Quote from: SAGG on December 24, 2016, 12:39:13 AM
I think the writers were being cute here, and thought they were being clever, with the old Saturday morning cartoon version of Josie and the Pussycats, with the villain and all. I thought the way the Josie/Alexandra angle was being played had an interesting take: On the surface, from Josie's POV, Alexandra was the bad gal, but then Alexandra turned the tables, and made Josie really to be the one who's fault it was. However, I don't think Josie was really using Alexandra's money because they'd still be "friends" now just for the money angle where Josie could ride the gravy train. Josie basically used Alexandra, but not for the money. I think Josie just grew apart from her, but didn't let Alexandra know how much Josie's drifting hurt Alexandra, who grew resentful...

That's all well and good as cake frosting. That is, if it just adds some additional level of interest or depth to a story that primarily exists to be fun or funny and entertaining, because the latter is really the only reason I need to read Archie Comics. I'm not looking for serious character interaction as the primary reason for reading. It's all secondary to a story that interests me for what's happening -- the events and ideas in the story. The only thing that makes me want to read Archie Comics as opposed to some other comics that might have stories about interesting events and ideas is for relaxation and amusement, and they are entertaining to me only insofar as they they take my mind off the boring day-to-day grind, and leave me with a feeling of having had a little fun or a chuckle.

If I want something else from a comic book, I can easily read about Batman keeping the people around him at arms' length and alienating them emotionally by being controlling and/or distrustful, but I don't even particularly care to read about that anymore.

Many people get depressed about their problems in the dead of winter, and especially around Christmastime, when it seems easy to glance around at other people you know (or who you see on TV) whose lives seem like they must be easier, or who seem happier than you. At times like these it's helpful to have a clear perspective on where your own personal problems fall on the true scale of human misery, but for an accident of birth in time and space.

• Instead of a cold, you could have AIDS, cancer, the ebola virus, a congenital deteriorating nerve disease, or just be slowly starving to death.


• Instead of dealing with a car with mechanical problems, you could be dealing with the sudden death of a beloved spouse or close family member or friend, or the loss of an arm or a leg.


• Instead of having unpaid bills piling up, you could be another man's slave, a political dissident being imprisoned, tortured, or crucified for your beliefs, or an innocent Jew in Nazi Germany whose entire worldly possessions have been confiscated who's being sent with your whole family to a concentration camp.


• Instead of facing a bad quarterly review, you could be facing the Spanish Inquisition, a firing squad under Josef Stalin's regime, a lynch mob, or be unjustly sentenced to Death Row.

These are not flukes in human history, nor are they things of the past that no longer happen somewhere to someone, or will never happen again. We're talking about millions upon millions of people that were affected by those few examples I chose to mention, and these are only a few of the more recognizable examples of people with REAL problems. For every one of the recognizable examples, there are tens of thousands of unknown or forgotten tragedies and other examples of true human misery, each of which affected vast numbers of people, and it's only the luck of the draw that you happened to be born in the time and place that you were, and free of thousands of potential health problems that severely reduce the span and quality of human life. From any realistic perspective, you are one of the lucky ones.

There's something to think about at Christmas.

On the plus side, these are all temporary problems. You just have to deal with them. You will suffer through the cold, and then get well again. You will have the car fixed, or if it's something like a head gasket problem, write it off as not worth fixing, and find another car. That of course will add to your unpaid bills, but there will always be unpaid bills somewhere, or if not they're just lurking around the next corner. It's not like you just got news from the doctor that you have only months left to live, or a loved one is in a similar situation. We all have to weather the crapstorm once in a while, so don't think you're the only one. Concentrate on whatever positive things you have in your life that make it worth living, no matter how small those things might seem. You just have to suck it up and work your way through it. Each of us has different issues to deal with in life. Some other guy might have a great job, a brand new car, plenty of money in the bank, and still be worse off, with bigger problems than you, unless you're facing a death sentence. Take some Nyquil and get plenty of sleep and try to rally yourself. These things won't go away by themselves, so it's up to you whether you're going to do something about it or just wallow in the misery of it all. Most of us have been there in some way at one time or another, so don't let the aggro and adversity defeat you. Hold fast to whatever it is inside that makes life worthwhile, and things will get better eventually. Not without some suffering on your part, but whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. These problems will eventually be nothing but a fading bad memory, but you'll still be there.

