Quote from: BettyReggie on November 11, 2016, 05:49:26 PM
I'm going wait until Tfaw has a special, maybe some of those RiverDale #1's wil be $1.00. Because right now I only pre-order Pitilli's  & Parent's issues.

Dang, don't tell me they're going to force me to buy a copy of RIVERDALE #1 just to get this sweet Dan Parent cover. Er... who's the girl with Archie here?



It's a relief to see that all the January 2017 digests are now solicited with the line Brand new story!, as I wasn't sure whether new lead stories would last into the new year. Wait a minute, did I just say ALL the January 2017 digests? DAMN that Archie Comics! Sure, they wait until I cancel my subscription to the 75th Anniversary Celebration Jumbo Comics Digest, and the minute I do, then they put a NEW lead story in there!! GRRRR...!!  Leave  it up to ACP, no matter what I do, when I zig, they zag. Could it have been that disgruntled email I sent them when I cancelled?  Or is that even the right solicitation copy for this digest? It's a Jumbo Comics Digest, not a Double Digest, as the copy says, after all.

Quote

Archie 75th Anniversary Digest #5
Betty and Veronica are about to set out on the winter adventure of a lifetime: they're heading out to Pickens Park to go... ice fishing?! Ok, maybe not Veronica's preferred way to spend a snowy Saturday. Find out what makes the cultured Miss Lodge change her mind and embrace some outdoor fun in "Fishing for Love!" the hilarious new lead story to this comics double digest!

Script: Dan Parent
Art: Dan Parent
Cover: Dan Parent
On Sale Date: 12/14
160-page, full color comic
$4.99 U.S.

Quote from: steveinthecity on November 11, 2016, 11:12:44 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on November 11, 2016, 10:32:06 AM

New sig... too much? Still mulling it over, might have been a tweak or two too many in manipulating the bits'n'pieces.

The coloring makes me think of Mr. Goodbar candy. Your mentioning "bits'n'pieces" then makes me think of Sugar Babies.   

Hmm... I see what you mean. I was looking for an effect similar to a brightly-colored comic book title logo with an equally-bright contrasting background, but I may have overdone it. That yellow is a little intense. I may experiment with some other colors, but will probably keep the red lettering.

Well, it appears I have solved my own mystery. With reference to the ad mentioned in the immediately preceding post, it appears again in VERONICA #58. I admit after looking closely at the ad in #56, I just glanced over the one in issue #58 the first time around and assumed it was merely repeated from a couple of issues prior, but now I see that they did alter it by changing the text in the little yellow bars stuck over the cover images:

ARCHIE ANDREWS WHERE ARE YOU DIGEST #108 [On Sale Now]
ARCHIE'S STORY & GAME DIGEST #37 [On Sale in Nov.] - and it's issue #37, replacing issue #36 from the previous ad in issue #56.
VERONICA'S DIGEST #5 [Available Through This Ad Only]
LITTLE ARCHIE DIGEST #17  [Available Through This Ad Only]
BETTY'S DIGEST #1  [On Sale Now]

So it now appears from comparing the two ads, which appeared in the October and December 1996 issues respectively, that "Available Through This Ad Only" does indeed appear to be a euphemism for the more commonly-seen "Still Available". I admit my future knowledge that all of these titles were doomed to cancellation in a few months' time led me to make a false connection there.

What's weird is that the ATTAO banner does seem to appear only on these ads for shortly-to-be-cancelled digest titles, so that's still somewhat confusing, given that skimming through the issue I can see other house ads for back issues of the 48-Page ARCHIE'S CHRISTMAS STOCKINGs and SABRINA'S HALLOWEEN/HOLIDAY SPOOKTACULAR/SPECTACULARs, and all of those ads for the floppy format comics still say "Back issues still available!"  or "48-Page Specials Still Available!", rather than "Available Through This Ad Only". So why were the lower-selling digest titles treated differently in ads? Apart from the floppy comics, I still haven't seen any ads from this mid-1990s period selling individual issues of anything but these or other short-run digest titles... it's never an ad for an issue of JUGHEAD JONES DIGEST MAGAZINE or BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST, just the digests that only came out annually or 3 or 4 times a year. Maybe the only point here is that these titles (even though they might be annuals or quarterlies) didn't stay on sale until the next issue arrived at retail outlets, like other digest titles did, and when they were past their "Retailer: Display until ______" date, ACP wanted to let the readers know that while they could no longer buy them from the regular outlets, ACP still had them in stock and available.

