Fun for all ages, and wholesome family entertainment, I'm sure... 

Quote from: kingofthewatermelons on January 25, 2017, 10:19:05 AM
What is the one with the wishing pendant?

"Please Don't Repeat Yourself" from VERONICA #109.

There was a sequel where the pendant returned, "Turnabout is Fair Play" in VERONICA #122.

Quote from: Purgatori on January 25, 2017, 08:46:43 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 24, 2017, 09:29:00 AM

From what I've been reading, Betty and Veronica have already "come out". 

Please elaborate. Sounds like I would love to be reading what you've been reading!

                                 ^ Reading the Shoutbox...  ^

TV shows are really easy to write, if you only remember to start with the basic premise of "Hey, you know what would be cool? If everybody was having sex with everybody else !" And, of course, make sure you advertise the show heavily in all of your digests. Wouldn't want any of the 10 year olds to miss anything cool!

I'm pretty much in agreement with all of your assessments here, PTF. As to why Truly did not appear before/after the reboot...

The answer should be pretty obvious if you stop and think about it. She's Craig Boldman's character, and only Craig Boldman can really write a story in which Trula is truly Trula. She's a brilliant creation, because he's a brilliant writer. You'll notice that she appeared in very few non-Boldman written stories in which she had a major role, even during the time period when she was appearing semi-frequently in JUGHEAD, as written by Boldman. But she never actually became a "regular", ongoing supporting character (or antagonizing character). Like all great comic book antagonists, the readers could look forward to each new appearance of Trula, because they were just spaced out enough, that they never grew tired of her. But more to the point here, do you think that writing a story in which Trula masterfully manipulates Jughead with ease and never ever misses a trick, accurately predicting all of his reactions several steps in advance and taking them into account, is easy to write? Maybe if you're Craig Boldman, but with all due respect to Dan Parent and some of the other great ACP writers, that's just not their style of writing. So when Boldman stopped writing JUGHEAD, that was pretty much the end of Trula -- as well as the end of most new Jughead stories, when JUGHEAD was cancelled. At least anything longer than a 5-pager in one of Jughead's digest titles -- and then you have to consider how difficult it is to develop a satisfying Trula story in only 5 pages. Boldman could do a 5 or 6 pager with Trula occasionally, but only after he had established her and developed her in longer stories. It's really hard to convey the full effect of Trula's character in the short-shorts, and those stories only really work if the reader is already familiar with Trula from the longer stories.

Now, the one comment that caused me to wonder what you're thinking (or drinking?) is that remark about Trula having red hair. She doesn't have red hair, and has never had red hair (unless the colorist DID actually make a mistake). She's always had auburn hair (that's "brownish red" to you, or probably more accurately, reddish brown), sometimes described as "chestnut". The Archieverse has more than enough redheads anyway, at least a far greater percentage than seems to be the case in the real world (a subjective perception, I'll admit).


                                    ^1st appearance^                                                      ^Last appearance^

On the cover of #89, if anything, it's that bright light source in the background illuminating Juggie and Trula's faces that makes her hair appear lighter in color than it normally is in the stories - a dark auburn or chestnut brown. But if you look to the far right of the cover, her hair is darker and more brown as it should be (but the colorist still didn't get quite the proper combination of color screens). You could call it a mistake or a lighting effect that just didn't quite come off the way it should have, or chalk it up to the cover colorist not being the same as the colorist who did the interiors. Even on the cover of #210, the colorist tried to get creative and toss in these highlights that would normally never be seen in her hair as colored in the interior stories. Thinking back on that first multi-parter now, I do seem to recall that there was some waffling between the chapters on Trula's proper hair color. So on those pages where it does appear more red, THOSE are the mistakes, because in stories thereafter, it settles down (at least on the interior pages) to auburn/chestnut/reddish-brown, and that is where it stayed.

BEN 10, Season 4 - 10 (25 min.) episodes + original TV movie "BEN 10: Secret of the Omnitrix" (75 min.)

THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST Vol. 3: THE BOOK OF THE IRON FIST TP
GREEN HORNET: REIGN OF THE DEMON #2 (of 4)
PUNISHER #8
SQUADRON SUPREME #15 (final issue)
DEATH OF HAWKMAN #4 (of 6)
STAR TREK/GREEN LANTERN Vol. 2 #2 (of 6)
BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE ADVENTURES #3 (of 6)
SIXPACK & DOGWELDER: HARD-TRAVELIN' HEROZ #6 (of 6)
THANOS #3
DETECTIVE COMICS #949
ODYSSEY OF THE AMAZONS #1 (of 6)
WONDER WOMAN #15
JLA: KILLER FROST REBIRTH #1 (one-shot)
SHE-WOLF #5
SKYBOURNE #3 (of 5)
LOOSE ENDS #1 (of 4)
DARK HORSE PRESENTS #30
PATSY WALKER AKA HELLCAT #14
HILLBILLY #5
TARZAN ON THE PLANET OF THE APES #5 (of 5)
BETTY BOOP #4 (of 4)
BATMAN '66 MEETS WONDER WOMAN '77 #1 (of 6)
WONDER WOMAN '77 MEETS THE BIONIC WOMAN #2 (of 6)
FUTURE QUEST #9
KAMANDI CHALLENGE #1 (of 12)
MICRONAUTS #9
BLUE MONDAY Vol. 2: ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS TP
THE LOST BOOKS OF EVE Vol. 1 TP (2008)

But what I want to know is if Josie & Sabrina are actually going to BE in JUGHEAD #14, or did Derek Charm just draw them on the cover??

*Pop Tate is one creepy looking fat man now, isn't he?*

Quote from: Oldiesmann on January 23, 2017, 06:41:09 PM
The interesting thing is Riverdale was originally solicited as a one-shot a couple months ago, and now it's an ongoing series even though the show hasn't aired yet.

The RIVERDALE one-shot was just that... a one-shot (scheduled to ship 03-01-17 ...but we'll see...). That issue contains four short stories each focusing on a single character (and all written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) which serve as prequels to the TV pilot episode.

Which was then followed by a solicitation for RIVERDALE (ONGOING) #1... which has since been cancelled. The ongoing series was also supposed to have been written by "Aguirre-Sacasa and the members of the show's writers' room, along with art by up-and-coming artist Alitha Martinez" according to the original solicitation.

So the one-shot #1 and the ongoing #1 are (or were) two different comics. Since they cancelled the ongoing #1 issue, it shouldn't create any confusion down the road as to which is the proper #1 issue (in effect, the one-shot #1 would have actually been like issue #0... but now we don't have to worry about that).

And on a side note, AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #11 and 12 were both cancelled as well (along with SABRINA #7), so B&V #3 just may come out before those do. And when I say "cancelled", I mean that those issues will have to be re-solicited (just like B&V #3) before you'll see them published.

I'd say "YAY!" for a Sabrina 80-Page Giant, but I'm still not convinced any of those 80-Page Giants will actually see print, since the Reggie 80-Page Giant was already cancelled, and we still haven't seen any of the others previously solicited yet.

Nice to see the return of Agents B & V, though!

But RIVERDALE DIGEST #1 !?!  Oh, please... does that damn show have to taint every format of their publishing line? Ugh. Just seeing all the ads filling up the digests is disgusting enough.

Quote from: PTF on January 24, 2017, 09:17:39 AM
Alright! Love the Moose special.

And could Betty & Veronica come out before the next Afterlife be in April? It's the ultimate tortoise vs turtle race reaching it's conclusion!!

From what I've been reading, Betty and Veronica have already "come out". 

Quote from: Upsiditus on January 22, 2017, 08:21:36 PM
You have hit on why this won't work as a live action TV series.  They can only do one season because the next year they would have to move up a grade.  If they did a cartoon it could go on for many years, like the Simpsons.

Not quite, though. The series is called RIVERDALE, not "Riverdale HIGH". Of course the actors are going to age, and they know that. They can't be playing 16/17 year-old high school students for more than two seasons.

BUT this TV series is already breaking all the ground rules established in the Archie comic books, so having Archie and his friends graduate and continue on beyond high school seems like a minor thing in the context of all the major changes from the comics that we know they're making so far.

SABRINA the live-action TV series went on for 7 seasons, and they didn't cancel it because she was no longer a teenage witch. Or if you want a few better parallels in terms of thematic background, take HAPPY DAYS (11 seasons), THAT 70s SHOW (8 seasons), and DAWSON'S CREEK (6 seasons) -- all shows whose focal characters started out as teens in high school.