Seriously. Hang in there, and have the best Christmas you can under the circumstances.

EDIT: In a weird case of synchronicity (have you ever noticed how there are never any non-weird cases of synchronicity?), as I was typing this reply the following Random Image (from SAGG's gallery) appeared over at the top of the left-hand sidebar:


I guess I will save you the trouble of reading this story and just tell you the answer to Archie's question. The correct answer is entropy, Archie. Trillions of years in the future, as applied to the entire universe, and everything in it (can't say that anyone gets any special treatment, at least).

ASTRO BOY - Finally finished the last couple of years worth of the 18-year run of the original series from Shonen magazine(1951-1968), plus some miscellaneous stories from the 1970s through 1981, and the 27-month run of the newspaper strip (1967-69). The latter was more of a sequel to the 1963-66 B&W anime series, which ended its television run (Episode #193) with the boy robot hero melted to a slab of metal falling ever closer towards the sun, about to sacrifice his robotic existence in a last-ditch attempt to save every living creature on Earth. The metal slab was a fragment of a spaceship hull which had been destroyed by a meteor shower as Astro had attempted to pilot it into the sun's coronasphere, and contained an anti-proton bomb designed to quell errant solar eruptions which were wreaking havoc on Earth's global climate and would soon make human life on earth impossible. The rocket couldn't be directed by remote control from Earth, since the solar eruptions would interfere with any radio communications, and the bomb was the only one of its kind in existence, and had to be precisely targeted to have the desired effect. Solar magnetism would have affected any pre-programmed guidance system, and there was only time for one attempt, so an intelligent pilot was the only option. In the end Astro guides the course of the bomb using his own built-in rockets until his energy fails, and he is fused with the remains of the ship as he approaches more closely to the sun's heat. In the daily newspaper comic he's rescued from his final fate by technologically-advanced aliens who repair him and send him back to Earth along with one of their own, an insectoid female named Scara who has taken on human form, but the alien ship's method of spacewarp travel results in them both arriving on Earth in contemporary times (meaning the late 1960s). Astro experiences many adventures (including meeting his 21st Century mentor Dr. Ochanamizu as a young man, and getting involved in the Vietnam war) before finally running out of energy. His inert body does remain in existence until the 21st Century date when he will be born, finally disintegrating upon his actual 'birth'. From that point forward, the newspaper comic becomes a rebooted/retold version of his earliest adventures, although the actual stories (apart from the retold origin with new details) are different than those of the Shonen magazine run. It was quite a run of stories for AstroBoy -- 23 volumes in paperback. I'm still working my way through the rest of the anime episodes (about 45 left to go) of the 1963 anime series that were not adapted from the manga stories.

Quote from: SAGG on December 22, 2016, 03:48:25 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on December 22, 2016, 01:35:52 PM
The difference is apparent to me at a glance, just looking at the thumbnails in your folder. The colors are brighter, the whites are whiter, and the blacks are blacker. Of course you lose a little bit of the resolution of the original image no matter what (and ACP's digitally scanned images are not what you'd call "hi-res" to begin with), but capturing the image directly from the screen is obviously a vast improvement. You could even use the snipping tool when viewing an original digital page that you've already previously printed and then scanned and uploaded to compare the two resulting images side-by-side.

And even if it weren't, think of the time and money (paper and ink) it's saving you.

Yes, definitely a vast improvement. I pinned the snipping tool to my taskbar. Now, this wouldn't work with old books, though, right? Just the screen images of digitals? 

