Quote from: Jabroniville on February 23, 2017, 12:44:29 AM
As a comic book company? I can see them quietly shuttering their original content, and only releasing collections and/or one-shot specials. THAT at least has some potential, and is probably cheaper than busting out monthly stuff.

^^^
THIS.  Or possibly even licensing the reprints out to other companies, like they've already done with IDW and Dark Horse.

Quote from: Jabroniville on February 23, 2017, 12:10:12 AM

* This bizarre story came about from the same Jughead run that featured the "Jug moves away" story mentioned above. Again given drama and actual emotion, Jughead reveals in a diary that "it's not that I hate girls- I just had my heart broken when I was younger!"- it turns out that a childhood crush on Joani Jummp, the girl-next-door, resulted in heartbreak when his family moved away. In the same issue, he meets a sexy rocker-chick who's into the same kind of music he is, and begins feeling those funny tingles for the first time in forever. And just as he's about to unsteadily step into the dating pool... JOANI MOVES TO RIVERDALE. Initially, this is treated as dramatic, incredible stuff, with Jug actually being terrified out of his mind, insanely confused ("oh, JOANI" he cries, after kissing her for the first time, "Now I'm more confused than ever!"), and more.

The "it's not that I hate girls- I just had my heart broken when I was younger!" trope was revisited in a kind of role-reversal when Batton Lash wrote "Freshmen Year - The Missing Chapters: Jughead" for ARCHIE & FRIENDS #140. In this version, Jughead's family has moved to Montana at the beginning of Jughead's freshman year, when Jughead's dad accepts a new job offer in Selby, Montana. Jughead is enrolled in Selby High and meets Sadie Cameron, whom he quickly develops a crush on... but the new job isn't working out for Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones misses her old friends, so the Jones family moves back to Riverdale, and that's the last Jughead saw of Sadie. The story explains Jughead's ubiquitous S-shirt (S for Selby High, as in Archie's R-sweater for Riverdale High), and the S also reminds Jughead of his lost love, Sadie.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on February 22, 2017, 06:19:04 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on February 22, 2017, 01:44:50 PM
JUGHEAD is the only New Riverdale title I continue to read at this point.

Have you given Josie and the Pussycats a shot?  I think it's great!  Second best after Jughead, and it's a CLOSE second best.

I've given it 3 shots. Sorry, I absolutely HATE the writing, and didn't find it funny at all. I probably wouldn't have read as far as issue #3 if I hadn't liked Audrey Mok's artwork. I might give it another chance if they changed writers but kept Mok on the art.

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 22, 2017, 04:03:59 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on February 22, 2017, 02:15:45 PM
All of the new 5-page lead stories in the digest titles have had a monthly theme for the last 3 solicitations. The March digests all feature "storybook" tales, April's digests have an "international" theme, and May's digests all have a musical theme. I wonder what they're thinking with this? I suppose those 5-page themed stories could add up to a single floppy comic if they wanted to reprint them, but that seems really unlikely. I guess maybe they're hoping it will encourage a few people to buy every digest title that month, if they didn't normally get them them all?

Exactly I'm more interested in getting all the titles those months when I usually don't. Especially international and musical.

Even though low sales leading to the cancellation of Archie with #666, and B&V with #278 in 2015 demonstrates that the idea of a floppy comic reprinting the new Dan Parent 5-page lead stories from the digests probably isn't workable, ACP could still possibly offer a series of one-shots (or maybe an ongoing series) as a digital exclusive, collecting those new lead digest stories. Maybe an ongoing DE under the umbrella title of CLASSIC ARCHIE would generate some interest in digital subscriptions (or possibly even garner a few new all-access subscribers for Archie Digital). There are a lot of people who might not want to buy a whole $4.99-$7.99 digest issue just to get the one new 5-page lead story if they didn't care for the selection of reprinted stories that might buy something like that.

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 22, 2017, 09:46:07 AM
When is Betty and Veronica Issue #3 coming out? How can they release a trade without that issue?

