and go for shorter, done-in-one-issue stories (although she could keep the connecting subplot threads), concentrating more on comedy situations. I think she was possibly overly ambitious with this series, and shouldn't have introduced so many new characters, and planted so many plot threads that never came to any sort of fruition - or maybe that's just the nature of an ongoing webcomic that posts new pages once or twice a week. I guess the fact that this last story, a 22-pager, took her so long to complete (where her earlier, and longer, stories had posted new pages far more frequently) was a big hint that she was running out of steam. SCHOOL BITES had been around as early as 2004 in a print digest format (I'm pretty sure it was initially a Kickstarter project) before having the first two printed stories (about 125 pages) serialized as a webcomic (3 times weekly) beginning in 2009, and after which she continued with new stories online (and later funded print versions of the webcomic pages again through Kickstarter). You could tell at one point she couldn't devote the time to it, because she began to frequently post sketches, pin-ups or 1-page gag strips (and even some of those were done by guest artists) instead of new pages of the current storyline, and even began an ongoing once-a-week 'backup feature' on Fridays called "Life With Prince Pangur Ban the Fluffy" (supposedly based on the real-life antics of her cat). Maybe she should have just slowed down and dropped the frequency of posting back, and not wasted her precious energy trying to draw pin-ups or gags, solely to maintain the relentless grind of a 3-times-weekly schedule. Apparently Prince Pangur Ban had his fans though, because that also went on to become a successful Kickstarter campaign that resulted in a collected print edition. It was cute, but I'd rather have seen more pages of SCHOOL BITES to move the story forward with all those plot threads.

Now see, I already spent a couple of hundred words talking about SCHOOL BITES without even giving one hint about the characters, storyline, or... anything, really. But it's weird because the comic has a lot of things I like, and a lot of things I don't like about it -- or rather, let's put it this way... there were some aspects of it that definitely need work and possibly a little re-thinking. I can't help but feel that some of those latter problems had a lot to do with the fact that it was being created as a webcomic though, as opposed to the normal sort of schedule that a writer/artist needs to maintain to create a regularly-published comic book.

And you might be asking what does Holly G do all day that she can't find the time to draw 3 finished pages of a webcomic in a week, since she isn't committed to drawing any other comics? Well, the answer there is that her "day job" is helping her husband, Jim Balent, run his little self-publishing comic book company, Broadsword Comics. Balent publishes his own title, TAROT: Witch of the Black Rose (not really my cup of tea, but just to put Holly's world in context here), and Holly is not only his wife, she's his VP of operations, which means she deals with the business and production end of running a one-comic-book publishing operation, while Jim spends the majority of his time doing the writing and drawing of TAROT (which is how the couple really pay their rent). Plus, of course, Holly has her own fanbase and takes on commission work for her own fans, and always seems to be putting together another Kickstarter project, some sort of ancilliary merchandising (prints, limited edition variant covers, buttons, magnets, stickers, etc.), either for TAROT or for SCHOOL BITES, and of course, they both maintain a heavy convention appearance schedule, because it's all about promotion, keeping in touch with their fans, and selling that ancilliary merchandise and getting new private commissions work. Ya gotta hustle to be a self-employed entrepreneur. Holly also maintains a bunch of other interests like cosplay, glamor photography, and burlesque. What I'm leading up to here though is that I think she put a lot of energy into promoting SCHOOL BITES at first, hoping that it would get a little more well-known, and thus generate a lot more income for the couple, but for whatever reason, when that didn't happen and it didn't really "take off", as it were, for her (she was doing it for ten years, believe it or not), she got a little burnt out on it, as I think the energy she was putting into it was taking more out of her than it was really worth. I think at one point she had hoped it might be optioned for animation or something. I can see why there weren't any takers, because it's not (in its current form) an all-ages property. It could be re-worked that way, or at least as a PG-rated thing, but maybe she isn't interested in doing it that way as a webcomic or a print comic. There's a few mild adult situations and some minor nudity, but that's about it. In its current form it would have to have a fairly narrow audience range, because it's reflective of Holly's tastes and not really "mainstream".

Anyway, I think what it is, is that for Holly to really focus her energy on SCHOOL BITES and address some of the weaknesses I mentioned, she'd need to be free to spend the majority of her time "in the zone" of creating that comic, which is what her husband needs to do to get TAROT (which is supporting the both of them) done on a timely basis and make it a consistent product. And he can only focus on that because he has her there to support him and do a lot of the grunt work of running a one-comic-book publishing operation. And it's equally true that she'd need someone to do all the same stuff for her that needs getting done, for her to really put the same level of energy into SCHOOL BITES and make that something that generates a living wage for her, but I don't think she can do it. It's kind of like a Catch-22 thing, where they'd need to be successful enough each on their own comics that they could afford to hire someone else to free up both of their time, knowing that all the important stuff was still getting done while the two of them were spending most of their time just writing and drawing comic books.


Is it entirely collected in print form? Or did you read some of it online?

DeCarlo Rules

#894
Quote from: irishmoxie on January 16, 2017, 02:32:51 PM
Is it entirely collected in print form? Or did you read some of it online?

