Hey Darin!

Good to hear that Super Suckers is still a going thing, and that Corona vampires haven't caused the end of Bung Hill civilization (such as it may be...)

Any projection on the next SS Binge Book? I need that for my collection.

I didn't see this one coming, because I didn't read Dynamite's solictation for this issue closely enough. I had been buying the previous issues more to get the Dan Parent cover variants than for any other reason. #1-8 are done in the same "New Archie" style as the earlier DC crossover with Harley & Ivy. Which is nowhere near as interesting to me as it would be if Dan Parent drew the story. But surprisingly to me (I was completely unaware until I opened the cover of #9 and began reading) Dan Parent DID in fact draw the interior artwork for this entire issue.

In 1972, Tom DeFalco began his career in comic books working as an editorial assistant for ACP, where he began writing scripts on the side, but one of the earliest things he did was to conceive and develop the Archie reprint comics digest:



The Archie digest line would go on to become the company's most profitable format for decades. Tom DeFalco went on to work for Marvel Comics beginning in the 1980s, where he spent the next 20 years of his career. He later served as Editor-In-Chief at Marvel from 1987 to 1994, making him one of the longest serving individuals to hold that post, and later returned to write for Archie Comics in 2000s again.

Hats off to Tom for brainstorming that little digest of collected reprints that managed to make it into more retail outlets than any other comics published from the 1970s onward!

The inverse law applies. If ACP solicits something, the more I want it, the more likely it will be cancelled, rescheduled, delayed, cancelled again... ad infinitum.

With the first TP collected volume, Sabrina had been at the lowest point in her popularity since the cancellation of her ongoing series (last seen in Tania Del Rio's manga version), but NOW Sabrina's star is on the rise again with her own Netflix adaptation, and we STILL can't get a decent trade collection of Sabrina stories published, never mind one in color.

ACP is launching a new digest title, ARCHIE SHOWCASE DIGEST. No information about whether this is another "limited series" digest title of 12 issues like ARCHIE 75th ANNIVERSARY DIGEST (2016-2017) and ARCHIE MILESTONES DIGEST (2019-2020) so far, but I'm intrigued by the solicitation copy which reads "The Archie Showcase digest series will place the spotlight on Archie Comics' hottest characters". Well, if it's a 12-issue limited digest series, then we'll only get the top-selling dozen characters: Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, Sabrina, Josie (and the Pussycats), Cheryl Blossom, Kevin Keller (...or maybe not), Katy Keene, Mr. Weatherbee, and...  

Moose? Dilton? Ethel? Chuck? Mr. Lodge? Miss Grundy? Li'l Jinx? Who knows. MAYBE Super Duck, since he's got a current floppy comic limited series... but I kind of doubt it. More than likely the only characters being "showcased" here will be those that have figured significantly on RIVERDALE or other ACP video series.

Characters who I'd like to wish would get a SHOWCASE digest spotlight issue, but who probably won't (even though they could find more than enough stories to fill a Jumbo Digest), because I don't think ACP would be that daring to risk an issue not selling (sure would be nice to be proven wrong, though):
- THAT WILKIN BOY
- WILBUR
- MADHOUSE GLADS

I mean, theoretically, even an irregularly-seen character like Trula Twyst, Cricket O'Dell, Frankie Valdez, Wendy Weatherbee, Raj Patel, Ginger Lopez, or Veronica's cousin Marcy McDermott could have a Showcase issue devoted to them, as long as they could fill enough pages with stories that featured that character (that leaves out Harper Lodge, Toni Topaz, and Shrill...) Not that I'd ever really expect them to do anything like that.

And they've already wasted the entire first issue by devoting the "spotlight" to Archie Andrews -- Whoa! Now there's a character who's just not getting enough exposure!!    Well, at the very least, I guess I'll probably get a Jughead, Betty, and Veronica solo digest issue out of the deal (and probably a Reggie one as well), so at least I know it won't be a total loss.

https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/MAR201592

He outlived all his contemporaries at Archie Comics. Truly the last of the Old Guard. I think he had been editing for ACP since the mid-1960s, when Harry Shorten left the company. Who knows how this will affect the continuation of "classic style" Archie?

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on January 24, 2020, 10:06:56 AMGood review. Wait, this is volume 2, and it covers 2018? So there was no volume covering 2016 (the first year in which new stories appeared in only the digests)?