You can isolate any part of an image you see on your screen. It's really handy for images you find on web pages that don't allow you to save them by right clicking (or saving the image's URL address). You can also use the keyboard commands Ctrl+ or Ctrl- to enlarge or reduce the size of everything on your screen as it's displayed before using the snipping tool (although that doesn't really change the resolution of anything, so if it's low-res, it will still appear fuzzy when enlarged -- what you see on screen is what you get). It's good for isolating a specific element of an image you see on the screen, when you don't care about the rest of it -- if you didn't have the snipping tool you'd have to crop the image using a graphics editor program. You can further modify the JPEGS you save using the snipping tool in a graphics application (like Paint for Windows, or Photoshop if you have that). But really all you're doing is taking a snapshot of what you're seeing (or the part of it that you want to save) on your screen. That certainly applies to any images you've scanned that you're looking at on your screen as well, so if you want to cut out a specific panel from a page you've scanned, you can do that too. Although as I said previously, you always lose a little bit of the original image's resolution when using the snipping tool, so if you have scans that you want to cut down to a single panel, it's better to crop them using Paint or Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Picture Manager also allows you to edit the image in various ways, so you can do things like adjust brightness, contrast, and colors (there's also an auto-adjust feature that sometimes improves an image's view-ability without you having to fool around with specific controls). Cropping in Paint works almost exactly the same way as the snipping tool does (you hold the mouse key down and drag across the area you want to save), but Paint retains all of the original image's resolution. There are other common photo-editing programs that have features like "straighten" that allow you to correct the angle of an image that's slightly crooked (by lining it up with grid lines), but you lose a little resolution each time you do that. The Snipping Tool will turn anything you see on your screen into a JPEG graphic image though, so if you want to capture blocks of text you see on some website, cut out on-screen coupons or whatever, you can turn it into a JPEG image. It's also helpful for showing someone else some weird error message or warning dialogue box you might be getting for some reason.

The difference is apparent to me at a glance, just looking at the thumbnails in your folder. The colors are brighter, the whites are whiter, and the blacks are blacker. Of course you lose a little bit of the resolution of the original image no matter what (and ACP's digitally scanned images are not what you'd call "hi-res" to begin with), but capturing the image directly from the screen is obviously a vast improvement. You could even use the snipping tool when viewing an original digital page that you've already previously printed and then scanned and uploaded to compare the two resulting images side-by-side.

And even if it weren't, think of the time and money (paper and ink) it's saving you.

Why do you need to print it if you're only going to turn it back into a digital format again?

If you have Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 10, then you have the Windows Snipping Tool, which allows you to place a box around any part of your visible screen that you want to capture and save as a JPEG file.

LOOK! Here's a snippet I captured with the Snipping Tool in Windows (from its Wikipedia entry):


If you're not familiar, here are some instructions on how to find and use it:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13776/windows-use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots

But if you're unfortunate enough to have a version of Windows that doesn't include the snipping tool, all is not lost. There are free equivalents that you can download from CNET:
http://download.cnet.com/guides/snipping-tool/

Print something, just so you can scan it? Don't be ridiculous! If that's what you've been doing with all the stories in your media gallery, you must be spending crazy money on inkjet cartridges for nothing! Not to mention all the time you're wasting... I made the above snip and uploaded it to my gallery in less than 30 seconds. I didn't want to be rude and say anything about it, but it also explains a few things about the small size and low resolution of the images you've been adding to your gallery. You're losing resolution when you print, and then again when you scan. All you really need is a JPEG snapshot of the page you're looking at on your screen at home.

Oh, and properly technically speaking, you're UPloading files from your computer to this site, not DOWNloading them. Files coming IN to your computer from somewhere else on the net are downloaded, and files going OUT of your computer to somewhere else on the net are uploaded.

PATSY WALKER AKA HELLCAT #13
BETTY AND VERONICA SPECTACULAR (ARCHIE GIANT SERIES) #458 - All good stories. All Dan DeCarlo stories.
BLACK HAMMER #6
ART & BEAUTY MAGAZINE #3 - Robert Crumb's drawings of various women taken from photographs.
SUPERF*CKERS FOREVER #5 (of 5) - Also has the hilarious bonus flip-book twisted Christmas Special SUPERF*CKERS SAVE CHRISTMAS!
DARK HORSE PRESENTS #29
GUMBALLS #1
DONALD DUCK ALBUM (DELL FOUR COLOR) #1182 (May 1961)

