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Messages - DeCarlo Rules

#1276
Archie's birthday is February 4th, as established by no less an authority than the original artist, Bob Montana. He chose that day because that was the date in 1946 on which Archie first made his debut as a daily newspaper strip, which eventually outlasted Montana himself, running in newspapers for 65 years.
#1277
Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on January 08, 2017, 05:14:48 PM
Quote from: Asdfghjkl on January 08, 2017, 12:33:02 PM
Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on January 08, 2017, 09:36:04 AM
Quote from: Justnobody42 on January 07, 2017, 11:01:18 PM
Quote from: Asdfghjkl on January 07, 2017, 12:17:04 PM
Does anyone know of any B&V stories where the girls encounter magic?  Like witches, magical artifacts, or warlocks?  I know that there's one where Veronica finds a wishing pendant and where the girls find a genie, but I'm looking for something new (or old, I guess) to read.   The only stories that I seem to find are ones involving Sabrina and no offense to my favorite teenage witch, I kinda want something where B&V are in the spotlight.  Thanks in advance


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


This may sound strange, but a Column I enjoy called "Ask Chris" talks about a Frank Doyle (The king of Archie Writers!) story where Betty and Veronica meet...Satan.


That story was more recently reprinted in The Best of Archie Comics, Book Four

I've read it.  Good story.  At least now we all know why Archie always did whatever Veronica said in the 50's.  Lol.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Yeah, it wasn't her looks or her money, after all  ;D

What good are looks and money anyway, if not as magic powers by any other name?
#1278
Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on January 08, 2017, 09:33:36 AM
QuoteI dunno, I don't see how a comedy Archie show would work all that well. The Archie comedy has always been, well, rather traditional and not really anything special.

Why wouldn't it work? It would work quite well if they had the right writers. What's wrong with being "traditional"?? And if the Archie comedy is "nothing special" according to you, then why has it been around for so many years? Clearly they were doing something right.

'Nothing special' describes most of the non-comedy shows on television about ordinary people (and ordinary teenagers). Once they stop being funny, I have absolutely no intrinsic interest in what Archie and his friends do in their boring teenage lives.
#1279
Welcome/Introductions / Re: hey hey hey
January 09, 2017, 10:51:54 AM
It took me a while to get that. "Ace"-X-you-all.
#1280
Quote from: irishmoxie on January 08, 2017, 12:09:18 PM
I really liked the Hex Girls one. I've watched about 10 episodes so far.

I didn't even think too much about the song "Trap of Love" Daphne was singing, while I was watching the episode the first time, but watching it again now just as I posted the link above, I suddenly understood the deeper meaning of all of the lyrics of the song. Daphne knows that as soon as she sings a song about a trap, Fred will be mesmerized by it, which may be the only way she can get him to pay attention to her and communicate with him. Daphne is trying to explain to him how frustrated she feels right now, but it's about more than just being used as bait to catch the Phantom. She feels trapped by her own feelings of love for Fred that aren't being returned, and the song is like a final wake-up call to him before it's too late. For her, that love is turning to pain, and she may have to cut off her own feelings to save herself. But it's clear when they cut to Fred's reaction (practically blank, yet confused) as Velma asks "What do you think of the new song?", that he's fascinated, yet dumbfounded. He still doesn't get it yet.