Sorry, I had a brainfart. Still stuck in the timewarp of last month, but at the same time trying to think "previous year". Since edited and corrected -- the stories are indeed from last year, 2019. Volume 1 covered the stories from 2018. My bad.

New digest stories from years prior to that were collected in a series of digital-only releases entitled ARCHIE BEST OF 2015/2016/2017 DIGEST ANNUAL (available on ComiXology, Amazon and elsewhere), but were never made available in a print collection, unlike the ARCHIE MODERN CLASSICS series.

If I recall correctly, ACP started including new 5-page stories in every digest issue sometime in 2014 (not sure of the exact month), so the year 2014 did not have a new story in every single issue of every digest title from January through December, but that was the year that the digests ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE (#1, March) and JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE (#1, June) were launched, and the inclusion of new 5-page stories may have started with those first issues (if not the other digests published in the same months).

It's good to get this because it represents kind of an annual survey of classic Archie stories. There were 48 stories in this book -- I got the feeling that a couple were left out to keep it down to 256 pages. By my account there should have been 50 Archie digest issues released in 2019; possibly a couple of those individual digest issues had more than one new story, so maybe as many as 52 new 5-pagers saw print in 2019. Of the 48 stories in this collection, Bill Golliher wrote 28 of them (and he's virtually the sole writer now for B&V stories). Francis Bonnet wrote 9 stories appearing in the 3 Archie digest titles, followed by Angelo DeCesare with 8. The remaining 3 writers only contributed a single story in 2019 (or if they did more, they weren't included in this collection). Dan Parent drew most of the B&V stories, and contributed a single Archie & Jughead story (which he also wrote) as well. I wish that Jeff Shultz and the Kennedy brothers had drawn more of the remaining stories; their work is sorely missed and I always appreciate seeing a new story by them.

I don't recall seeing any stories by Francis Bonnet prior to 2019, but on average, they're as good as any of the other stories in this collection. That just strikes me as really odd, that a new writer could potentially break in at ACP by writing classic Archie stories at a time when the number of pages of those stories is at an all-time low, but there it is. Unless "Francis Bonnet" is actually a pseudonym for some established writer who for some reason doesn't want to reveal his true identity. He does seem very familiar with the characters and typical Archie-style plots, though, so I wonder...

I no longer subscribe to any of the three Archie digests, although I still get the two B&V digests. It's good to be patient and get a large dose of the new Archie stories at the end of the year, though, which makes this compilation really worthwhile for me.

Quote from: Archiecomicxfan215 on January 22, 2020, 10:44:56 AMI recently purchased this book from Barnes and Nobles. Only copy in the store near me.

I wish they'd do more volumes of that series, and BETTY'S DIARY, too. That was absolutely one of the best in the Archie Comics Presents line so far. And how about a VERONICA volume while we're at it?

This story from 1962 sounds familiar, so I'm going to say it HAS been reprinted, since that's the only way I would have gotten to read it. IIRC, Archie imagines himself a juvenile delinquent, but of course he's an utter failure at that, and Fred Andrews manages to prove otherwise. Without going through a bunch of trade paperback collections to find it, I can't actually say where it was reprinted, though.

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on December 04, 2019, 06:44:55 AMHow do I adjust my settling, so that the oldest posts are at the top of the Thread, & the newest at the bottom?

Here's something I think might work to fix it:

1. Click on your username to go to your account.
2. Click on "Forum Profile", and from the dropdown menu choose "Look and Layout".
3. Scroll down and under "Board and Topic display", make sure the box next to "Show most recent posts at the top in topic view" is NOT checked.

Let me know if it works. In my profile, that box is not checked, but the newest posts are at the bottom of the thread.

Isn't it that way normally by default? Mine is, anyway. You must have done something to change it.

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on November 22, 2019, 06:56:52 AMHave you have a special time in your life, when Archie Comics were important?

NOW. They're important now because, while at one time the type of comics (humorous, fun, lighthearted comics that portray a kind of idealized middle-American small town high school experience) that are in Archie comics was very common, those type of comics no longer exist -- anywhere BUT in Archie comics. So, like endangered species, sometimes we never really appreciate the things we always took for granted would be there, until they've all but disappeared.