They can't. So that TP solicitation will be cancelled unless B&V #3 comes out the month before the TP is due out. They've been doing the same thing right along with solicitations for the Afterlife With Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina TP collections, and they've cancelled those solicitations a number of times. Cancelling solicitations is no big deal to ACP. They do it all the time, and think nothing of it. It's just become part of their normal standard operating procedure.

All of the new 5-page lead stories in the digest titles have had a monthly theme for the last 3 solicitations. The March digests all feature "storybook" tales, April's digests have an "international" theme, and May's digests all have a musical theme. I wonder what they're thinking with this? I suppose those 5-page themed stories could add up to a single floppy comic if they wanted to reprint them, but that seems really unlikely. I guess maybe they're hoping it will encourage a few people to buy every digest title that month, if they didn't normally get them them all?

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on February 22, 2017, 07:15:27 AM
Doom, Gloom & Rumors Of Boom.
Stop being so darn negative.

The only people who are negative are the people who actually care about what Archie Comics used to be about. If we're negative, it's only because we really want ACP to be publishing GOOD Archie Comics, and that doesn't really seem to be happening, apart from about 20 new pages a month spread over 4 digest titles. Instead, they're screwing around trying to find out if some imaginary market exists for Archie among adult readers who don't like the traditional Archie comics - and in the process, trying to turn the characters into something they're not, and were never intended to be.

The alternative is worse -- we could just accept that the old ACP is already dead, and stop paying attention to what's going on with the company and ignore them.

Apparently the book will soon be co-written by Mark Waid and Ian Flynn. Now I like Mark Waid's writing on some comics (a lot), but ARCHIE is not one of them. I also enjoyed Ian Flynn's previous writing for ACP on MEGA MAN and NEW CRUSADERS, but those weren't titles that were particularly funny.

Then again, there's no way to know what the split of duties here is between Waid and Flynn. I suspect that Waid's name is being used by ACP to imply a connection to ARCHIE, but he's performing minimal writer's duties here with the bulk of the actual writing being handled by (the much cheaper to hire) Ian Flynn.

Either way, I'm not particularly happy about it. Hope I'm wrong and Flynn might surprise me and turn out to have a talent for humor comics. JUGHEAD is the only New Riverdale title I continue to read at this point. I'm at a loss to explain how Tom DeFalco's REGGIE can be so un-funny, considering that he's written a lot of the best stories for Archie classic comics.

Future Quest #10 had the heroes finally getting organized, as Space Ghost is conscious and recovered from his injuries, and he's able to provide the Quest team and InterNation agents with some valuable intel regarding Omnikron. What remains of the Herculoids (Tarra, Igoo, Zok, and Gleep) also arrived on Earth to join in the battle. We saw Tundro's demise in the first issue, and this issue it was mentioned that Gloop had also been absorbed into Omnikron. I have to admit I don't recall what happened to Zandor and Dorno -- are they still alive?

We also got to see, in this issue, the new Mightor meet his prehistoric predecessor via an accidental trip by Ty through the void, and the original Mightor gives him some tips on how to use the power-club. It's kind of surprising to find out that the original Mightor lived in the prehistoric past of Earth, since I always assumed he just lived on some other prehistoric world somewhere in the universe (if not an alternate-Earth timeline), since there are many strange things in Mightor's world (flying, flame-breathing dragons for one) that never existed in the past of our planet. In some ways Mightor's world just seemed a little like Amzot, the Herculoid's planet, but inhabited by more human (or humanoid) tribes of people.

That set me to wondering a whole bunch of things about the H-B Universe.

1. Why haven't Vapor Man, Gravity Girl, and Meteor Man taken a larger role in fighting Omnikron? You'd think the Galaxy Trio would be as much or more aware of the danger of Omnikron as Space Ghost, and being among the most powerful of all the H-B heroes, their particular talents could be very helpful in combatting this menace.

2. For that matter, what about Kid Comet, Astra, and Moleculad? Do they even exist in this universe? You'd think that a group named the Teen Force had something to do with the Space Force of which Space Ghost was once a member...