That's pretty amazing writing, because... things are changing between them. It turns out it only matters as far as the evolution of the relationship between Daphne and Fred over the course of the series, and even that doesn't make sense until you learn why it is that Fred is obsessed with traps and can't relate emotionally or express his feelings. Because, you just assume from the first episode that he's a big dumb handsome hunk, that's all -- like it's just a cartoon character cliche thing that doesn't require explaining or wondering about. But by the time everything about Fred's background becomes clear, all the pieces fit together perfectly.
#1281
Quote from: irishmoxie on January 07, 2017, 05:21:22 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 07, 2017, 01:01:26 AM
I've been binge-watching SCOOBY-DOO: MYSTERY INCORPORATED, trying to get through a single DVD disc (6-7 half-hour episodes) a day. It's been pretty addictive (this is the first time I've seen any of these) and amazing on so many levels: the writing, parody/satire, characterization, ongoing subplots. There are so many interesting things about this show, whether you admit to being a fan of Scooby-Doo or not. I always liked the general premise of the original cartoon, but the writing was pretty bad and it was repetitious, and it was hard to sit through viewing multiple episodes without getting quickly bored. This rebooted version of the show is obviously aimed at an older audience. It's smart writing, and not only that, there's an ongoing mystery that links all the episodes together. As the seasons progress, there are lots of new characters introduced. Some of them are ongoing, while some of them return unexpectedly in much later episodes. There's both comedy and drama in the series, with the levels of danger, action, tension, and scariness being slowly ratcheted up as the seasons progress, and the ongoing mystery being slowly revealed as more and more complex. They do a lot of plotting where it sets up an obvious suspect to be behind each episode's mystery, but the obvious suspect invariably turns out NOT to be the perpetrator. And the monsters actually get quite scary as the episodes progress (even though you know that there has to be a scene in the end where a rubber mask gets pulled off to reveal the villain). At least they're scary in the context of a cartoon, and what's happening at that moment in the episode's plot. The animators came up with some impressive monster designs, and lighting, camera angles, and animation timing are all used to good effect, as are vocal and sound FX. Sometimes the monsters or ghosts are so impressive that the inevitable explanation at the end of the episode seems a little implausible. Then there is the ongoing romantic tension between Daphne and Fred, Velma and Shaggy, and even Scooby and... that goes through many twists and turns over the course of the series. I could probably write a few thousand more words on several of the specific episodes - it's that good.


I might watch this even though I'm not that into Scooby Doo. I need some more comedy.

Trust me, I'm NOT that into Scooby-Doo... or wasn't, until I watched THIS show. You'll like this if you give it a chance. It builds up slowly at first. There's even a girly episode with a girl band called the Hex Girls:

(Click on pic for music clip.)

Here's another clip from that same episode, where Daphne goes undercover as bait for the monster, posing as the band's new lead singer:

(Click to go to the clip. I can't really explain the significance of the song title "Trap of Love", but that's something you'll only understand when you get to know Fred Jones.)

At first I thought that the Hex Girls was a one-off episode thing, but they make a return appearance (I won't say exactly where or how) in the 2nd Season*. There's a lot of that in this series, where you think you'll never see certain characters again after their initial episode, but they wind up returning again unexpectedly somewhere later on. Continuity is very strong in this series and episodes HAVE to be watched in order (they all even have Chapter #s at the beginning of each episode's title card). I just finished watching the 2nd (and last) Season ending yesterday, and it was absolutely awesome and unexpected. The ongoing plot really heats up in the last few episodes. Can't recommend this series highly enough. So many good things in here, with references to every horror movie trope imaginable, from Vincent Price movies to The Shining, to Twin Peaks(!) -- that last one caught me by surprise. Don't want to say too much more, because the surprises were a big part of the fun of watching the show, knowing very little in advance about it.

(*I also just discovered, while looking for those music clips, that the Hex Girls apparently appeared in one or more other Scooby-Doo DTV features, so maybe it's some kind of new ongoing house band for Mystery Inc.)

#1282
Quote from: SAGG on January 07, 2017, 12:01:43 PM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on January 07, 2017, 10:39:08 AM
Finished reading Donald Duck: Sheriff of Bullet Valley by Carl Barks.
"Carl Barks was to Donald Duck what Bob Bolling was to Little Archie." I recall reading that somewhere....  :coolsmiley:

That doesn't seem quite right to me. Carl Barks was brilliant, no question. But he didn't create Donald Duck or his nephews. He did create a lot of other important characters like Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, and Gladstone Gander, to name just three of the most important ones.

I may be mistaken about this, but didn't Bob Bolling create Little Archie? Granted, I guess it would be more analogous to creating Superboy where Superman already existed beforehand, but to put it more accurately I guess, Little Archie would not exist if it were not for Bob Bolling. Or if he did somehow, eventually, come into existence, then he would have turned out to be a significantly different character under a different creator's hands. However, Donald Duck would still exist if Carl Barks had never written or drawn him, because he already existed before Carl Barks ever worked on his stories, and he'd still be essentially the same Donald... just with far less good stories about him.