For me, while I had developed an appreciation for Dan DeCarlo's work (and to a lesser extent, Dan Parent's) years beforehand, my attitude towards Archie comics was pretty casual -- I mean, they'd always be there whenever I got around to finding them, right? It took something like being hit over the head with a lead pipe to wake me up; a screaming headline like "THE DEATH OF ARCHIE". That was July of 2014. And luckily, at that time, you could still get just about every trade paperback and hardcover collection of Archie Comics that had ever been printed (by ACP, IDW, and Dark Horse, too). And indeed, as promised, the for-real final issue issue of ARCHIE, #666 (The Number of The Beast) rolled out barely a year later, signalling the end of an era that will never return. Sure, B&V continued for a little while longer, and there have been mini-series and one-shots (and the 5-pagers leading off the digests) since then, but we're never going back, so let's enjoy what little is left of classic Archie while it's still there.

I was thinking about this some more, and I guess I concluded that it's hard for ACP to build up any kind of momentum in reader interest. They've got only ONE real ongoing title (Archie), and everything else is miniseries that come and go, with no continuity between almost any of them. Starting with the rebooted Archie in 2015, it seemed like they hoped to add a new title (Jughead, Josie, Reggie) every 6 months or so and build the line of ongoing titles back up to a stable 4 to 6 titles. But it didn't happen because those titles just weren't embraced by enough readers, and Archie remained the only title that could sustain enough sales to continue.

Of course the reprint digests are ongoing too, but as far as any new material it's only 5 pages per issue, which will then get reprinted in a one-shot (although I guess you could look at the one-shots B&V Friends Forever and Archie & Friends as 'ongoing' titles), and eventually down the road as a trade paperback. So then after the digests/one-shot floppies there's the occasional miniseries (Your Pal Archie, Archie Meets Batman '66, Archie the Married Life 10th Anniversary) or one-shot (Archie Meets the B-52s). So I guess that averages out to about 1 or 2 issues of Classic Archie per month (including all the 5-pagers in the digests. The rest is all reprints (digests and TPs). Still, it's a far cry from the decades prior to 2014 when there were ongoing titles for Archie, Archie & Friends, Jughead, B&V, Betty, Veronica (replaced towards the end by Kevin Keller) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Titles coming and going all the time means that there's no real brand loyalty in the sense of... every individual reader is picking and choosing ("I like this one; I don't like that one.") among the few titles being offered in any given month. Even when you find a miniseries you like you know it will be gone in 6 months or less, probably never to be followed up again (or at least not for a good long time, like with Cosmo). That works out okay for larger comic book companies that publish lots of different titles every month and split their output between ongoing series and miniseries, but ACP just publishes too few new titles each month, which makes it hard to generate reader excitement.

I mean, Batman or Spider-Man are still WAY more popular and recognizable than Archie, but just try to imagine if DC or Marvel ONLY published one ongoing series, either Batman or The Amazing Spider-Man, and then a paltry few other different Batman or Spider-Man variant or spinoff character miniseries each month, all done in a variety of different styles with absolutely NO continuity between any of them.

Seems like it's ignoring everything after LIFE WITH ARCHIE #1 (i.e., all of "The Married Life" stories written by Paul Kupperberg). I like the art (well, except for Dan's decision that an older Archie should have a huge jaw in order to distinguish him from teenage Archie), but it's still too soon for me to pass final judgment on it as a story. I plan to re-read the whole thing in one sitting sometime after the last issue is released (or I might just wait for the TP), and maybe I'll have a clearer feeling about it by then. Clearly it's not a sequel to the run of LIFE WITH ARCHIE as written by Kupperberg, though. Having re-read the whole prior Married Life story fairly recently, both the strengths and flaws inherent in that series became a lot more obvious to me. After reading the whole thing again, I revised my initial opinion downward in terms of plot and story continuity, but felt like where it stood out was in terms of character interaction scenes and dialogue (only possible where you have a lot of pages for that kind of stuff).

That said, the story doesn't have anywhere near the same room to breath as the original LIFE WITH ARCHIE magazine, and the plot is necessarily compacted to fit into six standard-sized floppy comic issues -- which amounts to the same as only THREE magazine-sized issues of The Married Life, so it's hardly fair to compare one to the other as a complete series, either. Then again, I can recall the same sort of complaints about the final B&V story arc by Uslan and Parent. Either one is still miles better than what we're getting in the current ongoing ARCHIE title and miniseries like SABRINA.