PUNISHER #7 - The last issue to be drawn by artist Steve Dillon before his untimely death. Since that was really the big attraction to me with this new series, I'll probably wind up dropping it soon.
AVENGERS #2.1 - Seems kind of like an arbitrary numbering sequence, as this story is really taking place shortly after the events of AVENGERS Vol. 1 #16, so shouldn't this be #16.02 ? Whatever. Now THIS is really Mark Waid's forte.
SQUADRON SUPREME #14
SILVER SURFER #8
THANOS #2
STAR TREK/GREEN LANTERN VOL 2 #1 (of 6)
CAVE CARSON HAS A CYBERNETIC EYE #3
GREEN HORNET: REIGN OF THE DEMON #1 (of 4)
JEM AND THE MISFITS #1 - Very talky and slow-moving. Doesn't make me want to continue.
TANK GIRL: GOLD #3 (of 4)

Quote from: irishmoxie on December 19, 2016, 07:41:48 PM
Honestly more interested in the storybook digest stories.

Me too! It'll be a long time before the well runs dry for Dan Parent's modern updates of classic fairy tale stories.

Re: Sabrina the Teenage Witch #1 one-shot: In this reboot she never even attended high school, and starts college after previously being home-schooled by her aunts? With story and art by the team from IDW's My Little Pony comic? That seems to indicate to me that the story and art might actually be comical/cartoony, so maybe I'll give this one a look after all.

EDIT: I actually missed the interior page penciled and inked by Andy Price when I first scanned these solicits. Some interesting details in that drawing, including Sabrina's t-shirt that has the GROOVIE GOOLIES logo on it, a Chinese take-out box labeled "Lee Ho Fooks" (taken from a line in the song "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon; "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain/He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks/Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein"), and a pendant (seen hanging from the bookcase) taken from a classic episode of Star Trek. This is definitely starting to look more promising to me. I only hope the story injects some humor into the proceedings.

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on December 15, 2016, 12:43:16 PM
I read the beginnings of Duck Avenger in one of those Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge and Donald volumes and  it was alright, it was funny. But I have not read the other comics that are only about the Avenger. Is Scrooge and/or his nephews in those comics?

I wasn't aware that Duck Avenger was used in any of Don Rosa's stories, but I've missed a lot of them. I've been meaning to catch up with Fantagraphics' complete Don Rosa Library collections, but have fallen a little behind on that series in particular. There is just a LOT of Disney stuff coming out right now, with IDW's regular comics, trade paperback collections of same, and the Library of American Comics hardcover reprint collections of the Donald Duck, Silly Symphonies, and Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Stories newspaper strips, and then Fantagraphics' Mickey Mouse newspaper strip collections and Carl Barks Library and Don Rosa Library hardcovers. It's hard to keep up with it all, since all these hardcover books tend to be somewhere in the $30-$50 price range (except for IDW's reprinting of the European stories in trade paperback).

Duck Avenger is actually a creation of the Italian Disney comics artists. IDW reprinted the earliest appearances (short stories, including his origin) in some of their regular DONALD DUCK comic books not too long ago. My objection to the DUCK AVENGER comic book is that the stories are far too long at 60 pages, not very humorous (it's more like a regular superhero comic book that way), and I don't particularly like the artist (whose name I've forgotten now). His style is a little off the standard Disney character model and style.

But to answer your question, Uncle Scrooge was in the first issue (actually, DUCK AVENGER #0) briefly, but he didn't play a big part in the story. I didn't notice the nephews in any of the 3 issues I read. In fact, this series tries to give an entirely new setup than Donald's usual one. Here he's hired by Uncle Scrooge to manage a new skyscraper that Scrooge purchased, that formerly belonged to an eccentric billionaire scientist who disappeared. Donald discovers a completely hidden floor in the building that houses an artificially-intelligent computer called One, and this become's the Duck Avenger's new secret headquarters (there are other high-tech gadgets that the scientist left behind when he disappeared, also), and One becomes his aide-de-camp as the Duck Avenger, stays constantly in contact with him, and is able to help him out of especially tough scrapes. In the second issue (actually #1) the building is rented (or leased, I forget which) to a muckraking TV news station, whose obnoxious star reporter has a vendetta against the Duck Avenger, and there's a mysterious woman who works there that turns out to be time traveller from the future who figures out Donald's secret, and aids him for reasons known only to herself. In issue #0, Donald battles an invasion from the conquest-minded alien race known as the Evronians, and they return again in issue #2. In issue #1 he had to stop a time traveller from the future from changing history. Very non-standard for a Disney comic.