Besides, RIVERDALE already "won't work" for me. But there are certainly hit TV series that 'don't work' for me that manage to capture enough of an audience to run for years and years. Case in point... I never really watched SABRINA when it was on the air, yet it didn't need my help as a viewer to succeed as a television series. Another good example would be LOIS AND CLARK. Or perhaps even more precisely on point in terms of making an analogy here -- I submit for your examination: SMALLVILLE (10 seasons) and GOTHAM (3 seasons, and counting). Both 'based on' youthful versions of Superman and Batman respectively, but vastly different than the source material of the comic books. If you wanted to point a finger directly at 2 shows inspired BY more so than adapted FROM comics, to serve as models for RIVERDALE, those would be the ones -- even the title RIVERDALE is telling us as much (otherwise, why not title the series ARCHIE, a word which would certainly invoke greater recognition among the public as adapted from a comic book?). I would advise any Archie comics readers to adjust their expectations of the adherence of RIVERDALE to the source material of Archie Comics accordingly.

Whether or not those programs worked for comic book readers was irrelevant in terms of whether they succeeded or not as television shows. The stamp of approval of the consensus of comic book fans means nothing because those viewers are a fractional percentage of the overall viewing audience (although it may be noted that a sizable segment of the comic reading audience was not put off by those shows' lack of faithfulness to the source material of the comics).

To show an example of the direct opposite, comic book fans who watched the animated series YOUNG JUSTICE were rabid in their support of the series (despite the show's deviation from the source material established by DC comic books published prior to its airing), yet that wasn't able to keep it on the air, and it was cancelled after only 2 seasons -- because the show failed to capture the much larger younger demographic that Cartoon Network wanted, the consumers of show-based merchandise like action figures and toys. The toy line produced by Mattel fizzled, so they weren't going to pony up any more TV advertising revenue -- because the show was written at too sophisticated a level for the younger viewers who were the main consumers of toys to follow, even though the older comic book fans loved it.

When comparing some of the best Dan Parent (written & drawn) book-length stories against each other, it's hard for me to pick one over the other. Some of those Christmas stories with Jingles and Sugar Plum from a few years back would be right up there, too.

On the other hand, both of these (ARCHIE #636 and ARCHIE #647) are right up there too, and it's hard for me to choose between them -- both have interesting and unusual twists on the usual status quo for Archie and the gang, which makes them both memorable.



I sort of agree with what Steve is saying, but it's even harder to select a single issue out of all the classic Silver Age stuff (well, I narrowed it down that far anyway). For me it would probably be an issue featuring all stories by Frank Doyle and Dan DeCarlo, but WHICH one? I don't know. I guess JOSIE had the longest stories in the early issues, with a new short beginning where the previous one ended (so they were like chapters in a longer story that needed to be read in order). Maybe JOSIE #9, with the story "You're the Tops" (and subsequent connecting chapters), where Josie and the gang go to the 1964 World's Fair:



But it's pretty hard to say that's a definitive choice, when I know there are a whole bunch of JOSIE issues that I haven't read, and that's just as true of a lot of the classic Silver Age issues of ARCHIE'S GIRLS BETTY AND VERONICA, and BETTY AND ME as well. But BETTY AND ME #3 and 4 would both be high on my list as well. Actually, most of the 1960s issues of BETTY AND ME have a high percentage of Dan DeCarlo stories, which dwindled quickly as the 1960s rolled on into the 1970s and Dan D started doing more and more covers and pin-ups for the whole Archie line (and even moreso at the midpoint in the 1970s when Bob Montana died and DDC took over the art on the Archie newspaper strip). Who do I have to kill to get some Silver Age Archives hardcover collections of titles like JOSIE and BETTY AND ME, that featured all or nearly all stories with Dan DeCarlo at the height of his artistic powers, right from the first issue?



Which brings me to my biggest gripe with ACP, and why I won't give them more of my money. If they were to ask me why I'm such a foot-dragger, and won't buy ACP products from Archie Digital, it's because they won't let me have direct access to the characters, titles, stories, and artists & writers I most want to read from their publishing history. When they make those Silver Age titles like JOSIE, ARCHIE'S GIRLS BETTY AND VERONICA, ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE, BETTY AND ME, REGGIE AND ME, and LIFE WITH ARCHIE -- and Bronze Age titles like ARCHIE'S TV LAUGH-OUT, JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, THAT WILKIN BOY, and MADHOUSE GLADS available digitally (as single issues or archival collections), then I'll become an Archie Digital consumer in a heartbeat. If they're going to force me to try to find the stories I really want to read the most by sifting through one digital anthology collection (the exact contents of which they will never even tell me) after another, I'll just stick with their print digests and collecting back issues, thank you very much. 

