PLUTO: URASAWA x TEZUKA VOL. 5, 6, 7, & 8 (of 8 ) - That was great. One of the best manga series I've ever read. Really impressed. Five stars *****!
REGGIE'S WISE GUY JOKES #13, 24, 30, 34 - IMO, this is the best of all the Joke Book titles. Why? I dunno, maybe the one-page gag just suits Reggie better than Archie or Jughead. Here you find more one-page gags with Reggie dating Midge again, and also more of his insults and put-downs aimed at Ethel (but mostly, Archie is the victim of his zingers more than anyone else).
MOTOR CRUSH #1
DUCK AVENGER #2

REGGIE AND ME #36, 50, 107, & 113

#36 has all Samm Schwartz artwork, and #50 is entirely drawn by Al Hartley. Some interesting stories in some of these. In one of them, Veronica prefers Reggie to Archie, and he then literally knocks himself out trying to impress her. To make a short story even shorter, Reggie winds up taking Veronica to the big dance, and Archie winds up in a full body cast. It's GOOD to have your name in the title, am I right??

In another story, Reggie's car breaks down, and Archie offers him a ride to pick up his date... who is none other than Midge, at her house. After a series of mishaps (all caused by Archie), Reggie's clothes are ruined and he smells like the fish Archie had just caught and had in his car with him, and not only is he a mess, he's late to meet Midge. Arriving finally at Midge's house, Reggie is fit to be tied and furious at Archie, but just misses Big Moose as he's leaving, saying something to Midge like "It's a good thing that rumor I heard about you having a date with Reggie turned out to be untrue!" Wow, did that just sound like Moose was threatening her? And of course, Reggie as well, but it certainly seems like Midge made a date with Reggie, and just finished lying to Moose about it, when confronted by him. And sure enough, when Moose has left, Reggie and Archie pop out of the bushes that hid them from Moose's view as they approached the house, and Midge tells Reggie "It's a good thing you were late! If you'd been on time, Moose would have pulverized you!" Now, Reggie is grateful to Archie for all the problems that caused him to be late, and goes with Midge and Archie to Pop's, to celebrate his good fortune in having narrowly escaped Moose's wrath. The End. ... Wow, that's a switch. Reggie and Midge sure pulled a fast one on Moose, and they seem pretty pleased with themselves. She's quite the little firecracker, isn't she? Makes you think, doesn't it? Maybe Moose's constant paranoia and barely-contained rage is based on something more real than just his imagination -- or is it his jealousy and possessiveness that makes Midge cheat on him? In fact, this story tells you that Midge will try to get away with whatever she can when Moose isn't watching her like a hawk, which implies that she... well, I don't need to draw a picture, do I... ? It would seem to go a long way towards explaining why Reggie is so willing to risk life and limb time and again, if there's even a slight chance he can get Midge alone for a little while. He's not just deluding himself with his own vanity that she's attracted to him. But again, here's another story where REGGIE WINS AGAIN, contrary to the beatings he's usually seen taking from Moose in the final panel of a story from ARCHIE or JUGHEAD, or any other title not called REGGIE AND ME.

Now, there's another story in here where Reggie goes on for pages cruelly taunting Ethel and making all sorts of insensitive wisecracks about her looks, after she asks him to go to a movie with her, using the two free tickets she had (naturally, Jughead had turned her down first). It isn't just one or two mean-spirited insults, he's really laying it on thick with the cruelty. I mean, this goes on for like, two-and-a-half, three pages. It starts out with Reggie, after he turned her down, saying "Hey, I've got to think of my reputation! I can't be seen out in public with someone who looks like you!" and gets worse and worse. Stuff like "Hey, did you try to sue your parents for sticking you with that face?" In one panel, even Moose joins in on the "fun", and makes up his own insults about Ethel's looks. Then Betty hears what he's saying, and (being Betty) leaps to defend Ethel, putting Reggie in his place by telling him what a rotten excuse for a human being he really is. And that goes on for a half-dozen panels or so, and then Archie joins in to try to make Reggie feel like the heel he actually is. They begin to wear him down, and Reggie protests he's really not that bad. To prove it, after they've shamed him into it, he goes out with Ethel on the date as she originally wanted. REALLY? Ethel would even take him up on her original offer after all the really NASTY, hurtful things he said to and about her? Yup. So off they go, arm in arm, as Reggie, with a glum expression on his face, thinks to himself "My problem is, my HEART is bigger than my MOUTH!" BOY, what a fun evening that must have turned out to be for all involved.