3. What about other H-B heroes conspicuously among the missing? Young Samson & Goliath, and Blue Falcon & Dynomutt? Will we ever see them? Admittedly Blue Falcon is a bit underpowered for this type of situation, but Race Bannon and Jade are doing all right in this crisis without any super powers.

AVENGERS #4.1 (of 5)
THANOS #4
GREAT LAKES AVENGERS #5
STAR TREK/GREEN LANTERN VOL. 2 #3 (of 6)
DETECTIVE COMICS #951
WONDER WOMAN #17
JUGHEAD #13
ASTRO CITY #41
SHE-WOLF #6
TANK GIRL: GOLD #4 (of 4)
SCOOBY-DOO TEAM UP #23
BATMAN '66 MEETS WONDER WOMAN '77 #2 (of 6)
FUTURE QUEST #10 (of 12)
KAMANDI CHALLENGE #2 (of 12)
KONG OF SKULL ISLAND #8

POPEYE CLASSICS VOL. 9 HC (IDW) - reprints Popeye (Dell Comics) #40-44

JUGHEAD & ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #25

BEN 10 CLASSICS VOL. 1: BEN HERE BEFORE TP (IDW) - reprints short stories from Cartoon Network Action Pack (DC) #2-18
BEN 10 CLASSICS VOL. 2: IT'S BEN A PLEASURE TP (IDW) - reprints short stories from Cartoon Network Action Pack (DC) #19-26

BEN 10 [Alien Force] CLASSICS VOL. 3: BLAST FROM THE PAST TP (IDW) - reprints short stories from Cartoon Network Action Pack (DC) #27-46
BEN 10 ALIEN FORCE: DOOM DIMENSION VOL. 1 MMPB (Del Rey) - original graphic novel/Part 1 of 2
BEN 10 ALIEN FORCE: DOOM DIMENSION VOL. 2 MMPB (Del Rey) - original graphic novel/Part 2 of 2

BEN 10 [Ultimate Alien] CLASSICS VOL. 4: BEAUTY AND THE BEN TP (IDW) - reprints short stories from Cartoon Network Action Pack (DC) #48-56
BEN 10 [Ultimate Alien] CLASSICS VOL. 5: POWERLESS TP (IDW) - reprints short stories from Cartoon Network Action Pack (DC) #57-67

BEN 10 [Omniverse]: DEEP TROUBLE TP (IDW) - reprints Ben 10 (IDW) #1-4
BEN 10 OMNIVERSE VOL. 1: GHOST SHIP (Viz Media) - original graphic novel
BEN 10 OMNIVERSE (HCF 2013) HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (Viz Media) - minicomic
BEN 10 OMNIVERSE VOL. 2: JOYRIDES (Viz Media) - original graphic novel
BEN 10 OMNIVERSE VOL. 3: PARALLEL PARADOX (Viz Media) - original graphic novel

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on February 19, 2017, 12:41:30 AM

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 18, 2017, 11:33:19 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on February 18, 2017, 10:38:06 PM
I also have a couple of trade paperback collections of romance stories where they've whited out all the dialogue balloons and captions, and completely rewritten the stories, to hilarious effect.

Do you remember what these are called?

TRUER THAN TRUE ROMANCE: Classic Love Stories Retold by Jeanne Martinet (Watson-Guptill, June 2001)

MARVEL ROMANCE REDUX: Another Kind of Love (by various) (Marvel, Feb. 2007)

On a related note, I feel it's pertinent to point out that Jeanne Martinet was not the first to conceive the idea of repurposing reprints of older romance comics with newly-written, satrirical or ironic dialogue. That dubious honor belongs to John Lustig's LAST KISS.

Lustig bought the copyrights to various of the Charlton Comics Group's romance stories (among them, the comic book First Kiss) for a pittance in the 1980s, when the defunct publisher sold off its copyrights to characters and stories piecemeal. Since absolutely no market for straight romance comics reprints existed at that time, LAST KISS first began appearing as an ongoing semi-regular feature in the (also now-defunct) COMICS BUYERS' GUIDE in the late 1980s. Unlike the above trade paperbacks, LAST KISS was conceived as a humorous feature that excerpted 1-4 panels from those old Charlton romance comics with the addition of rewritten dialogue. The only time Lustig re-dialogued complete stories (and the only print appearance of LAST KISS outside of the CBG feature) was in a 4-issue series published by the obscure indy company Shanda Fantasy Arts between 2001-2003 (hard to find now, but keep an eye out as you're scouring those cheapie boxes).