So it would probably be more accurate to say "Bob Bolling was to Little Archie what Carl Barks was to Uncle Scrooge", since Uncle Scooge can be considered a derivative character of Donald Duck. Scrooge McDuck could not have come into existence if Donald Duck had not existed first, which is the same situation as with Bob Bolling's Little Archie and Bob Montana's Archie.
#1283
PPS -- When I look at the record of delivery dates for WORLD OF ARCHIE digest, that one title seemed to have an okay delivery rate. Half of them were up to a week late (only one was 9 days late), and the other half were even delivered a few days earlier than comic shops got them. If ALL of the digest titles had a similar record of being delivered, I'd have absolutely NO complaints about subscriptions. So WHY just that ONE title? Are they somehow paying closer attention to that one because it has the most subscribers or something?  JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE wasn't bad overall (five out of six) either, but then one had to turn up missing, and not even replaceable, so that just ruined it.
#1284
Quote from: SAGG on January 07, 2017, 05:01:28 AM
I think either way we can agree ACP just doesn't have its act together. I hate to say it, but they're really slipping up. And the slope is getting steeper....  ???

I can't begin to list ALL the ways that ACP as a publisher is frustrating to me as an individual comic book fan and collector having a desire and expectation for certain things, but I'll try to cover the broadest strokes.

1. New material: I'm 180 degrees in opposition to their publishing philosophy. Long story short, the things (not to mention the people) they left behind to move forward with the New Riverdale reboot are pretty much the ONLY things that made Archie Comics worth reading to me in the first place.

2: Reprint program: It's a mess. Nearly everything about ACP's approach to reprinting (this applies to digital 'reprints' as well) stories from their vast library is counter to the way comic book collectors think. We want to collect specific stories, specific characters, specific writers and artists. What we GET is an anthology of whatever ingredients were convenient to toss into the stew they happen to be serving up. I don't get to pick the ingredients. ACP picks them for me, and I can take what they're serving or leave it. Even worse, they're not even going to tell me what those specific ingredients are going to be before they serve it up. I wind up paying for things I don't want, or things I wanted the first time I read them, but don't need to pay for again.

3: Digital program: While the economics of print make Problem No. 2 kind of dicey to solve, the digital format should remove all those barriers, so that the consumer can get exactly whatever he or she wants. Instead of selling me a digital copy of an issue of JOSIE from the 1960s that I want to read, I still have buy a whole anthology worth of stories (including Little Archie and L'il Jinx stories that I would never consider paying for by themselves) to get the story by Frank Doyle and Dan DeCarlo that I really wanted (assuming I somehow even knew beforehand that the story I wanted was in there). When they do Digital Exclusive collections, they won't even tell me exactly what's in them. If I want JUST the new Dan Parent stories from the current digests, I can't buy those.

That about covers most of the main issues, apart from the lack of new classic Archie stories (refer to Problem No. 1).

PS -- Oh yeah, almost forgot. Their subscription service stinks too.
#1285
Quote from: SAGG on January 07, 2017, 04:20:59 AM
I guess this is why I'm just going through digitals to buy now, because I can download them immediately. I rarely buy a ACP book anymore hands-on, with the exception of the new Archie one, just to see what it was about. I think I'd blame ACP more than anything else, since they're the ones in charge of producing the product for the distributors. To sum up, ACP seems to be having trouble with getting out the hands-on books, as opposed to getting them out digitally....

Well, this is one of the unknowns. I don't know if ACP slashing its in-house staff means that somehow a service called "Subscription Genius" is being subcontracted to track, bag, label and deliver subscribers copies to the USPS, or if "Subscription Genius" is just a piece of software that ACP leases to help (what's left of) their in-house staff to accomplish the task (but it's on them to actually get subscribers' copies bagged, labeled and out the door to the USPS).

I doubt very much if this is influencing me in any way to go the digital route, though. I have bigger problems with that (a whole other discussion which you may or may not recall) than with the mail subscriptions. No, it seems if anything this would be prodding me more in the direction of buying back issues of print titles, thus cutting ACP out of the loop of making any profit off me altogether.
#1286
All About Archie / A Digest Subscriber's Report - 2016
January 07, 2017, 03:48:31 AM
I subscribed to every single digest title that ACP published in 2016. Here's some data I compiled by tracking the in-store released dates (taken from Diamond Comics Distributors' website, so these are the dates that they would have appeared for sale in local independent comic retailers' stores) and the dates I received those same issues of my digest subscriptions in the mail. I unfortunately did not begin seriously tracking my subscription delivery dates until February 2016 (thus the titles released in January 2016 appear in gray font and are notated as "no data"), but otherwise tried to list all digest issues released in 2016. A single exception to that is ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST #275, released in comic shops on 4-Jan-2017. It was close enough to 2016 for me to include the data this summary, replacing delivery data that I failed to record for ARCHIE COMICS WINTER ANNUAL #265 (released in comic shops on 30-Dec-2015) so that I could have a total of 10 issues of that title (the proper annual frequency) represented.

