Quote from: Mr.Lodge on March 09, 2017, 06:02:17 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 09, 2017, 01:42:43 PM

The humor genre just doesn't work for the existing customer base, and the younger demographic just isn't buying those format comics, or frequenting comic book shops in enough numbers.

I guess the lemming droids are only capable of handling the mindless super hero drivel being cranked out for their 3rd-grade reading level basement-dweller audience. 

Sure, that's really helpful. Always phrase your opinions in the most offensive way possible, because let's face it -- name-calling is the highest form of expressing your intellectual maturity. Anyone who'd read "mindless super hero drivel" must be a "3rd-grade reading level basement-dweller" -- and of course, those readers have just as high an opinion of adults who read Archie Comics, to be fair.

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 09, 2017, 05:31:08 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 09, 2017, 01:24:40 PM

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 09, 2017, 11:07:21 AM
The floppy titles would be:

Archie
Jughead
Betty
Veronica
Cheryl
Reggie
Sabrina
Josie and the Pussycats
Katy Keene

Well you've obviously identified the major problem with Archie's floppy comic books. Betty and Veronica in a comic book together must have led to the downfall of the entire empire. Obviously those two need to stay far away from each other.

Meh. I just meant, with floppies not money-makers, it'd be pointless to have a title for a B&V team-up. They can interact in their solo titles.

So basically you're just wanting to return to what they were publishing circa 1982 before they cancelled all of the titles on your list (but with the addition of Veronica and Cheryl in their own titles, which didn't happen until later), but MINUS a BETTY & VERONICA title, which has a longer track record of selling than anything else but ARCHIE and JUGHEAD. Never mind that for a lot of their shared running time, B&V was outselling both of those titles. It is, in fact, the chemistry between the two girls (rather than the simple formula of adding Betty's popularity as a character to Veronica's popularity) that made that title a best-seller for ACP that outlasted JUGHEAD by three years (not to mention all the other titles on your list that were cancelled sooner, including their own solo titles). You just seem to want to ignore reality here, in favor of your own personal wish-fulfillment.

It's all well and good to play the fantasy wishing game and say "I wish they'd just start publishing all those titles/characters I like again", but you're not really identifying or offering any solutions to the problem of why ACP floppy titles aren't selling. Adding continuity to all the titles may please you, but it isn't going to make them sell any better.

You're just not getting it. The only place floppy comics sell is in comic book shops. But the comic shop customer doesn't want Archie Comics -- or any humor comic, really. If humor comics sold, Marvel and DC would have established ongoing titles in that genre. The only reason DC even publishes things like Looney Tunes or Scooby-Doo or Teen Titans GO! as floppy comics is that DC's main audience includes parents who buy DC's comics aimed at older readers, who are also encouraging their kids to read comics by buying those titles for them. Those comics DC can afford to publish at close to break-even, just to seed an upcoming generation of comic readers (and to tell the truth, half the sales of those comics are probably coming from older nostalgic adults who buy them for themselves).

On the other hand, the only thing that IS selling for ACP, the digests -- if less than in their heyday, still far better than the floppies, and far more profitable at higher cover prices -- you want to cancel, presumably for no other reason than that they don't interest you personally.

No, what ACP should have done, after cancelling one floppy title after another, is they should have started tranferring all that new content (20-25 pages worth) into all the digest titles. To encourage print digest sales, they shouldn't sell a digital version of the digests. They could make the new content from the digest issues available later (6 months to a year) as a digital single, for $2 -- but if you want those new stories earlier, you need to buy the print digest.

They obviously can't do that now, since they cut all their freelancers loose except for Dan Parent (who couldn't fill 80-100 new pages needed to fill the digests with a floppy comic's worth of new content every month).

PLANET OF APES/GREEN LANTERN #2 (of 6)
STAR TREK WAYPOINT #4 (of 6)
ASTRO CITY #42                   
MICRONAUTS #10

ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #25 - Yay for fairy tale month! A funny spin on Hansel & Gretel from Dan P starring Archie and Betty (but Jughead gets the best jokes). Standout reprint is the classic Jughead short "Dream Boy", but we have a good balance here between 1-page gags, and shorts featuring different characters(Archie, Jughead, Betty & Veronica, Reggie, Moose), which makes this about the most varied of all the digest titles.