More well-worn funnybooks from the bins at my LCS. I don't see many Harvey Comics in there, and when I do, they're almost invariably either RICHIE RICH, CASPER, or SAD SACK, all of which seem to have had a ton of spinoff titles, and none of which particularly interest me. It's the second-tier titles from Harvey that I like... BABY HUEY, LITTLE DOT, STUMBO THE GIANT, and HOT STUFF, and I hardly ever see any of those. So I was happy to find these random issues from the '60s & '70s:

HOT STUFF #131 & 143
HOT STUFF CREEPY CAVES #3 & 7
DEVIL KIDS STARRING HOT STUFF # 35 & 71

There also existed another spinoff title called HOT STUFF SIZZLERS, but I didn't find any of those. I never really thought about it before, but I wonder what the deal was with Harvey Comics having SO many spinoff titles for its various characters, even ones like Hot Stuff who weren't the company's real breadwinners like Richie Rich, Casper, and Sad Sack? I mean, HOT STUFF CREEPY CAVES does not, as you might imagine, contain any stories featuring any caves apart from the one that Hot Stuff usually lives in. Nor do the stories in DEVIL KIDS feature any other kid devils, with the exception of Hot Stuff himself. In other words, the contents of both spinoff titles were completely indistinguishable from any random issue of the main HOT STUFF title... so WHY, then, did those spinoff titles exist at all? They were all published bi-monthly, so if there was enough of an audience to support spinoff titles for those characters, why not just make the regular HOT STUFF title monthly instead, or even every-three-weeks, since the contents of all of the spinoffs was interchangeable? The best I can come up with is that retailers were likely to leave a bimonthly title displayed for sale longer, until a new issue arrived to replace it, so the title would have a better chance of actually selling to a reader than a monthly title that got removed from display sooner, if still unsold. That, and I guess maybe Harvey Comics liked to project some kind of illusion that they were a larger publisher in the comic book industry than they actually were, and publishing three or four bi-monthly titles instead of one or two monthly titles helped create that illusion, because...  it's just more different titles that they can say they publish, even though in any given year it would be the same total number of comics published as if they had half as many monthly titles.

I read a bunch of beat-up, uncollectable comics (mostly from the '60s and '70s) that I found in the bins at my LCS:

SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH #13

ARCHIE'S GIRLS BETTY AND VERONICA #154

MADHOUSE GLADS #81 - Interesting story - "When Johnny Comes Marching Home": Clyde Didit joins the Army Reserves (thereby paying for his college tuition whilst simultaneously avoiding being drafted and sent to Vietnam) and goes off to boot camp, where he has a typical 'generation gap' experience dealing with his drill sergeant, trying to explain why he doesn't dig the whole 'learn how to kill your fellow man' scene. Luckily for him, Clyde fractures his leg while heroically pushing the sarge out of the way of a bunch of falling oil drums, so he gets off the hook from having to spend two whole weeks in Camp Hell. (huh. I guess "When Clyde Comes Hobbling Home" just didn't have the right ring to it...) Another story's in here where Bippy the Hippie 'sells out' and joins The Establishment, gets a haircut and wears a suit and tie so he can rake in the simoleans working for The Man (but he was only doing it because his father lost his job). Fran the Fan saves Bippy from dropping out of school when she asks her dad (a well-connected dude with some pull) to help Bippy's dad get a new (and better) job, so Bippy can go back to being the loveable freaky laid-back poster boy for peace, love, nonconformity, and happily-adjusted unemployment. Far out, man. I was a little bummed out that fab Fran didn't get a bigger part in the stories (unrecognized by los hermanos Didit, she's a brainy bird who usually outsmarts them), but at least these ones were a little different. Then there's a more typical one, where Rod the Mod buys a brand new chopper (apparently he'd just seen Easy Rider, as his bike's a copy of the one Peter Fonda rode in that movie) just for the purpose of showing up Clyde in front of Fran by challenging him to an off-road race, and making him look bad. Naturally, Rod's dirty tricks of rigging the race course wind up backfiring on him (hmm... this guy reminds me of someone...)



I've got more of these, but it'll have to wait for a bit.

There's always Walmart, I guess. But I don't know that I'd want to work there either. I guess you could look at it this way... just think of how much fodder you'd have for a complaint thread!

Diamond will cancel all retailers' pre-orders (that includes Midtown Comics) for those titles, so you'll have to order it again, if and when it's ever re-solicited by ACP. Keep checking those solicitations. This sort of thing happens with comics (and any other products distributed by Diamond Comics) solicited by various publishers all the time, so it's not likely that Midtown Comics would ever notify any of their customers of the cancellations.