Some other notes:
Issues listed in a RED font were ones I received later than they appeared in comic shops. Issues that were delivered by mail egregiously late (by which I mean 2 weeks or more late) are in BOLD font. Issues that were SO late that I had to email the subscription department to complain are highlighted in YELLOW, except for a single issue highlighted in RED -- JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS #23, which, when it was over 3 weeks late, and I emailed ACP to complain, I was informed that they no longer had any copies of that issue to replace the one I was missing, so they issued me credit for another issue on my subscription for that title instead (and I had to special order that issue from Diamond Comics through my LCS).

Issues listed in a GREEN font were those that were delivered earlier than the comic shop on-sale date, and if they were received a week or more earlier, I listed that issue in BOLD font.




A few other comments seem appropriate here. It hardly seems likely that too many other digest subscribers are tracking issues of their subscriptions in this kind of detail (notice how I avoided the word 'obsessively' there - but looking at the data overall, there may be some good reasoning behind my obsession). Which leads me to wonder how many kids are missing issues from their subscriptions that simply never arrive and they never notice, or possibly their parents don't know where to direct their complaints (or can't be bothered, if they're even aware of it). This data certainly doesn't present a pretty picture for anyone thinking of subscribing to the digest titles, but it is what it is. I've already cancelled my subscription (after 2 issues, but by that time issue #3 and 4 were already in the pipeline) to ARCHIE 75th ANNIVERSARY JUMBO COMICS, and I'm planning to let my subs to both ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST and WORLD OF ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST expire (they currently only have a couple of issues left). I've got a few more issues of both ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE and JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE before I have to worry about making a decision on those titles, and I already re-subscribed to both B&V FRIENDS and BETTY AND VERONICA a couple of months ago (those are the two most important titles to me, that I don't want to miss an issue of). My LCS doesn't even normally preorder any of the digest titles for their shelf, so I'd have to order these special for myself every month, or go looking for them at the local Barnes & Noble every month.

It's hard to say how much of the blame here should be allotted to my local USPS (they can't possibly be handing even bulk rate mail this badly, this often, can they?), how much to ACP, and how much to "Subscription Genius". Subscription Genius is what is basically handling the subscription orders, although the order help department at ACP can obviously make modifications manually (and users can see certain data of their own and modify things like their mailing address, and renew subscriptions). Subscription Genius may be no more than an app that ACP licenses from a software group that automates certain tasks like tracking issue #s, addresses and billing. I don't know if they're an actual service that has anything to do with the printing and mailing of subscribers' copies. My own admittedly non-documented recollections as a subscriber from 2015 is that delivery of issues then seemed more or less timely, with most issues arriving up to a week or so either early or late, but things seem to have taken a significant downturn after October or early November of 2015, when online comic news sites carried the news of ACP having slashed its in-house staff, eliminating several permanent employees. I wouldn't even consider getting issues delivered a week or so late that big of a deal, if there was any kind of consistency to it, but this is too much.
#1287
I've been binge-watching SCOOBY-DOO: MYSTERY INCORPORATED, trying to get through a single DVD disc (6-7 half-hour episodes) a day. It's been pretty addictive (this is the first time I've seen any of these) and amazing on so many levels: the writing, parody/satire, characterization, ongoing subplots. There are so many interesting things about this show, whether you admit to being a fan of Scooby-Doo or not. I always liked the general premise of the original cartoon, but the writing was pretty bad and it was repetitious, and it was hard to sit through viewing multiple episodes without getting quickly bored. This rebooted version of the show is obviously aimed at an older audience. It's smart writing, and not only that, there's an ongoing mystery that links all the episodes together. As the seasons progress, there are lots of new characters introduced. Some of them are ongoing, while some of them return unexpectedly in much later episodes. There's both comedy and drama in the series, with the levels of danger, action, tension, and scariness being slowly ratcheted up as the seasons progress, and the ongoing mystery being slowly revealed as more and more complex. They do a lot of plotting where it sets up an obvious suspect to be behind each episode's mystery, but the obvious suspect invariably turns out NOT to be the perpetrator. And the monsters actually get quite scary as the episodes progress (even though you know that there has to be a scene in the end where a rubber mask gets pulled off to reveal the villain). At least they're scary in the context of a cartoon, and what's happening at that moment in the episode's plot. The animators came up with some impressive monster designs, and lighting, camera angles, and animation timing are all used to good effect, as are vocal and sound FX. Sometimes the monsters or ghosts are so impressive that the inevitable explanation at the end of the episode seems a little implausible. Then there is the ongoing romantic tension between Daphne and Fred, Velma and Shaggy, and even Scooby and... that goes through many twists and turns over the course of the series. I could probably write a few thousand more words on several of the specific episodes - it's that good.
#1288
Quote from: kassandralove on January 06, 2017, 01:52:19 AM
I got the archie shirt that looks like the ramones!! 