MAD presents GOODNIGHT BATCAVE HC - I don't know the children's book being parodied here, but it's MAD and it's a Batman parody, so it's all good. Pretty gentle as satire goes, but I enjoyed it. The text isn't particularly skewering Batman, and it could almost have been published (with less comically-exaggerated artwork) as a straight Batman children's book.

THE SIX 3-STOOGES #1 (a.k.a. FOX LEGENDS SERIES #1 [May 1993]) - An interesting and well-done unauthorized biography of the 6 men who were once part of the comedy trio known as The Three Stooges. This was apparently a co-publishing project (first in a series of celebrity bio-comics) between Fantagraphics and an Australian publisher, Fox Comics. Written and drawn by a cartoonist named Ian Eddy (whose previous work I was completely unfamiliar with), and very capably so, in an underground comix-ish style, printed in black & white. This done-in-one bio didn't really tell me much that I didn't already know about the Stooges, but it was a nice concise summary of their careers, as a group and as individuals.

DRAGONS RIOTING VOL 1 - Just trying out a few different manga series looking for a good comedy. Only about halfway through this one, and haven't made up my mind about it yet.

Floppy comic books are a dead-end for Archie Comics, unless they're prepared to invent a whole slew of new characters, titles, and genres (or at least license some viable existing IPs).

The humor genre just doesn't work for the existing customer base, and the younger demographic just isn't buying those format comics, or frequenting comic book shops in enough numbers.

They need to figure out how to do an end-run around the comic shop market distribution system to reconnect to the traditional younger readers. Gee, if they could figure out a way to get into the school system like Scholastic Books does, that would be perfect.

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 09, 2017, 11:07:21 AM
The floppy titles would be:

Archie
Jughead
Betty
Veronica
Cheryl
Reggie
Sabrina
Josie and the Pussycats
Katy Keene

Well you've obviously identified the major problem with Archie's floppy comic books. Betty and Veronica in a comic book together must have led to the downfall of the entire empire. Obviously those two need to stay far away from each other.

I'd have cancelled the floppies altogether. The comic shop market demographic that supports that format clearly isn't buying what Archie Comics is selling. Instead of trying to reinvent the characters to appeal to a marketplace demographic that has rejected them, I'd have concentrated on different formats and different avenues of distribution. That may have involved some slight degree of modernization for new stories as far as appealing to kids in the traditional audience age range, and probably a shift away from the short stories under 20+ pages. More likely the shift would be toward a standalone OGN with more pages, in a format that could be kept in print and distributed via the book trade, as opposed to comic shops. For comic shops, the high-end chronological/complete format in hardcover, starting with the very best material (Silver Age). Also all of the same stuff (and individual issues complete with ads and everything) for digital format. They could do some "best of" or character-centric or thematic collections of older stuff in the same format they were using for The Best of Archie Comics TPs (not that every collection would need to fit the 400-page format, they could try different page-count/price-point combos).

It's in ARCHIE'S FAVORITE COMICS FROM THE VAULT (page 218). I knew I'd read it in a TP collection somewhere, but I had to flip through them to find it. As it turns out, it was fortunate I did, because I was also able to answer my own question about the first U.G.A.J. story (also in that same collection on page 211). It's "Between Us Girls" from JUGHEAD #79 (December 1961), in case you're interested.

According to the "How Well Do You Know REGGIE Quiz" reprinted in ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #25, Reggie's birthday is July 25th. No idea what story is the source of this information.

Judging by the colorful graphic design/layout of this 2-page quiz feature, I'd guess that this had appeared originally in one of those issues of BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR after it was redesigned to look more like a magazine (issues #69-90). All of those issues had some sort of short 1 or 2 page special features - fashions, quizzes, etc.

Quote from: steveinthecity on March 08, 2017, 11:05:28 PM

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on March 08, 2017, 07:45:48 AM
What year and issue # did Big Ethel, under the name "Ethel", appear?

Unless I'm also misunderstanding, you want Jughead #84. I think that's 1962, I can't log onto GCD for some reason to confirm.

I think that's correct, the May 1962 issue. The 6-page story you're referring to is "Electronically Yours" by Samm Schwartz, in which Dilton's new computerized mate selector matches Ethel up with Jughead. IIRC, Ethel's last name isn't actually mentioned in that story, and I'm not sure which story it was that established her last name, or if there was any variance in that before settling on Muggs. An unnamed girl who is clearly now identifiable as Ethel appeared earlier than that, but I'm not sure exactly where. That issue also contains another Schwartz United Girls Against Jughead story ("A-Picknicking We'll Go") which I'm not sure if was the very first of that series, but it's certainly one of the earliest. Writing credits on both stories seem to be uncertain.