You can find a complete archive of John Lustig's LAST KISS panels at http://www.lastkissinc.com/.

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 19, 2017, 04:42:34 PM
I remember local TV programming for homework. Where you could call in and a tutor would help you with a math problem live on the show.

Costume characters are still fairly popular at children's birthday parties. Like women dressed up as Elsa or other Disney princesses.

I know that local cable access stations still exist, and so do major market stations that produce local programming, even some aimed at or starring kids (but these tend to be more in the mold of PBS' kids' programming such as Sesame Street).

The phenomena to which I'm referring here is similar to such nationally-syndicated precursors as The Howdy Doody Show or Bozo's Big Top (later known as Bozo's Circus). Bozo the Clown started out as a kid's show host in a local market and later expanded to national syndication. "Jollie's Circus Show" in the Jughead story above is clearly based on Bozo's Circus (some type of clown kids' show host may have accounted for almost half the local shows of this kind). Other types of kids' show hosts took on different personas, like cowboys or spacemen. The format of these shows nearly always involved a number of regular costumed cast members, a live (and frequently interactive) studio audience of kids, and skits, puppet characters, games & prize contests, usually interspersed with a number of syndicated cartoons (Gumby would not have been out of place in such a lineup). Both daily morning and afternoon programming time slots had shows of this type, as well as some weekly ones in early Saturday or Sunday morning time slots. This type of locally-produced kid's show host program was nearly ubiquitous in all major television markets in the 1960s, many of which were popular enough to continue through the 1970s. The introduction of cable TV programming into these same markets in the 1980s slowly made those kinds of programs an endangered species, and they were all but extinct by the early 1990s.

JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #25 - I was pleasantly surprised to find my subscription copy in the mailbox yesterday, 5 days ahead of its release in comic shops next Wednesday. The lead story in here by Dan Parent is "Child's Play", in which Archie and Jughead get jobs working as costumed performers on a local kids' show, "Jollie's Circus Show" (turns out Jughead is a big fan of Jollie's - he never misses the show). Archie gets hired to wear a rabbit suit (Mr. Floppy), and Jughead winds up cast as Bobo the Bear. They get the jobs because the show needs a guitarist and a drummer (so it's kind of like The Banana Splits?) Jollie turns out to be not-so-jolly, and Jughead is disillusioned (and this reminded me of stories I heard about a certain local kid's show host when I was young; it may be that there are a lot of local legends like that). It's a funny story, but the premise immediately struck me as oddly dated. I remember local programming of kids' shows from my childhood (and I'm sure Dan does as well), but I could have sworn these type of locally-produced programs ceased to exist a couple (or three) decades ago. Am I wrong about that? I guess I can just let it go, and say Riverdale is stuck in a never-neverland nostalgic timeless era.