Yeah, it's pretty weird, alright. On one hand, they want to treat the characters now (in both the drawing and writing style) as not being "cartoony", and the stories aren't really humor stories anymore.

But they do have talking dogs.

WALT DISNEY'S MICKEY & DONALD CHRISTMAS PARADE #2 (2016)

This is a 68-page "bookshelf format" (thick glossy white pages, squarebound, with a stiff glossy cardboard cover) comic book, that contains only 4 pages of non-story material (and one contents page), for the very nice price of $5.99.

The new (to the USA, translated from the Swedish Kalle Ankas Pocket 422, 2013) lead story is the epic 43-page all-star adventure, "Tis No Season". In it, Mickey Mouse, returning from a time-traveling adventure in the 1890s in which he teamed up with Sherlock Holmes, arrives back in Mouseton 2016 to find that his friend Doc Static's laboratory is nothing but a dusty, disused building that looks like it's been vacant for decades. Doc Static had invented a device that charged Mickey's body with chronal energy, so he could visit the past without using a time machine. When the chronal charge dissipated, Mickey was supposed to return to the exact moment he left. He did return to 2016, but not the same 2016 that he left! So what happened? Seeking out the Doc, Mickey discovers that he's now a librarian, and had never even been a scientist! Even worse, he soon discovers that Christmas no longer exists! Accessing a computer, Mickey finds to his relief that the new timeline he finds himself in had nothing to do with his adventure in the 1890s, but that Christmas has been outlawed since 1956! Seeking to solve the mystery, correct the chronal divergence, and save Christmas, he turns to Donald Duck for help. Donald thinks his old pal Mickey has gone off his nut, since Don can never remember a time when Christmas was celebrated, but takes him to see Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge does remember Christmas (because he's way older than 60), and agrees to help Mickey (because having no Christmas season has negatively impacted Scrooge's many commercial ventures!), and Huey, Dewey, and Louie are very interested in this idea of a holiday on which kids receive tons of presents! Scrooge explains that on the night of December 24, 1956, when Santa Claus visited all the houses in the twin cities of Mouseton and Duckburg, instead of leaving presents, he robbed every single home! The shocking news quickly spread around the world, and people were so frightened by the idea, and the possibility of a repeat performance, that Christmas itself was quickly outlawed. Irascible Donald is still skeptical, but grudgingly agrees to help, and takes them to see Duckburg's resident genius inventor, Gyro Gearloose, who of course has a time machine on hand. Traveling back to the fateful night of the time divergence in 1956, Mickey, Donald, Scrooge and the boys all witness a horde of miniature robotic Santas wreaking havoc on their two hometowns and robbing homes of all their valuables, which attack our heroes with destructive ray beams when they are caught being observed in the performance of their pernicious programming. Obviously this must be the work of a sinister mastermind -- and why didn't the real Santa Claus stop it? To discover what happened to the real Santa, the pals take a quick trip to the North Pole, where they discover that Santa, his workshop, and all his elves and reindeer have been trapped in a time stasis bubble! Mickey quickly deduces that this plot is so perfidious, so diabolical, that only one arch-criminal mind can be behind it -- no one else but Mickey's nefarious Number One-nemesis, THE PHANTOM BLOT! How Mickey, Donald, Scrooge and the nephews track the Blot to his lair, free Santa from the time stasis bubble, defeat the Blot's evil army of killer Santa robots, and restore Christmas to its rightful place in history, makes for a fun and interesting Christmas story, in fact, the best Christmas story I've read in quite some time (although last year's MICKEY & DONALD CHRISTMAS PARADE also had quite a good, long Christmas story -- but I believe IDW has topped themselves this year).

I only wish ACP could offer something in a similar format. These Christmas specials from IDW aren't tied to any particular year, really (which explains how a time travel story that was published in Sweden in 2013 can easily be updated in translation, and lose nothing). Or at the very least, they should make a new, long story (25-30 pages) and include it in the ARCHIE COMICS SUPER SPECIAL Christmas issue. Since ACP loves to sell direct through the mail, these could be stocked (and advertised as still available in the digests) for years, until they were all gone.