THE ROOK VOL. 2: DESPERATE TIMES TP
RESIDENT ALIEN VOL. 3: THE SAM HAIN MYSTERY TP
STAR TREK: NEW VISIONS #13 - THE HIDDEN FACE
PLUTO: URASAWA X TEZUKA VOLS. 1, 2, 3, & 4 (of 8 )

Quote from: BettyReggie on December 08, 2016, 05:22:55 AM
The Archie Coloring Book is not happening. I can't believe it. That would have been awesome. I guess Midtown Comics will not charge me the $7.99 for it.

No, any standing orders would be cancelled. There's always a chance you may see it turn up again in the ACP solicitations in another six months or a year.

I was tempted to say it looks like Valerie has put on a little weight, but then that's true of Pepper as well, and on the whole it pales into insignificance compared to the many other changes rung on the personalities of the characters. This really isn't the Josie and the Pussycats that I know. But then that also applies in varying degrees to all of the characters in the New Riverdale books. 

What works on TV for Gilmore Girls doesn't work in a comic book. They're two different media. Unlike TV, you can't look at the artwork and read extensive text at the same time. The art is supposed to be "read" as a series of still frames that directs your eyes in a natural flow from panel to panel to keep the story moving, with the reader filling in the missing information between panels as your eyes move across the page. Too much dialogue is making the reader linger too long in a single panel, and the non-sequitur references are tangents that take your mind out of what's going on in the story. It's like trying to watch a subtitled movie where there's a ton of dialogue to read and you need to think about what that dialogue is about, and meanwhile there's something going on in the picture that you're missing. It's not exactly like that, because you can control how long it takes you to read it and when you move on to the next picture, but it turns the whole comic into slow motion with commentary. That's the same reason I skip Ryan's North's bottom-of-the-page commentary in JUGHEAD on the first reading. You lose connection with the immediacy of what's actually happening. I don't want a 20-page comic that can be read in five minutes, but there's got to be some balance, and the dialogue here is just too distracting to no good purpose. It calls attention to itself where it shouldn't. Or maybe *sigh* it's because I'm not a girl, and therefore not that smart. I didn't like DC Bombshells, either.

At any rate, that's all I have to say about it because now I'm done with it (unless the comic gets a new writer). Well, I gave it more of a chance than I gave ARCHIE (which I dismissed after issue #2), only because I had more of a vested interest in wanting to like a comic with these characters (same for Sabrina) than I did for Archie, Jughead or Reggie, and I was more predisposed to like it because of the artwork. I'd say the same about B&V, except that when I heard Adam Hughes was writing as well as drawing it, somehow I had a hunch that it wasn't going to wind up being too satisfying for either gender. I'll accept your contention that JOSIE is a 'for girls only' comic, but that being the case, I don't see much of a future for it as a print comic, since the comic shop audience demographic is still overwhelmingly male dominated. I'll be pretty surprised if the print version runs more than 12 issues. It would have to have a pretty heavy word-of-mouth buzz going for it within the comic fangirl network for it to survive. Maybe this is one title that's better off as a Digital-Only comic.

It's funny that you perceive ARCHIE as being targeted to teens. My subjective perception based on the handful of people I know who are reading it (and weren't reading classic Archie before) is that they're all 40-something adults, like the marketing is based on some vague nostalgic brand name recognition for people who stopped reading Archie (if they ever really did) by the time they reached their teens. Of course these are also people who are mainly coming into a comic book shop to buy other titles. It might be vastly different in the digital marketplace.

Between the change in the art style, the change in the writing style, the changes in the characters, the change in who the books are aimed at, and the change from humor-based stories to... something else, there's nothing here for me to connect to. It just seems like ACP is heavily invested in relying on the characters' names and branding more than anything else.

From Diamond Comics, here is a list of ACP products for which all previously solicited orders have been cancelled, along with their Diamond order codes.

OCT161174   ARCHIE NEW RIVERDALE COVER BOOK #1 - CANCELLED
AUG161233   ARCHIES BIG BOOK TP VOL 01 MAGIC MUSIC & MISCHIEF - WILL RESOLICIT
AUG169241   ARCHIES COLORING BOOK #1 - WILL RESOLICIT
OCT161175   BETTY & VERONICA NEW RIVERDALE COVER BOOK #1 - CANCELLED
OCT161189   REGGIES 80 PAGE GIANT COMIC #1    - CANCELLED
SEP161300   SABRINA #8 CVR A REG HACK - WILL RESOLICIT
SEP161301   SABRINA #8 CVR B VAR SOUTHWORTH - WILL RESOLICIT
AUG161239   SONIC SUPER DIGEST #18 - WILL RESOLICIT
AUG169242   SONIC SUPER SPECIAL MAGAZINE #14 - WILL RESOLICIT

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on December 07, 2016, 08:42:35 AM
I use Firefox at home, & when I click on a link to a Thread, it takes me to a blank page.
You got Fox problems?