There's a couple of other notable Dan Parent stories in here, one of which, "Streetsmart Strategy" is drawn by Stan Goldberg (I don't think I've ever seen one). In fact, I skipped reading the credits for the story, but noticed it's another one of those stories (I've seen several) where Jellybean is so adorably cute that she's attracting all sorts of attention (exclusively from teenage girls in this particular instance) while Jughead is out walking her in her stroller. On page 3, in panel 2, it's a medium head shot of Jellybean by herself, and in a thought balloon (responding to Jughead's comment in the previous panel: "I love you like a sister, JB, but you DO present problems!") Jellybean thinks to herself "A sweet little charmer like ME present problems? What a cockamamie idea!". At that moment, even though I'd never before seen a Dan Parent story drawn by Stan Goldberg, I thought... "Waitaminnit. Is this a DAN PARENT story?" and flipping back to the credits, I confirmed I was right. So it's a little scary to me now that I can so readily identify a DP story without even knowing the credits beforehand. In fact, there's another Jughead story in here that Dan Parent drew, which is credited here as written by George Gladir ("Identical Opposites!"). A couple of pages into it though, I was already beginning to doubt the veracity of that credit, as the whole story just seemed too Dan Parent-ish ... or Dan Parental? ... Whatever. Then on page 3, Ginger Lopez (a DP-creation) shows up in the story, and I was 98% certain that someone at ACP had flubbed the credits. Just to be absolutely sure though, I looked up the story (which first appeared, and was cover-featured, in JUGHEAD JONES DIGEST #100, May 1996), and sure enough, on GCDb the writing is credited to Dan. The story introduces Jughead's cousin Nathan, who looks exactly like Jughead, but behaves completely differently. (I was reminded here of Archie's identical opposite twin cousin, the well-mannered and cultured Alistair from the English branch of the Andrews family, but he's a later creation, first having appeared in ARCHIE #527 in 2002). Alistair Andrews was created by Greg Crosby. Both stories were probably inspired by The Patty Duke Show (and I know Dan is a big fan of classic sitcoms)... "They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike; You can lose your mind! When cousins... are two of a kind!". I should remind Dan about Nathan Jones next time I see him, and ask him about putting him in a new story together with Alistair Andrews... that could be fun. Like, what would happen if both Alistair and Nathan showed up in Riverdale at the same time, and Archie & Jughead hatched a 'Prince & the Pauper' scam at the same time that Betty & Veronica schemed their own little 'Trading Places' plot?

There's the usual mix of Jughead stories filling out this issue - a few Boldman/Lindsey Jughead stories (and a couple of Gladir/Lindsey stories, too), a half-dozen Samm Schwartz classics, a few new and a few old Stan Goldberg ones, and a mish-mosh of other artists like Dick Malmgren, Tim Kennedy, Bob White, Fernando Ruiz, Al Hartley, Chic Stone, and Bill Vigoda.

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 18, 2017, 11:33:19 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on February 18, 2017, 10:38:06 PM
I also have a couple of trade paperback collections of romance stories where they've whited out all the dialogue balloons and captions, and completely rewritten the stories, to hilarious effect.

Do you remember what these are called?

TRUER THAN TRUE ROMANCE: Classic Love Stories Retold by Jeanne Martinet (Watson-Guptill, June 2001)

MARVEL ROMANCE REDUX: Another Kind of Love (by various) (Marvel, Feb. 2007)


A few other collections of (unaltered) romance comics have been published in this century, too:

ROMANCE WITHOUT TEARS: '50s Love Comics - With A Twist! by John Benson (Fantagraphics, Jan. 2003)

AGONIZING LOVE: The Golden Era of Romance Comics by Michael Barson (Harper Design, May 2011)

YOUNG ROMANCE (Jan. 2012) and YOUNG ROMANCE 2 (Mar. 2014) are two hardcover collections from Fantagraphics that reprint the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby romance stories that began the entire genre in comics. (Yes, the romance comics genre was invented by the same two men responsible for creating Captain America and ACP's Adventures of The Fly).

And of course, the aforementioned Craig Yoe's collections of WEIRD LOVE in hardcover format from IDW and YoeBooks (3 so far). The Weird Love and Young Romance collections are available in digital format as well, from Amazon and ComiXology.


The history of the genre has been chronicled in a couple of books, as well:

CONFESSIONS, ROMANCES, SECRETS, AND TEMPTATIONS: Archer St. John and the St. John Romance Comics by John Benson (Fantagraphics, May 2007) is a text history companion to Benson's earlier collection of St. John romance comics reprints, Romance Without Tears.

LOVE ON THE RACKS: A History of American Romance Comics by Michelle Nolan (McFarland, Apr. 2008) takes a broader view and encompasses the entire publishing history of the genre, from Simon & Kirby's seminal YOUNG ROMANCE in 1947, the title that started it all, to the last gasps of Marvel and DC's romance comics in the 1970s.