Quote from: irishmoxie on January 21, 2017, 12:41:00 PM
I like Action Lab Dog of Wonder, Princeless, and Ghoul Scouts. I've read others like Nutmeg, Vamplets, Mishka, and Hero Cats but they were just ok. They seem to have long stretches between issues though. I read the FCBD of Doll Face. The art kinda reminds me of Sky Doll.

I never saw the FCBD Dollface issue, so I don't know if it's actually the same comic as #1 or not (that's one common use of an FCBD comic, as kind of a free preview of an upcoming series). I only picked it up on a whim because the art looked kind of interesting. Never read Sky Doll either, although I've seen it - but isn't that some kind of Euro-manga thing? Even though this is supposed to be some kind of origin story, I didn't completely understand the plot. I guess Dollface is some kind of robot, but she has a name ("Lila") and doesn't really seem like a robot, more like her personality was transplanted from someone (dead?) or something. There was some kind of techobabble stuff about using the Necronomicon to program her, but I didn't really get it -- and it seemed like the readers were assumed to be familiar with Zombie Tramp already, so I was lost there. Maybe there's some shared-universe background stuff from the Zombie Tramp comic that they assume readers already knew as well. Doesn't seem like the best approach for a new series.

EDIT: Okay, tried looking up that FCBD issue and couldn't find it, so I'm guessing that this is the one you meant. (Not sure which of these covers actually appeared on the printed book, but note the difference in titles - "ZT vs DOLLFACE" or "ZT vs The Doll-Faced Witch Hunter".):
[
...and the solicitation description on this one mentions "What happens when a witch hunter's soul from 17th-century Salem, Massachusetts gets infused into a life-sized, ball-jointed, 3D printed, sexbot in present time?" and while the latter part was clear enough in issue #1, I saw nothing in there identifying how exactly this witch hunter Lila from the 17th century's soul got grafted onto the Dollface body. While I did see Dollface referred to as a "witch hunter" by Zombie Tramp (again, since I never read that character's series -- isn't she a zombie, not a witch?), it wasn't made clear what happened when Dollface was programmed at all (except the technobabble bit about using the Necronomicon to program her tipped the reader off that something weird was going on). It seems like they assumed at a minimum that all the readers picking up #1 would already have read the ComicFest preview comic (which appears to be an entirely different story, possibly taking place sometime in-between the pages of this first issue of Dollface). I like the basic concept, but the execution as far as this single issue in terms of writing could have been a lot better. Maybe I should see if I can find a copy of that FCBD issue somewhere, but I'm not going to expend much effort on it.

Yet another EDIT: So I just found an online preview of what is referred to as "HCF 2016 ZOMBIE TRAMP VS THE DOLL-FACED WITCH HUNTER", and the 3 pages previewed of the HCF giveaway are the same as 3 of the pages I read in DOLLFACE #1, so maybe they are the same comic book story, after all.

I think I'm going to skip watching any video today and just read.

ONE-PUNCH MAN, Vol. 10 - Started reading this, but got interrupted by other stuff before finishing. But I've just been enjoying the heck out of this series since I discovered it. Then I checked the mailbox this morning (which I forgot to do yesterday) and found...

BETTY AND VERONICA JUMBO COMICS #250 - So I sat down, planning to just read the new Dan Parent story, but then started flipping through it, looking at the credits for all the stories, and wound up reading another dozen or more of them. I think I counted about half a dozen Frank Doyle/Dan DeCarlo stories in here, and just as many Dan Parent stories (in addition to the new one). One of those FD/DDC stories was a winter skating story that had more funny slapstick gags with Veronica than I think I've ever seen in a single story. There are a few Bob Bolling stories too (apart from the Little Betty and Veronica stories, which I don't read). Also, (at least) half a dozen Mike Pellowski stories, but I guess if they just stopped reprinting those then they'd have to go back to 1980s and earlier stories to fill all those pages in the digests (not that I'd be complaining if they actually DID that). Man, it seems like Pellowski wrote at least twice as many stories as anybody else writing for ACP in the 90s and 00s. There's also another whole issue of SABRINA reprinted here (continuing the sequential reprints of Holly G's run on the title) that I hadn't read before. The new story by Dan P. has an appearance by Harper (only two panels, though ). It seemed a little shorter than usual (the last 2 pages only had 2 big panels per page) and the ending wasn't as funny as usual for Dan, but there are some decent funny bits leading up to that.