As far as the credits go, there was no point in keeping track because it was presumed no kid cared about anything like that, and the only thing most artists cared about was whether they got paid on time. Many companies had, at one time, a firm policy of never crediting any of the writers, artists, letterers or colorists. The publishers just saw it as a way of letting their competitors identify the outstanding talent by name so that they could then poach them by offering them more money. Over time, competition for artists and writers gradually raised the costs of producing the comics for publishers, which led to higher cover prices (although that was only one of several factors).

Not sure if I'm getting what you're asking. In the earliest appearances of both Moose and Ethel, they were consistently referred to as "BIG Moose" and "BIG Ethel", but sometime in the 1970s, they just seemed to drop the "Big" and just started calling her Ethel. Moose followed the same pattern but lagged behind Ethel, with the "Big" nickname persisting for some time after Ethel's had been dropped. As with most changes to the characters, there wasn't some definitive point where it just stopped being used unilaterally in all stories by all writers, or at least I don't think so. I think "Big" was just used with their names inconsistently for a period of time, gradually becoming less frequent until it wasn't used at all any more, or only on rare occasions.

FINK ANGEL: LEGACY - TP collecting 4 related story arcs from 2000 AD and JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE.
ROM #7
REGGIE AND ME #3 - Still not liking it, so this is the last one for me.
GREEN HORNET REIGN OF DEMON #4 (of 4)
JEM & THE HOLOGRAMS ANNUAL 2017 - Rats. Only 8 pages by Gisele, and it's a framing device, not a complete story on its own. Not a good intro point for new readers.
SILVER SURFER #9
HELLBOY AND BPRD 1954 GHOST MOON #1 ("#14 in a series") - I never was really a reader of the regular BPRD series, and only off-and-on for HELLBOY, but I really like the retro-series set in the past.
STREET TIGER #1 (of 4) - A grindhouse action movie type story in an interesting cartooning style.
DETECTIVE COMICS #952
WONDER WOMAN #18
NURSE HITOMI'S MONSTER INFIRMARY VOL 1 - Just trying out a few different manga series looking for a good comedy. I liked this. Will review it later on my review thread.

Quote from: Upsiditus on March 06, 2017, 10:11:34 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 06, 2017, 10:38:05 AM
When was volume #321 published and by whom?


  The book was published in 2016.

All of the Archie stories that appeared in PEP and JACKPOT that first appeared in the early 1940s issues are public domain now because copyrights were not renewed by ACP at the proper time. The scans on Digital Comic Museum are downloadable and can easily be saved and converted to PDFs, and there are ways of having a PDF-formatted book printed and bound in limited quantities. I've seen people use these PD comics and sell them as Print-On-Demand books using Amazon's CreateSpacepublishing service. You can even print the JPGs yourself on standard 8.5" x 11" copy paper on a color-printer and take the pages to a bindery to have them bound into a hardcover book.

It seems like you have found just such an example of this. Perhaps someone realized that libraries would be potential buyers of a book like that, and has produced at least 321 volumes of these classic (public domain) comics. No mention on the book's indicia page of the publisher's name (or business name) or address?

Quote from: steveinthecity on March 06, 2017, 03:13:21 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 06, 2017, 10:38:05 AM
What was in Classic Comics Library volumes #1 through 320? When was volume #321 published and by whom? Pictures are nice, and very helpful.

Interesting that all the stories are taken from early PEP and JACKPOT issues, since public domain scans of all those issues have been available for some time now at sites like Digital Comic Museum. If you really want to identify the source of individual stories, that's where I'd go to look.

Just for laughs, here's a good one from PEP #39 (1943).

?   

I don't see anything.

I think the phraseology you're looking for here is "I see nothing! I know nothing!!" 

What was in Classic Comics Library volumes #1 through 320? When was volume #321 published and by whom? Pictures are nice, and very helpful.

Interesting that all the stories are taken from early PEP and JACKPOT issues, since public domain scans of all those issues have been available for some time now at sites like Digital Comic Museum. If you really want to identify the source of individual stories, that's where I'd go to look.

Just for laughs, here's a good one from PEP #39 (1943).