I got (not for Christmas) the shirt that has the same artwork as Gisele's main cover for ARCHIE MEETS RAMONES. Is it that one, or something else?


I also found a copy of that "LCS Day" limited variant cover of Archie Meets Ramones last week:


#1289
Archie's Friends / Re: Midge: Use her more?
January 05, 2017, 09:59:46 AM
Quote from: Shuester on January 05, 2017, 07:04:15 AM
...Bringing this back because I had something to say a while ago, and just now am getting around to it.

When the Archie New Look comics came out a few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of attention Midge got in them. In Bad Boy Trouble, which is a Betty & Veronica story (but told from Betty's perspective), Midge is definitely one of the most important characters. She is present in all four chapters, if I recall correctly, and she is seen as being one of Betty's best friends. And of course, most notably, Midge and Moose receive their own New Look story, Breakup Blues, which really centers in on them. Out of the three New Look stories I read, I actually disliked this one the most. I thought that the Midge in BB was too aggressive and immature, and she really seemed to be Betty's best friend here, well over Veronica. It seemed a bit out of character. But then, what do we really know about Midge? From the classic comics, I know that she is sporty, a cheerleader, pretty, both flattered by and frustrated by Moose, strong, and loves dancing. We know she can be assertive because Moose does listen to her, and we also know she can be sweet. So maybe Midge in BB wasn't that out of character after all, and we just don't know her well enough.

I felt that Breakup Blues was the best of all the New Look stories, for exactly this reason: it takes two rather vague and underutilized characters and attempts what I felt was a rather credible explanation of some seemingly contradictory things about their relationship. Midge is pretty and popular, but she isn't Betty Cooper. She IS a little superficial, and she DOES enjoy having male attention, but doesn't want to feel smothered or shackled at her age. If she doesn't feel she's getting both enough attention and enough fun out of being Moose's steady girl, she's restless and looks elsewhere for it. Yes, she's an immature teenager who hasn't really lived yet, and isn't necessarily ready or committed to a long-term relationship yet. She craves love and security, yet also the freedom to be and do what she wants. I can see where she could be completely bowled over by Moose's unwavering and single-minded devotion to her, and yet also bristle a little against being confined, and sometimes she feels the need to put her foot down and assert her authority over herself, that she's her own person. She's still a nice girl, but subject to changing her mind now and then. Whether she'll stick it out with Moose and eventually marry him, or even if she does, whether it will last... is not yet definite for her. That interpretation completely works for me, and violates nothing of what little has been established about her as far as I can see. Although the story tries to end on a positive, upbeat note, that things are all patched up between her and Moose, I was left with the feeling that by no means did it preclude the possibility that Midge might at some time in the future become bored and restless, yearning for some excitement again. And this is where Reggie would come in, because it seems that the old 'forbidden fruit' metaphor works in more than one direction -- depending on Midge's mood that day.
#1290
Quote from: Bluto on January 05, 2017, 01:24:55 AM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on December 27, 2016, 05:25:06 PM
Never mind all that. I'm still waiting for a proper Archie animated series. The first one (produced by Filmation) came the closest, but that isn't saying much. Of the main five characters, about the only one whose personality came even remotely close to being captured by the cartoon was Reggie (at least he could be relied on to pull underhanded tricks and prank Archie). Did we see comical situations caused by Archie's accident-prone nature, his inability to choose between Betty & Veronica, his constant chasing after various girls, his misadventures working various jobs in an attempt to make enough cash to date Veronica? What about Archie's behavior constantly landing him in Detention, or him being a constant thorn in Mr. Lodge's side? What about Archie constantly chasing Veronica, while Betty constantly chased Archie? We did not see anything like that. Did we see episodes based on the contrasting nature of B & V's personalities? We did not. Did we see episodes based on Jughead's mooching, his willingness to do anything if there was a food reward involved, or his concentrated effort to avoid work? We did not. Did we see intense contests between Archie & Reggie over dating Veronica or Reggie's constantly outclassing Archie as more well-dressed, better in sports, with a nicer car and plenty of spending cash; B & V's rivalry over Archie, and the lengths each might go to, to gain the upper hand over the other; or the battle of wits between Jughead and Reggie? We did not. Besides the music, all we ever saw were generic comedy situations. That and lots and lots of Hot Dog's antics. The Filmation people absolutely loved Hot Dog... it was practically his show. Not surprisingly, since they were the ones who invented him.
I can't begin to express how much I was looking forward to that show before its debut and how utterly disappointed I was when I finally saw it. As you point out, it wasn't like the comic book stories and characters. And the voices were terrible!

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the Filmation people actually read any of the then-current or recent Archie comic books as source material for their scriptwriters. Then again, as a Saturday morning cartoon, it was aimed at even younger kids than the median age of Archie Comics readers. That meant no dating or romance-based plots, no "girl-chasing" for Archie. As well, this was the time when animated cartoons on television had come under intense scrutiny by parents (specifically Peggy Charren's "Action For Children's Television", which had just been formed in 1968), and in a way, the very idea of adapting Archie to television was a response to this (where previously Filmation had adapted action-oriented comic book heroes like Superman and Aquaman). While The Archie Show went into production earlier than any "Action" against action-oriented television programs for children had actually been taken, as one of the early prime producers of those action cartoons (along with Hanna-Barbera), certainly producers Norm Prescott and Lou Scheimer had been among the first to hear the sabres rattling. As a result, all the flawed characteristics of Archie and the gang were ignored, and they became bland, model teenagers (except for the one 'black hat' character, Reggie the troublemaker, clearly portrayed as a n'eer-do-well whose actions were not to be emulated). They did have some idea of how bland they had made the characters though, and in an attempt to balance that, they figured -- well, who could object to the comical antics of a cartoon mutt who thinks like a human! As well, cartoon animals were always easier to animate for the traditional animators than realistic people.

Knowing a little about Lou Scheimer, the producer of the cartoon, I can tell you he was inspired in a lot of his choices for adapting existing media characters to animation by his own childhood memories, and many of those derived from the era of radio plays. THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, when you look closely at the cartoon, took most of its cues not from the Golden Age or Silver Age comic books, but from the classic radio series The Adventures of Superman, starring Bud Collyer. That's why he hired Collyer to play the role of Clark Kent/Superman, and former announcer for the radio series Jackson Beck to do the narration (heard in the cartoon credits doing a slightly modified update of the old radio opening "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! ... Superman! Rocketed to Earth as an infant when the distant planet Krypton exploded, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and freedom, with super-powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals!"). In addition to getting Bud Collyer, Jackson Beck, and Joan Alexander (Lois) to reprise their roles for the new animated cartoon, Filmation included characters used only in the radio series like Daily Planet copyboy Beany (himself an 'Archie-type' character). Another member of the voice cast of TNAoS was Jack Grimes, famous now as the voice of Speed Racer, here reprising his role (from the latter years of the Adventures of Superman radio series) as Jimmy Olsen. As an interesting connection, Grimes had also played the role of Henry Aldrich (one of the two prime Archie Andrews prototypes, along with Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy) of The Aldrich Family, on an early television adaptation of the radio series. (The Aldrich Family radio series had a complex evolution itself, but is well worth listening to by fans of Archie, as it gives some very interesting insight into how much the characters of Henry Aldrich and Archie Andrews shared in common.)

So when you ask yourself why the vocal characterizations for Archie and the gang in the Filmation cartoons sounded so strange, go back and listen to the voices on the old Archie Andrews radio program. Many people have wondered about the seemingly odd choice of Filmation to give the voice of Veronica (Jane Webb, who portrayed all the female voices on the show) a 'Southern Belle' accent, and that can be specifically attributed to the radio program. I think Lou Scheimer was largely working from an amalgam of hazy recollections of both the radio show and Bob Montana's newspaper strip Archie, and never even looked at the comic books of the time.