I use it at work. I had some intermittent problems with the site the other day. Might be a temporary thing.

MICKEY'S CRAZIEST ADVENTURES HC
GUNS OF THE BLACK BAT #3 (of 3)
BATMAN '66 MEETS STEED & MRS. PEEL #6 (of 6)
SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: FALL OF MAN #5 (of 5)
MICRONAUTS #8
PREDATOR VS. JUDGE DREDD VS. ALIENS #3 (of 6)

A couple of additional thoughts here.

Re: REGGIE #1 - It might have been more interesting if the narration had been via Reggie's own thoughts about himself and the other characters. That might have given us some new insight into how the world of Riverdale High is as seen from Reggie's POV. Missed opportunity. I appreciated the cameos of Evilheart and Pureheart here, but was puzzled that Tom D. was not able (or allowed... editorially speaking) to milk more comedy out of those brief scenes. Or really much comedy at all, on the whole. Nice to see the New Kids appearing somewhere, but unfortunately there's no characterization given to them -- functionally they are mere props in the story.

Re: JOSIE #3 - Just skimming through most of the pages in the lead story, it seems to me that a really decent writer could have made a funny (or at least fun) story out of the artwork just as it was. Things like Alexandra appearing out of nowhere on a Back To The Future-type hoverboard with a T-shirt bazooka really ought to have been funny, but the comic is really bogged down by dialogue which seems to think of itself as too clever by half -- as if merely loading up the dialogue balloons with excess verbiage containing all sorts of non-sequitur references somehow makes it funny. It doesn't. It works against the story, slows down the flow of reading it, and doesn't meld organically with the illustrations. More isn't always better. Get out of the way and let the pictures carry most of the story. Marguerite Bennett must have a tin ear if she thinks anyone talks like this in real life, or that it's the slightest bit believable. I suppose she must think that it's "smart" dialogue, but if it was really smart it wouldn't be trying to hog all the attention to itself, and distracting from the artwork and what's supposed to be going on in the story. It needs to be cut down by at least half. Contrary to what Ms. Bennett may believe, every single dialogue balloon does not need to make the reader stop and think "Oh, isn't that clever".

DEATH OF HAWKMAN #3 (of 6)
TRANSFORMERS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE REVOLUTION #1 (one-shot)
REGGIE AND ME #1 (of 5)
JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS #3
MOON KNIGHT #9
SAVAGE DRAGON #218
MICKEY MOUSE #324
DEADMAN: DARK MANSION OF FORBIDDEN LOVE #2 (of 3)

REGGIE AND ME #1 - It's readable, but definitely one of Tom DeFalco's lesser efforts at scripting for ACP. There's no problem following the story, at least. The biggest criticisms here are ones that generally apply to most of the New Riverdale comic books, i.e.: (A) not much happens in the course of 20 pages, and (B) what does happen isn't particularly funny, or even that interesting. I will admit that there are a lot of classic-style ACP 5 or 6 page stories where you could fairly say that "not much happens", but as long as the story is funny, it hardly matters -- you didn't invest much money or time in those 5 or 6 pages. Another thing that occurs to me is that it's a lot easier to forgive Reggie for being such a total dick as long as it's for the purposes of humor and entertainment -- but when he behaves the same way and he's not being funny, it makes him much less likeable as a character. There's probably no good reason for copying the format of B&V here and having the story narrated by Reggie's dog Vader. The information conveyed in the captions could just as easily be delivered by a disembodied omniscient narrator. The artwork wasn't terrible, or particularly good either, not the worst artwork to appear in a NR comic, but nowhere near the best, either.

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS #3 - Might as well admit here that I only picked this up to read the classic reprint in back. I attempted to read the new lead story, but half-a-dozen pages in the dialogue was so boring and tedious that I just gave up and skimmed the rest. Good god, reading an Archie comic book shouldn't feel like work, and this feels like trudging through waist-deep molasses. Audrey Mok's artwork isn't bad, and I could probably get to like it if the writing on this title wasn't nearly incomprehensible. All in all, some of the best art I've seen in a NR comic (aside from Derek Charm), along with absolutely the worst writing on any of the NR comics so far, which is a real shame.