Quote from: BettyReggie on October 13, 2016, 07:36:48 AM

📖  I mean the Reggie & Me #1 that's coming out on December 7th not the special. Even though the dog is pretty much on those covers. I don't see how the dog will be mentioned in every issue.
In the special coming out on December 14th that comic may have the Bill Galvan issues since he did the cover of that comic.

Ah, I see. Since you mentioned "the dog" (his name is Runty), and he's on the cover of the one-shot, I thought that was what you were talking about. I didn't expect Runty to be in the New Riverdale comic book (he's made very few appearances since that R&M digital miniseries), but if he is, I'd guess he'll probably be treated as just a normal dog... although since Hot Dog is some kind of mutant genius superdog over in the New Riverdale B&V comic, I guess I can't be too sure about that.

Quote from: BettyReggie on October 10, 2016, 10:38:27 PM
I hope we can see what they talked about during the panel. I want some word on Reggie & Me #1. Is Reggie's dog really going be such a big part of comic. Because you can't take a dog to school. We would only see the dog at home. Is Reggie's dog going have thoughts so we can see what he's thinking?

I'm pretty sure this just compiles all four issues of the Digital Exclusive REGGIE AND ME miniseries from ten years ago. Kind of a gray area where you can't really call it "a reprint", because it's never been seen in a print version before, yet it's not "new" either.

HCF 2016 ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE

HOWARD THE DUCK #11 - Final issue. I'll miss this, one of my favorite Marvel titles.
PUNISHER #6
MOON KNIGHT #7
GREAT LAKES AVENGERS #1

ACTION COMICS #965
HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #6
DOOM PATROL #2
MIDNIGHTER AND APOLLO #1 (of 6) - I think I'm pretty much giving up on all of these DC comics.

REVOLUTION #3 (of 5)
KILL OR BE KILLED #3
JONESY #7 - Better than the last one I read.
HENCHGIRL #11 - Apparently the final issue. I didn't understand the ending.
THE SHADOW: THE DEATH OF MARGO LANE #5 (of 5) - Good ending. Can't say I was surprised to find out that she wasn't really dead after all, but I liked the way it was handled.
GODZILLA: RAGE ACROSS TIME #2 (of 5) - A lot weaker than the first issue, which was great, but they're all stand-alone stories set in different time periods.
SPAWN #266 - Only read it because it was a crossover story with SAVAGE DRAGON.
ASTRO BOY - Various stories: "Black Lux", "The Mysterious Ball", "Super Cyclone", closing out the year 1956.
HOTEL HARBOR VIEW (Viz, 1990) - A one-shot trade paperback, seinin manga. Pretty good hard-boiled noir stuff.
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA/ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK #1 (of 6) - Turns out that Jack Burton and Snake Plisskin are actually parallel-universe counterparts of each other. Interesting concept based on the fact that they were both portrayed on film by the same actor, Kurt Russell.
MOONSHINE #1 - By Brian Azarrello & Eduardo Rizzo. The "100 BULLETS" team together again on a story set in the Prohibition-era 1920s, with backwoods hillbillies, a New York bootlegging mobster, G-Men, and (unless I miss my guess) werewolves, all in the mix. Very atmospheric. I liked it quite a bit.
REBORN #1 - By Mark Millar and Greg Capulo. I usually like Millar's stuff, but both EMPRESS and this aren't really doing it for me. I'll probably pass on future issues of this. Never been a big fan of Capulo to begin with.
DUCK AVENGER #1

I got a sneak peek at the Halloween ComicFest 2016 ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE giveaway comic which participating comics retailers will be offering to their customers during the last week in October.


Cover art:
Pencils: Dan Parent
Inks: Bob Smith
Previously appeared on:
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #233 (Nov. 2012)

It contains the following stories:

ARCHIE in "The Secret Project"
5 pages
Script: Rich Margopoulis
Pencils: Gene Colan
Inks: Rudy Lapick
Previously appeared in:
(1st appearance unknown, probably circa late 1980s.)
JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST #130 (Dec. 1996)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #32 (Nov. 2013)
ARCHIE 1000 PAGE COMICS JAMBOREE (2013)

JUGHEAD in "Rare Scare"
6 pages
Script: George Gladir
Pencils: Rex Lindsey
Inks: Rich Koslowski
Previously appeared in:
JUGHEAD (2nd Series) #132 (Nov. 2002)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #11 (Dec. 2011)

ARCHIE in "A Chiller Diller!"
1 page (uncredited)
Previously appeared in:
(1st appearance unknown, probably circa early 1960s.)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #32 (Nov. 2013)

SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH (1997) #5, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31 - There's a fair amount of continuity to this title (and the subsequent series by Bill Golliher and Holly Golightly) that is pretty unusual for any Archie title. This series started off with a 3-part story (guest-starring Queen Cleopatra of Egypt), in the first three and even after that it seems like especially when they get to issues later in the run, in any given issue there's a 50/50 chance you're going to see a footnote referring you to something that happened in an earlier issue. Like in issue #5, Sabrina wants to get her driver's license, so Aunties Hil and Zel dust off their old 1922 model car (which they bought new) and more or less force Sabrina to drive it (she's mortified) until she can pass the driving test. It looks a bit like Archie's old jalopy (before he traded it in for a classic old Ford Mustang in the 1980s). Then we don't see the car again until issue twenty-something when a situation arises that Sabrina needs it, but when that happens a footnote reminds the reader that her aunts gave her the car back in issue #5. Later, in issue #19, Sabrina decides to take Salem with her back in time to the late 1960s, and when Hilda and Zelda discover this, they must follow Sabrina back to prevent her from causing a temporal paradox. Zelda's green hairstyle won't fit in inconspicuously in the sixties, so she changes it to a conservative brunette medium-length style with a simple hairband. Although the time-tripping adventure wraps up in #19, Zelda's hairstyle continues to be a minor plot point in the following issue, after they've returned to the late 1990s, and again, a footnote appears explaining why Zelda's hairstyle changed in the prior issue. Eventually Zelda settled on blonde hair instead of green, parted in the center in front.

I'd assumed that most of the changes that happened in this series had their roots in the T.V. show, like having Sabrina's aunts de-aged, but while that was probably the motivation, the editor didn't just decide to have Dan DeCarlo draw them to resemble (however vaguely) their television counterparts. In this series, it was explained in issue #1 that they decided to de-age themselves (from how they appeared in classic Sabrina stories). On the other hand, there's no explanation for the change in appearance of Salem -- in the classic series he was an orange cat, and he was an actual cat, not a warlock who'd been turned into a (black and white) cat. Salem is given a last name in this series for the first time, but it's NOT Saberhagen as it was in the series that followed later. I don't have the issue at hand but it was some name beginning with G. In the later series, Salem Saberhagen was punished for using his warlock powers in some crazy attempt to take over the world, by being turned into a cat by the Witches' Council. In this series, Salem was punished by Enchantra for breaking his engagement to marry her, by being turned into a cat. All this is discovered when Cousin Ambrose finds himself in the same situation (engaged to Enchantra, that is). When Cousin Ambrose first appears in this series, he also looks different (without explanation) from the old series. He's slimmed down now, and has a goatee instead of just a mustache, and in general acts and looks younger. He has a tendency to wear black t-shirts with white suits.

Then there is the change in management over in the Other Realm where the witches are the native inhabitants. In the old series it was Head Witch Della, but now in this series it's Head Witch Enchantra, while a certain Della has the task of catering to Enchantra's every whim, as her personal executive assistant. Della now dresses conservatively, like an office lady, and she has her hair done up in a bun and wears big round eyeglasses like Dilton. Yet if you look closely, in some issues you can still see that bolt-shaped streak of white down the middle of her otherwise black hair. I had assumed this was all stuff established on TV, but in searching imdb, I could find no listing of cast members of the show who played any part named "Enchantra" or "Della". Which makes me wonder why they had to change things around in the first place. While the old Della was kind of scary in an arch-authoritarian way, Enchantra's more scary in a fruit-loopy Red Queen 'Off-with-her-head!' kind of way.

Quote from: irishmoxie on October 08, 2016, 05:00:35 PM
I didn't know Holly G! drew Betty and Veronica too (in addition to Cheryl and Sabrina). I wonder where her story "Where's the Werewolf?" is from.

And for a short while, she took over Josie and the Pussycats in Archie & Friends, when it was the cover feature. Holly even had a few stories in Sabrina the Animated Series.

When she was first starting out at ACP, like most new artists, she drew a variety of different stories in various comics -- a few Archie stories, a few Jughead stories, a few Betty stories, a few B&V stories. In fact, isn't one of the two Veronica stories in B&V Halloween Annual #251 also a Holly G. story? I don't have the digest right here in front of me to check. A number of those 'one-off' stories may have been original to the digests -- the earliest story of hers that I could find is in Laugh Comics Digest #145, Nov. 1998 ("Lightning Strikes"). If you see Nelson Ribeiro's name credited on the story as editor, chances are it's from one of the digest titles (I don't think he ever edited the regular floppy line of titles). Around that time, Ribeiro introduced a lot of new stories into the digest line. (After leaving ACP, Ribeiro moved on to work for Marvel as an editor on its reprint collections line.)

http://www.comics.org/penciller/name/Holly%20Golightly/sort/alpha/

And of course, Holly G. wrote and drew "She's Goth To Have It", where Betty goes goth. One of the telltale ID signs of a Holly G. story is the way she drew the girls' eyes in closeup shots, which is a departure from the usual 'Archie house style' eyes as refined by Dan DeCarlo.

That's an awful lot of dots for a URL address. I don't know if I'd trust that.

Nothing personal against Welsh dressers -- live and let live, I say. If you want to dress Welsh, it's nobody's damn business but your own.

BETTY AND VERONICA JUMBO COMICS #247
B&V FRIENDS HALLOWEEN ANNUAL #251
BETTY AND VERONICA SPECTACULAR #30 (July 1998)
SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH (1997) #5, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31
RAGNAROK #10
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS' THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT #2
TANK GIRL: GOLD #1 (of 4)

Those are some large families.  The senior Andrews, Coopers, Joneses, and Lodges must all have had more than a dozen siblings.

Quote from: steveinthecity on October 07, 2016, 04:20:06 AM
I'm not sure what I'd find compelling about Archie & the gang suddenly having kids beyond just a one-off "imaginary" type storyline.  I liked the way LWA approached a similar concept by having Archie and Betty as teachers of teen students who could (potentially) drive them batty.

I always thought they could have built a LWA spinoff series around Jellybean and her friends (which could also include some of Archie and Betty's new students at Riverdale). Jellybean, as the only 'name' character bridging the series to the past (but otherwise, as a teenager, effectively a blank slate) would be the natural anchor or lynch pin around which the other characters revolved, with Archie, Betty, Jughead, etc. taking over the roles formerly held by Mr. Weatherbee, Ms. Grundy, and Pop Tate. Of course, opportunities would abound for guest appearances of the "whatever happened to... ?" type: imagine Josie McCoy as a local independent music producer, Sabrina Spellman as the proprietress of a New Age/occult bookshop, Samantha Smythe as the owner of a heath & fitness club, Jinx Holliday as a local collegiate sports star, etc.

This has to be one of the best weeks for Archie (and "Archie-related") comics that I've had in a long, long time. What are the odds that ACP and Dynamite would both release a new floppy print comic book featuring the artwork of Gisele Lagace on the same Wednesday? Of course I'm talking about ARCHIE MEETS RAMONES and BETTY BOOP #1 (from Dynamite Entertainment).

On top of that, my two favorite ACP digests both came out this week, and I got both my subscription copies in the mail this week (both un-ding'ed and un-dented by the USPS, what are the odds?), BETTY AND VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #247 on Tuesday, and B&V FRIENDS HALLOWEEN ANNUAL #251 on Thursday. Both of them came out in comic stores on Wednesday, so -- hopefully without jinxing things here, maybe they're actually starting to get it together down in the mail room at ACP subscription HQ.

And if those weren't enough, by pure chance (I wasn't even looking, just happened to find them by accident), I managed to find 11 issues (none of which I had) of the 1997 SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH comic book series in Fine/Very Fine condition (and a single BETTY AND VERONICA SPECTACULAR, issue #30 -- which just happened to feature a long Prom story with Cheryl Blossom in it). What did I pay for those? Would you believe cover price?? Which, by 1997/1998's economy, amounts to $1.75 each!

Wow, the only way this could have been a better teen-humor week was if the floppy comic version of Die Kitty Die and/or a new print edition of Super 'Suckers had come out.

So, while I still have a few days to go before I finish reading all of those, I just wanted to briefly mention what a delight it was, just paging through that latest B&V FRIENDS HALLOWEEN ANNUAL. Quick breakdown here; there are about 10 Halloween-themed stories or features included in this Annual (which amounts to 73 pages, if you really want to know). As you might expect, B&V stories predominate in this issue, with 15 of those stories or features, totaling 85 pages (notable as a stand-out is the 2-part, 11-page "How Much Is That Hunk In The Window?", with Cheryl and Jason Blossom). Next in volume come 5 Betty stories adding up to 34 pages (and including an 11-page "Betty Cooper, Super Sleuther" saga, with Betty doing her best to make Nancy Drew look like a dummy). Next, tied in page count, are 3 Josie stories or features (one 1-pager and a pin-up, and one long 14-page Dick Malmgren/Dan DeCarlo classic), and -- surprise!! -- FIVE Ethel stories. Both Josie and Ethel get 16 pages each (although Ethel's stories are spread out throughout the Annual). Next are 2 Sabrina stories and a puzzle page (one Stan Goldberg story, one Dan Parent story -- late '80s/early '90s, respectively) -- 11 pages, and 2 Veronica stories (two 5-pagers plus a "monster" pin-up, also 11 pages total). Mr. Lodge gets one page (2 half-page gag strips) to himself.

Dan Parent kicks off the Annual with the new story "The Costume Calamity!", and it's another in what seems to be a recent string of new DP stories that features topical fads. A few months ago, he did a story poking fun at the hoverboard fad (which I'd never heard of, and had to have Dan explain it to me when I saw him at Boston Comic Con - the story had just come out the week before); to me, when someone says "hoverboard", I'm thinking like those skateboards that really hovered without wheels, like Marty McFly in Back To The Future, not this thing he drew into the story which looks like the bastard offspring of the Segway. Anyway, he followed up in Betty & Veronica Jumbo Comics #247 with a story where Mr. Lodge gets into the "adult coloring book" craze http://www.cbr.com/betty-veronica-jumbo-comics-digest-247/, and in this Annual, he's got Betty costumed as "Ilsa, from the animated movie Chilled" (i.e. Elsa from Frozen) -- so Veronica, afraid of being shown up by what she admits to herself are "Betty's superior sewing skills, creativity, and resourcefulness" -- and on a side note, I was just thinking that was so blatantly honest of her to admit, that I thought I was reading a Kathleen Webb story for a second -- has the brilliant idea to go to the Halloween costume contest dressed in a cardboard box. But in keeping with Dan's trending to topical fads, it's a cardboard box painted to look like one of those highly-rasterized sprites from the game app Minefield. She not only looks like an idiot, but the fact that she can't foresee the obvious practical problems that her rectangular solid shape will cause is "comedy gold", as they say.

There's another Dan Parent feature (I hesitate to call it a story, as such...) It's a series of 21 'photos' from Betty & Veronica's childhood Halloweens together, loosely strung together by some bridging text narration, and entitled "Betty and Veronica's Halloween Memories". These 5 pages are all in full-bleed (runs to the edge of the page cut), full-process (gradient) color. I think DP just did what I'd considered impossible -- he got me to read a cleverly-disguised "LITTLE Betty & Veronica" story, and even more than that, to actually enjoy it. Somehow I just never felt these characters were "cute", as drawn by Bob Bolling or Dexter Taylor... but Dan Parent actually does make B&V cute as little girls. I suspect this feature came from one of the later, "magazine"-style B&V SPECTACULARS, and ditto for the (also full-process color) 2-page "B&V Halloween Style" fashion spread. The Annual also includes that now-classic 12-page B&V Halloween tale, Dan's "An Axe To Grind!" that features Veronica's truck-drivin' Aunt Gladys.

I will get to more of the above comics in some reviews later on in this thread.

Quote from: irishmoxie on October 05, 2016, 02:33:39 PM

Do you take every Wednesday off to read comics? Lucky.

Looking forward to your reviews on the Ramones and Betty Boop. How was monster musume?

HaHa! I don't have to take every Wednesday off, because back when I was given the option of arranging my work schedule, I opted to take Tuesdays and Wednesdays off -- so my regular work week is Thursday through Monday.

This week is jam-packed though, so I'm not sure when I can get around to those reviews. I wanted to review those two though, so hopefully I'll find some time to squeeze those in before next week.

What to say about Monster Musume, (subtitled "Everyday Life With Monster Girls")? Not my usual type of thing, but I was able to borrow it to read (actually I was thinking it might be something like Eerie Cuties... but no, not really). That resulted in my spending hours on the internet researching various specialized subgenres (and terminology) of manga & anime, in order to understand the context of this particular specialized manga genre. I should mention that I'd not read much manga in the past 20 years or so prior to just the past few months (and I'm pretty sure this particular subgenre didn't exist then, at least not in any English translations), and I had mostly kept to my usual genres of shonen and seinin manga up to this point. That said, Monster Musume turned out to be all of the following: ecchi manga, also part of the "harem" subgenre, and to have as two of its three main characters the character archetypes of lolicon and yandere. It's also helpful to understand the concept of moe (MO-eh) in manga and anime characters. If any of the foregoing means anything to you. Basically, Monster Musume is an R-rated sex comedy, with some nudity (but no genitalia). It may or may not be offensive to women depending on how you feel about the nudity and/or stereotypes. The girls seem to have a hard time keeping their clothes on. It could be related to Archie only in the sense that the main character is a typical 'nice guy' who is surrounded by beautiful girls who insist on throwing themselves at him, yet issues of interspecies legality and strict rules involved in hosting 'monster girl' exchange students create barriers to following his natural impulses. Also, his "interspecies exchange coordinator" (who he may also have the hots for) has set up a situation in which this single young guy is playing "host family" to three different monster girl exchange students (a lamia, a harpy, and a centaur), all of whom are attracted to him, but rivals to each other, seemingly for the specific purpose of torturing him. I personally don't think it's worth the time for me to follow up with future volumes of this.

ASTRO BOY TPs (Dark Horse) - Skipping around various volumes, reading stories in chronological order (I'm up to 1957).
WONDER WOMAN '77 SPECIAL #4
ACTION MAN #4 (of 4)
REVOLUTION: MICRONAUTS #1 (one-shot)
REVOLUTION: M.A.S.K. #1 (one-shot)
SPEED RACER TP (2007, Seven Seas) - An OEL (original English-language) manga, done-in-one volume.
MONSTER MUSUME VOL. 1 TP
SQUADRON SUPREME #12
HELLBLAZER #2
SIXPACK AND DOGWELDER: HARD-TRAVELIN' HEROZ #2 (of 6)
RICK AND MORTY #18
LOONEY TUNES #233
UNCLE SCROOGE #19
ARCHIE MEETS RAMONES #1 - Totally awesome.
BETTY BOOP #1 (Dynamite) - ALSO totally awesome.
DEATH OF HAWKMAN #1 (of 6)
TITANS #3
UNCANNY X-MEN #14
SCOOBY-DOO TEAM UP #18 - So much fun!
FUTURE QUEST #5 - Still good, but beginning to stray a bit farther from the original cartoons...
BATMAN '66 MEETS STEED AND MRS. PEEL #4 (of 6)
REVOLUTION #2 (of 5)
SUPER F*CKERS FOREVER #3 (of 5) - Hilarious.
BETTY AND VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #247 - Fun new lead story by Dan Parent!

Scooby gets a whole pack of new 'wingmen' in SCOOBY-DOO TEAM UP #18 (which came out in comic shops today), in a story titled "A Dog-Gone Crisis!", when the doglike humanoid alien Green Lantern named G'Nort recruits his help (along with fellow Earth dog heroes Krypto the Superdog, Ace the Bathound, and Wonder Dog of the SuperFriends) to help solve a mystery -- the Dog House, headquarters of the S.P.C.A.* on Sirius-9 is being haunted by ghosts.

*Space Canine Patrol Agency, an interplanetary pack of dogs whose membership includes Paw Pooch (who can multiply his number of legs up to centipede numbers), Hot Dog¹ (a dachshund that can generate heat), Tusky Husky (a husky with a single great tusk that can grow), Mammoth Mutt (who can inflate his body to huge size), and Tail Terrier (who has an elongated, stretchable tail).

1. The S.C.P.A.'s Hot Dog predates ACP's pet of the same name by a few years.

As mentioned above in my earlier post, Sabrina. I just wanted to comment that one of the things I really liked about the classic Sabrina stories was that she was frequently portrayed (you might call it an ongoing theme for the series) as "torn between two worlds". She couldn't reveal herself as a witch to her human friends, but she really had a yearning to belong, be one of the gang, and just be a relaxed normal teenager having fun. Yet as a young witch in training, she was frequently placed in an awkward position, criticized for her mortal-leaning ways, and encouraged to do bad deeds. In order to make her Aunts and Head Witch Della happy, she has to do exactly the opposite of what she'd like to, which is using her spells for good deeds. I always liked that background tension that was part of the basic setup of the series.