The special also contains a couple of one-page Xmas gag strips featuring Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck, a 5-page Big Bad Wolf story called "That Sinking Feeling" where B.B. Wolf seemingly turns over a new leaf and gains the Christmas spirit (but Practical Pig, being the skeptical sort of swine, is still suspicious), and closes out with a 12-page Donald Duck and Gyro Gearloose adventure called "Vacation INGENIOUS" in which, during a blizzard in Duckburg, overworked and frazzled inventor Gyro decides to join Donald on an impromptu ski vacation, to get away from constant work and relax (but somehow, he's just unable to stop inventing things!) -- this last tale isn't really a Christmas story, but more of a "winter vacation" story. As with the lead story, all of these are translated from European-generated Disney comics, and appear here for the first time in a US publication.

Quote from: irishmoxie on December 14, 2016, 08:49:04 PM
How was Motor Crush? Would I like it? Is it girlie?

Would I like Duck Avenger if I like the Duck Tales movie from the 90s?

No and no.

Motor Crush is kind of some alternate universe Speed Racer thing with motorcycles instead of cars, with a female drug-addicted protagonist.

Duck Avenger is Donald as a superhero, but in a 60-page story it gets a little tedious.

I'm not going to continue reading either of those.

If you want a recommendation of something that seems girlie to check out, try SPELL ON WHEELS by Kate Leth & Megan Levins, a 5-issue miniseries from Dark Horse Comics. It's about 3 witches trying to recover their stolen magical items from a thief, and while the story didn't interest me enough to continue beyond the first issue, it's competently enough written and drawn, and I had no problem following what was going on. The character interaction between the three main protagonists may be enough to hold your interest.

Lots of stuff over the last week or so, not all of which I've been writing down, so here's where I catch up.

ASTRO BOY - Beginning with the first story from 1965, and continuing through to Feb. 1967:
"Roboids", "Robio and Robiette", "The Blue Knight", "Astro Boy Reborn", "The Melanin Tribe", "Meeva", and "The Faceless Robot".
I'm just about a year away from the end of the original serialized run of Mighty Atom in Shonen Magazine (about one and a half volumes in paperback). After that there are three paperback collections of the Mighty Atom newspaper strip that ran from 1966-1969, and I'm done. I think I may re-read the whole run (minus the 2 crossovers with Sonic the Hedgehog) of MEGA MAN after this.

JUGHEAD'S DOUBLE DIGEST #95 (Aug. 2003) - Not bad, but nothing very notable worth mentioning.

JUGHEAD'S JOKES (3 random issues) - At this point I've forgotten the issue numbers, but the gags were just as forgettable. I definitely liked the 4 issues of REGGIE'S WISE GUY JOKES I read a couple of days earlier better.

EVIL DEAD 2: MERRY DEADITE XMAS #1
BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ADVENTURES #2 (of 6)
UNCLE SCROOGE #425
SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? #76
HAWKEYE #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #946
WONDER WOMAN #12
MOONSHINE #3

ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE CHRISTMAS ANNUAL #23 - Arrived on 12/12, but I didn't read it all right away. I just finished it yesterday. The best thing in there was a longish Xmas story by Dan Parent, "The ELFth Day of Christmas" which is kind of like the movie Groundhog Day, with the day before Christmas repeating over and over, due to Jingles, of course. That and some B&V Christmas Fashions pages by Dan DeCarlo. The lead story is by Dan too, and it's okay, but not one of his best. It must be kind of hard to come up with new material for these 5-page Xmas stories when you're doing so many of them, so they can't all be his best.

HILLBILLY #4 - Enjoying this series quite a bit.