I THINK every single webcomic page she did eventually got collected in a print version funded through Kickstarter (although the last one, Night Classes, was a standard format 32-page floppy comic (it was only 22 pages of story in webcomic form). Most of the printed versions were filled out with some sort of extra material to even out the page counts.

The way I read it was this. I literally spent hours and hours paging through every webcomic page she had posted from 2009 through 2014 (three times a week, as I mentioned), so even though I say the webcomic pages amounted to about 380, that was 380 pages of SCHOOL BITES alone, but the actual number of posts in the archives during that period, paging through one at a time, was more like 500-something, because a lot of the posts were "filler". But I wasn't actually reading the story while I was doing that. No, at that point my only objective was to right-click on every SB webcomic page, choose "Save Image As", and file it in a folder somewhere. At some point when I saw how frequently she was starting to post non-SB pages, I started saving those too (figuring that it would be easier to sort them into different folders as I went along, rather than go back if I decided I wanted to find them later). There's no drop-down menu that identifies the individual archive pages by title or page number either, just bookmarks at the first page for each new story arc. So I spent a few nights doing that for a couple of hours a night, and wound up with 1 folder for each of the different SB stories (8 "issues" of different lengths, although on her drop-down menu she calls them "Chapters" and there are 11 (because she split a few of the stories into Part 1 and Part 2). I sorted special 1-page gags into a different folder, "Life With Prince Pangur Ban" strips into another, sketches and pin-ups into another. Some of the odd non-story pages I just wound up deleting later after I'd really looked at them, but I figured it was easier to save the images and throw away the ones I didn't need later, rather than go back and try to find something I wished I'd saved but didn't. Some of the page images I had to crop later on to remove ad banners at the bottom for Kickstarters when she happened to be running those.

After all that was done, I opened up the folders one at a time, beginning with issue #1, Chapter 1: "Orientation, Part 1", and was then able to read through it like it was a normal comic story instead of a webcomic.  So essentially I just made my own digital version by saving all the story page images as JPGs, so I could read it offline by just clicking through one image at a time. Basically I just used the same method I did for reading all of the Pixie Trix Comix and Henchgirl (although I discovered the latter as a print comic first). It's too labor-intensive a way of getting a digital comic out of a bunch of webpages for most sane people to consider, but I'm obsessed enough with my comics that I want to optimize the reading experience, and webcomics really aren't an optimal way of reading long-form comic stories, unless they're gag-a-day strips (which I guess sort of works for MA3, but my criticisms of MA3 would fall into a different category).

She still sells the printed versions (and also a digital version) on the Broadsword Comics website, but I haven't actually seen them yet, so I can't compare and tell you if she added, subtracted, or revised or altered any of the webcomic pages as they remain now posted in her archives. "SCHOOL BITES Vol. 1" is the "Orientation" story (Parts 1 & 2) and "SCHOOL BITES Vol. 2" is the story "Blood Drinking 101" (Parts 1 & 2), and she sells those (approx. 64 pages, manga size paperback) for $10 each. Those existed before she started the webcomic (Diamond Comics distributed them in 2004 and 2005), so the print version came before the webcomic. After those 2 stories she posted all the stories as webcomic pages first, and then later ran Kickstarters to fund the print versions. After the first two volumes comes the print collection SCHOOL BITES: SPECIAL SEMESTER COLLECTION, which contains the stories "Phys Ed", "Music Theory" and "DETENTION" (which I'm calling issues #3, 4, & 5) and is 128 pages for $20, same physical dimensions as the first 2 volumes. The next print comic is called SCHOOL BITES: INDEPENDENT STUDIES and contains the stories "Private Lessons" and "Home Ec" (Parts 1 & 2), which I'm calling issues #6 & 7, also 128 pages for $20, and the last one is the 32-page floppy comic, SCHOOL BITES: NIGHT CLASSES, Part 1 ($5). There are also some art & pinup books she sells. The 128-page books have some extra short stories that weren't posted as webcomic pages to even out the page counts.

Deb

I've been reading lots of Al Taliaferro Donald Duck comic strips, thanks to the IDW/Library of American Comics collections, as well as the 1980's Celestial Arts book "Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times" which is composed of 11 classic Carl Barks Scrooge comics painted with watercolor, acrylic and airbrush techniques, with some colored pencil here and there.  The art looks amazing this way.

BettyReggie

At midnight the digital copy of Archie #16 comes out.

BettyReggie

#897

I woke up so late & kind of forgot about the comic. So then I read it. The story is basically about Dilton. He makes a app that Reggie steals. And Reggie does what he does. And Dilton is one who gets blamed. Dilton makes a lot of enemies. The app rates everyone & it hurts their feelings. Jason & Cheryl both come to Riverdale. Cheryl is in their school but I don't see Jason introduced in the class. Wouldn't they be in the same class, since they are twins so they would be the same age & in the same grade. 
Cheryl meets Betty in the Lunchroom & Cheryl & Jason met Sayid at Pop's. I wonder what will come of that meeting? Will Sayid bad mouth Betty & the others to The Blossoms & be friends with them.

BettyReggie

#898
I read my digital copy of Archie #16 again.

BettyReggie


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.