VERONICA #29, 37, 41, 44, 45, 46, 48, 56, 58, 84 (August 1993-February 1999)

I have to admit I was a little disappointed, because I was expecting that there would be a lot more Dan Parent stories in these issues. I think I only counted about 3, and one pin-up (but it was a nice pin-up). However, those were stories written by Dan, but drawn by the Kennedy brothers (who were merely average illustrators at this point in their careers). Things pick up in the later issues, where there were a lot more stories written by Kathleen Webb, a couple by Barbara Slate, and even 2 or 3 by Frank Doyle. There's a fashion page or three by Dan DeCarlo (lots of nice covers by him, though), but he drew only one or two of the stories in these issues. A few Rex Linsey pin-up/fashion pages, too (he always takes a very imaginative approach to these). But overall, far too many non-notable stories by writers like Mike Pellowski, Hal Smith, and Joe Edwards, and even fewer outstanding stories art-wise, although the few drawn by Jeff Schultz looked good as always.

I can't kick about it since they all came out of the fifty-cent boxes, and to me they were always going to be just "reading copies" as opposed to "collecting copies". Some of the coupons had been filled out by then-owner 12-year old Maggie Berman, and in a couple of instances she even cut one or two out of the comic. She also liked to color the girls' lips in with a red felt-tip pen (very neatly), and in one issue she had a gold pen,and even covered an entire drawing of Veronica's car with it, along with a couple of earrings here and there.

Sometimes I like to comb through the letters written to Betty and/or Veronica, because the woman who wrote the letter pages (Sara Algase... she actually gets credited on the letters page as "by Sara Algase") will sometimes slip in a ringer, and she always has a devastating sense of irony. To wit, from the "Dear Veronica" pages in VERONICA #46:

Quote
Dear Veronica,
There is a girl in my school who is really snobby. All the boys like her. She modeled for ONE picture and she thinks she's awesome. At times she considers herself my "best friend" but at times she laughs at me and says, "How would you know? You're only an average girl." Sometimes I get a little jealous.
--  Confused
San Francisco, CA

Dear Confused,
This girl has quite a swelled head on her shoulders. But don't take it all at face value. Sometimes people act snobby because they are really insecure inside. She is probably jealous of you for being so down-to-earth. If you remind yourself of that the next time she brags, you won't feel as jealous.
-- Veronica

When I read one of those (I'd say you can find one of these planted in about 1 out of every 3 letters pages), I just have to roll my eyes and smile. Sara was obviously chomping at the bit to write some B&V stories herself. In some of the more boring issues, a letter like that can be the funniest thing in there.



New sig... too much? Still mulling it over, might have been a tweak or two too many in manipulating the bits'n'pieces.

VERONICA #29, 37, 41, 44, 45, 46, 48, 56, 58, 84 (August 1993-February 1999)














New sig... too much? Still mulling it over, might have been a tweak or two too many in manipulating the bits'n'pieces.

Okay, just by chance I noticed another ad, this one is from VERONICA #56 (Oct. 1996) -- so, slightly over a year earlier than the ad I mention above. Anyone want to guess which titles it spotlights individual issues of... ?

ARCHIE ANDREWS WHERE ARE YOU DIGEST #108 [On Sale in Sept.]
ARCHIE'S STORY & GAME DIGEST #36 [On Sale Now]
VERONICA'S DIGEST #5 [On Sale in Aug.]
LITTLE ARCHIE DIGEST #17  [On Sale Now]
BETTY'S DIGEST #1  [On Sale in Sept.]

The exact same titles. Just a few issues earlier (or only one, in the case of Veronica's Digest and Betty's Digest, which were published annually, despite not being called "Annual"). But not a hint of "Available Through This Ad Only". We can probably assume that this October cover-dated issue of VERONICA was on sale in July or early August, so that would place the "Now" of "On Sale Now".

Quote from: steveinthecity on November 11, 2016, 01:39:04 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on November 11, 2016, 12:08:20 AM
But all of the individual issues (including some that were going to be on sale soon) were very recent issues... and you don't see the same sort of ads for random issues of digest titles that weren't close to the cancellation line. They might have felt it was better to cut back the print runs of those [Available Through This Ad Only] issues, NOT distribute them to the returnable market, and keep the remainder of the print run (after direct/non-returnable distribution to comic shops, which wouldn't have amounted to much compared to the returnable market) in-house.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this one point at a time.  "Available Through This Ad Only", or ATTAO,    what does that mean exactly?  Was there a difference in the advertised book and the one in the marketplace?  That's why I brought up the direct vs. newsstand editions of that book. 


Were the ATTAO books in such low reserve they used them mainly to create a hype element to the offer?  Were any ATTAO books that remained after the ad ran it's course dumped into ACP's regular bulk back issue program?


I think step one is determining what (if anything) made the LA #20 & Betty #2 books offered unique. Do we know if there's both a Direct and Newsstand edition of LA #20? Were all digests offered to the market in both newsstand and direct only during that timeframe?  I'm not certain how common that was with digests.

I don't think ATTAO had anything to do with the books being on sale in the direct market. Two of those titles had advertised on-sale dates, the other three were marked as ATTAO. Obviously they could not advertise on-sale dates for any titles that were ONLY available through the direct market (comic shops) and through mail-order from ACP. The vast majority of the readers seeing those ads would expect to see the digests on sale wherever they usually got their Archie digests (supermarket, retail bookseller, department store, etc.).

There was a crucial difference with the direct market because those were the only retailers who bought from ACP on a NONreturnable basis, but in terms of numbers of copies distributed by that method, it was a drop in the bucket compared to returnable sales. Direct market sales were SAFE, a done deal, bought and paid for when ordered by the distributor from ACP (based on retailer demand). The normal digest retail distribution scheme was a crap shoot, since the publisher could never know what to expect in terms of the percentage of credit he'd have to allocate to retailers for unsold copies. Therefore, credit for unsold copies could totally make a title unprofitable, whereas that was not the case with direct market sales. Mail-order allowed the publisher to keep an even greater percentage of the cover price for himself, and the issues were never past their 'display until' date for in-house mail-order stock.

That said, ALL of the issues in that ad were 'current' issues, not backstock, and ALL of the titles would wind up being either cancelled with that very issue, or within another 3 issues. THAT is what makes this ad stand out. You just don't see ads for individual issues of digest titles like that. What you DO see (later) is listings of nearly every title that ACP published, and checklists of every issue from a given year, or a checkmark box to select an entire year's worth of issues of a given title. The only other ads I can recall with single issues of selected titles were for the 48-Page Giants, usually appearing shortly BEFORE the on-sale dates, but with NO 'ATTAO' notice on any of the titles.

What I'm seeing here is that the two (out of five advertised) titles that were given announced on-sale dates were ARCHIE ANDREWS... #112 and ARCHIE'S STORY & GAME #39, both of them titles that were longer-running (by nearly twice the longevity of LITTLE ARCHIE, or five times), and both titles which featured as the main character (regular, teenage) Archie. As such, I think that ACP was willing to distribute those by the normal method alongside the long-running standby digest titles, and take a chance on credit for unsold copies, while they weren't willing to do that for BETTY, VERONICA, and LITTLE ARCHIE's digests. In essence, I think this point in time is when Archie digests first began to feel the pinch of the contracting market for returnable distribution, and they were playing around with the idea that they might be able to sell certain titles only by the direct market, and the even MORE "direct" method of mail-order. Sure, there are innumerable examples of ACP house ads selling back issues, but none of them ever have the ATTAO marker on the older stock -- generally they'll say something like "Still Available!" or "Did You MISS This One?", and generally those were for special crossover stories or mini-series or one-shot specials, not random digest issues.

My theory here is that ACP was toying with the idea that they might create a new sales model for lower-tier titles IF they met the following criteria: (A) Lower-frequency titles like Annuals (Veronica's Digest, Betty's Digest) or Quarterlies (Little Archie Digest); and (B) They had lower print runs, with ZERO return credit issued (direct-market and mail-order sales ONLY). All I really need for someone to disabuse me of this theory is for ONE person to step forward and say, "No, I've been reading the digests for over 20 years, and I can tell you I got Betty's Digest #2/Little Archie Digest #20/Veronica's Digest #5 at my local 7-11/Piggly Wiggly/Paperback Booksmith, where I always got my digests". Or even the somewhat vaguer-sounding "Well, I never ordered anything from ACP through the mail, and we didn't even have a comic book shop in my town, but somehow I managed to buy a copy".

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on November 11, 2016, 01:11:36 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on November 11, 2016, 12:56:12 AM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on November 11, 2016, 12:45:26 AM
I have been shaking my head, rolling my eyes, face palming myself and just laughing out loud about all the pretty ridiculous things some people are saying. People swearing they are going to kill themselves, move to Canada (which by the way, why Canada and not, say, Mexico? pftt,  bunch of racists,lol), some universities across the country cancelling classes or tests because the wimpy kids are too devastated to study right now, blaming everything but themselves, etc, etc, etc, the silly list goes on 
I mean, seriously? They need to get it together. Accept they lost, accept that Donald J. Trump is the new president of the United States and move on..............Anyway, I just needed to get this out. Moving on 

I was over it months ago, when I saw what the choices were going to come down to, and accepted the inevitability that our next president was going to suck. On the plus side, now that he has presidential advisors, maybe one of them will tactfully point out how ridiculous that hairpiece looks.

  But if he hasn't changed his hairstyle in years, why would he start now? My wish would be for him to be a bit more tactful when speaking. I applaud that he is not politically correct, but do tone it down a little bit.

Baby steps, baby steps.  If he's going to have to learn a little diplomacy, there's no better starting point than for him to accept some constructive criticism from those around him. Never mind how that stupid toupe makes HIM look, think about how it makes America look!  He can work on honing his insincerity act later...

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on November 11, 2016, 12:49:33 AM
I remember reading a couple stories where Veronica is in the bathtub and Betty is right there just staring with a smile on her face. It was by DeCarlo so I am guessing it was intentional 

Hard to forget, since Steve only posted that DeCarlo cover of Betty & Veronica #6 about a week ago... 

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on November 11, 2016, 12:45:26 AM
I have been shaking my head, rolling my eyes, face palming myself and just laughing out loud about all the pretty ridiculous things some people are saying. People swearing they are going to kill themselves, move to Canada (which by the way, why Canada and not, say, Mexico? pftt,  bunch of racists,lol), some universities across the country cancelling classes or tests because the wimpy kids are too devastated to study right now, blaming everything but themselves, etc, etc, etc, the silly list goes on 
I mean, seriously? They need to get it together. Accept they lost, accept that Donald J. Trump is the new president of the United States and move on..............Anyway, I just needed to get this out. Moving on 

I was over it months ago, when I saw what the choices were going to come down to, and accepted the inevitability that our next president was going to suck. On the plus side, now that he has presidential advisors, maybe one of them will tactfully point out how ridiculous that hairpiece looks.

Quote from: steveinthecity on November 10, 2016, 09:58:40 PM
Here Betty introduces "Bath Crystals".  Adding a new wrinkle to one's bathing experience.

Clean body, dirty mind. She hasn't even gotten into the bath yet, and she's already thinking about SIN. 

Quote from: SAGG on November 10, 2016, 07:10:24 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on November 10, 2016, 10:13:08 AM

Quote from: SAGG on November 10, 2016, 09:17:47 AM
Just remember that you Trumpians own everything. If this Great Experiment of Trump fails, it's on YOU....

I question the math on that one. So theoretically then, the other 99% didn't vote?

Actually, combined roughly only 50% of eligible voters voted. This means 50% did not vote. There's the math. And Hillary won the popular vote, by the way. It's like 2000, save for Trump winning more electoral votes. The Trumpians wanted him, they got him, and now we can all see how "great" he's going to make America again. Their party has all the branches of government, so they own it. Pretty cut and dry to me, DR....

Well, when you talk about "Trumpians", you mean the richest 1% of all American voters. Even if ALL of the 1%ers voted for Trump, that still leaves 49% that could have gone either way. Logic tells me that of the remaining 49% (assuming all 1%ers voted, and voted for Trump), a pretty good percentage of non-1%ers must have voted for Trump, but certainly whatever the percentage split on that 49%, the votes FOR Trump had to far outweigh 1%. So to place the blame where it's due, it's NOT all on your so-called Trumpians. They just don't have the numbers, regardless of a 50% voter turnout. As Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time..."  Early on, I recognized the bleak situation of this election, and knew there couldn't possibly be any happy outcome. I guess we can now await the government rounding up all those associated with the Occupy movement on "Trumped-up" charges.

Don't even get me started about the electoral college... it's a joke, and has nothing to do with math. Democracy, my @$$!  But still, even the electoral college has to have a close vote to apply leverage to the deciding win, in order to maintain at least an "appearance of Democracy", otherwise there'd be rioting in the streets and armed revolution (assuming we can peel people away from their television sets).

But all of the individual issues (including some that were going to be on sale soon) were very recent issues... and you don't see the same sort of ads for random issues of digest titles that weren't close to the cancellation line. They might have felt it was better to cut back the print runs of those [Available Through This Ad Only] issues, NOT distribute them to the returnable market, and keep the remainder of the print run (after direct/non-returnable distribution to comic shops, which wouldn't have amounted to much compared to the returnable market) in-house.

Well, there are several interesting factors to consider about this ad. One, from the list of titles, we can probably assume that these were the poorest-selling of all the then-current Archie digest titles. There are three final digest issues included in that list (ARCHIE'S STORY & GAME #39, BETTY #2, VERONICA #6), and one next-to-last issue (LITTLE ARCHIE #20). The ARCHIE ANDREWS title would be cancelled as of issue #114.

These were titles that they weren't going to be offering in a subscription ad, because they had to know they were on their last legs. That being the case, having editorially assembled the contents for these issues already, rather than cancel them outright and just not bother to send them to the printer, they might have been experimenting to see whether the best way to reach the target audiences for at least some of those titles was through direct mail-order sales, since the smaller number of consumers ordering directly by mail might well have different tastes in what they wanted in a digest than the casual consumer that purchased digests by the normal retail route. So perhaps they just had the printer print up what would be (compared to normally-distributed digest titles) a relatively small print run, strictly for mail-order sales. Maybe you could get those "Available Through This Ad Only" titles in comic book shops, and by mail from ACP, but nowhere else, like the normal newsstands, retail stores, and supermarkets.

BETTY & VERONICA #2
AVENGERS #1.1
UNCANNY X-MEN #15
ACTION COMICS #967
WONDER WOMAN #10
DETECTIVE COMICS #944
BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ADVENTURES #1 (OF 6)
DONALD DUCK #18
JONESY #8
BETTY AND VERONICA FAIRY TALES TP
ASTRO BOY - "The Artificial Sun" & "Space Snow Leopard"