LIFE WITH ARCHIE #122 (June 1972) - There's a Bob Bolling story in here that's about Betty helping Veronica get her evening gown just perfect for a big awards presentation that she has to give that evening at the Yacht Club, a very swank blueblood affair, and Ronnie's going on and on, condescending to Betty, about how she wouldn't fit in with that crowd, wouldn't know how to act, and so on. At one point, as she's just about to hop into the limo with Archie, she actually pats Betty on the head! And there's even a little 'pat-pat' sound FX there. Then just as the limo speeds off, Mr. Lodge comes running down with the award plaque that she was supposed to present, but it's too late, Veronica's gone. Mr. Lodge grabs Betty, tells her she has to go to the club and bring the award to Veronica, drags her up to Veronica's room, and tells her to pick something out of Ronnie's wardrobe (they're the same size) but to hurry. He sees her all dolled up in one of Veronica's gowns, hands her the plaque, and gives her the keys to one of his cars to speed over there. Betty doesn't feel comfortable taking one of Mr. Lodge's cars, so she takes Archie's jalopy (a.k.a. "Ol' Betsy") instead. She gets to the club, but parks the car on the street where it won't be seen, and runs into the club, where she immediately catches the eyes of all the guys in her (actually Veronica's) stunning dress. All of sudden there's a big hubbub, she's the center of attention, and the guys won't let her go to bring the award to Veronica. One of them grabs it, and tells her he'll make sure it gets to her, but then hands it off to another guy. While it finally does make its way to Veronica's hands, by that time the stuffy old fogey who was supposed to be the one being honored that night with the award is so captivated by Betty that he's got no interest in receiving the award, he just wants to keep dancing with Betty. When they put him on the spot, he basically just grabs the award, saying to himself "Who cares about some silly old award, anyway?" leaving Veronica (literally) speechless. She's seething because presenting the award was her big moment, she had a nice introductory speech all prepared and memorized, and now it seems like her being there at all was just a big waste of her time. In all that's going on, she never noticed that Betty was there (she was too far away with all the guys crowded around Betty, so she couldn't recognize her, or her own dress that Betty was wearing). She leaves the club, fit to be tied, and goes home to tell Daddykins about it. Meanwhile, Betty finally manages to make her escape from all the attention, runs out of the Yacht Club, and hops in Archie's car to drive away. As Veronica sits at home, steaming about how her entire evening was ruined, she mentions some 'new blonde girl' that had all the guys distracted, and Mr. Lodge suddenly realizes that it was Betty, and his fault that he sent her. A nice little update of the Cinderella story by Bob Bolling. Most of his best stories have some kind of fantasy/fairytale feel to them.

LOST IN SPACE: THE LOST ADVENTURES #6 (of 6)

JUGHEAD #240, 243 (both from 1975)

THE THREE STOOGES: MERRY STOOGEMAS #1 - Another story by Bill Galvan is in this issue.

SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #84 (April 1965) - "Jimmy's a good kid, but he's always getting into trouble." That's what Superman is thinking to himself in this issue. Yup, that's our Archie, all right... I mean, Jimmy. Must be the red hair and freckles. You know, if Dan Parent or Dan DeCarlo had drawn this story, it would probably be just as funny as a typical Archie comic, too. Because of all his weird and wacky adventures, Jimmy promises to make a monster movie that breaks all box office records for monster movies. He's got access to nutty Professor Potter's time-space transporter machine, and summons up Titano the Super-Ape (old foe of the Man of Steel who has kryptonite vision) to battle against the Flame Dragon from Krypton (yeah, they had some strange megafauna on that planet), but everything goes wrong (just as well, since he'd probably have been sued by Toho Studios & Universal Pictures for ripping off their earlier film, King Kong vs. Godzilla). Oh that Jimmy! In the second story, JO disguises himself as a girl, in order to fool the members of his own adoring Jimmy Olsen Fan Club. For some reason, this seems to happen in Jimmy Olsen stories almost as much as it did to Bugs Bunny. That's when he's not changing into a Giant Turtle Boy, a werewolf, a human porcupine, or his superhero identity of Elastic Lad. Great cover (falling off, no backcover on my copy) on this issue.



BETTY BOOP #3 (of 4) - I wish this was an ongoing series. Too bad it has to end with #4.

WONDER WOMAN '77 MEETS THE BIONIC WOMAN #1 - This was better written and drawn than most of the previous WW77 specials, and I liked the story and art better than the last BATMAN '66 miniseries. I got both of the regular cover variants (Alex Ross & Cat Staggs), but didn't know until I looked at the back pages that Dan Parent drew a Retailer Exclusive variant cover for UltimateComics.com. They cost $10 plus shipping, though. Here's Dan's cover: