Quote from: Ottawagrant on September 23, 2016, 06:45:53 PM
Thanks for letting me know that. I didn't have the other books you mentioned, but glad I didn't pay a lot for it. I remember a short time ago they took some of the 400 page books & reprinted them in the 1000 page books. I usually buy the 1000 pagers, but had seen the 400's in the store. All the same stories, page for page. The plates for the comics didn't have time to cool. Now THAT is recycling! You are right, they need to dig a little deeper in the last 75 years for some different stories. I'd LOVE to see them reprint that classic story where it turns out to be Betty as a mysterious kissing bandit, who is kissing everyone. Boys & girls. Now THAT is a page turner. They could reprint any of those stories from the late 50's to late 60's for me any day.

Let the buyer beware. ACP will print the same stories over and over again, once in the regular digests, once in the 1000-Page Comics or Giant Comics digests, and now going in the reverse direction, from the 400+ page "Best of Archie Comics" and "Archie's Favorite Comics" trade paperbacks, back to the standard digest format. There seems to be an implicit assumption that there's no overlap in consumers between the different formats, and/or that readers are too young (or too stupid) to notice or care. It's pure laziness and greed on the part of the publisher, in trying to milk every single ounce of work that comes out of the editorial and production department multiple times.

In fact, because of this latest 75th Anniversary Celebration digest scam, I am just about ready to let all my digest subscriptions run out. I will probably just continue to get the Betty and Veronica, B&V Friends, and Jughead and Archie digests by ordering them through my local comic store, and simply browsing individual issues of the remaining titles at Barnes and Noble or Walmart to see if there's anything worthwhile in them to make them worth buying.

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 23, 2016, 12:03:45 PM
Speaking of bad art, does anyone know what constitutes breakdowns versus finishes as listed in the most recent Archie issue. The inking was so bad on it. Comparing this to Fiona Staples... Wow

Breakdowns are also known as layouts. This is just a rough blocking out of the figures and panels, so you can see how the story will be told, and where all the characters will be placed in each panel, sometimes with the balloon placement to indicate where artwork shouldn't go because it will be covered with dialogue. The pencilling on the figures still needs to be finished, and then inked, background details drawn in, and so forth. In the example below, the left page shows Jack Kirby's layouts or breakdowns for a Captain America story (the lettering was then added on top by Sam Rosen). You can see Kirby's written notes to the penciller in the margins. The finished page on the right was then completed by another artist, George Tuska.



In this second example from the same story, you can see an interesting anomaly. Sometimes the penciller didn't always follow the layouts slavishly, but chose to show the same scene from a different position, even though the basic information conveyed is identical -- Panel 1 on the top of left hand page in the layouts shows a different camera angle and composition to the shot than Panel 1 on the top of the right hand page.




Here's a different kind of example. Sometimes the same artist who will produce the finished art will do his own breakdowns/layouts, as a stage of working out how to tell the story before committing to working on the details of the page. In this case, they're called "prelims" or preliminary art. Here artist Wallace Wood is working out how to tell the story on this page, but you'll notice that when he gets to the final page, he's made a number of changes from the way he originally laid out or broke down the story.

December is a good month for the digests. My three favorite digests all come out in December a week apart.

12/07


12/14


12/21

ROM #3
REVOLUTION #1 (of 5)
ROM: REVOLUTION #1 (one-shot)
WONDER WOMAN '77 SPECIAL #4

Quote from: BettyReggie on September 22, 2016, 05:29:18 PM
He did do the cover Archie #10 of them dancing at the beach.

Okay, I just checked that out. I don't know... he made Veronica look pretty weird, all tall and skinny with these huge feet. It's almost like he stuck Veronica's head on Big Ethel's body.

Oh, I didn't even remember the name, but Sandy Jarrell drew that issue of BATMAN '66 where he went to Japan and fought Lord Death-Man.*

Not as cool as a genuine Jiro Kuwata Bat-Manga story, but still pretty cool. Then I saw some other stuff Jarrell did (METEOR MEN) that looked kinda loose and scratchy. And then there's the inker, Kelly Fitzpatrick (whose work I don't know either), so who knows. Just have to wait and see, I guess.

*http://www.sandyjarrell.com/search/label/Original%20Art%20for%20sale

Super Duck.

Quote from: JonInIowaCity on September 22, 2016, 01:59:12 PM
I prefer Suzie. I remember her always looking for (and failing miserably at) jobs. She's got spunk!

Who was the artist? Or one of them, anyway?

Quote from: SAGG on September 22, 2016, 04:12:43 AM
And if you think that's something, check out the very next entry! 

Yeah -- wasn't it clever how he leads you so quickly to the final punchline in Panel 4 that your eyes just skim over and completely miss the appearance of Ginger Lopez in Panel 2?

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 22, 2016, 12:56:55 PM
I think the Reggie 80 pager is essentially an ad to get people to buy the new Reggie as he's kind of a character most people haven't heard of. While almost everyone knows who the core 4 are.

I'm pretty sure it's the 2012 REGGIE AND ME digital exclusive miniseries, all in one 80-page comic.

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 22, 2016, 12:56:55 PMThe variant covers are reprinted in the back of each issue but tiny size. Yes the covers book is nice to look at but you can't display it like a variant cover. Commissions are interesting but with the use of markets to color them they don't look polished to me. I don't like the black and white sketches either. They just look rough to me. Though digital commissions is something I'm getting into now.

Why can't you display it? You can buy as many copies as you want, and cut out the pages of whatever cover art you want to display and put it in a frame. Presuming you had enough frames to hold them all, you'd only need 2 copies of the book to display every single variant art piece, plus they don't have logos or other stuff like cover prices or barcodes on the art, so you get to see all of it un-obscured. Or if you're a cheapskate, you can just tack them to the wall with pushpins or thumbtacks.

I assume you segued into the commission art because of the blank sketch variants, so how exactly do you get a digital commission on a blank sketch variant? I'm guessing you can't, so then you can't display it, but it's nice to look at.    It seems like you're arguing that variant cover art is only worthwhile if it's ON the cover. Unless it's a digital "blank cover sketch" commission - then it's different.    Well, you could always buy the digital version of the cover art books too, you know.

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 21, 2016, 07:19:44 PM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on September 19, 2016, 11:43:04 PM
I voted 60's. That decade, to me, had the funniest stories and the best artwork. The 60's were the golden age of Archie comics.

Makes me wonder why they didn't release an archive of the 60s like they did for the 70s on those cd-roms.

They planned to. There was even a mockup of "The Silver Age Collection" included on the packaging with the tagline "Coming Soon". Poor sales of the Bronze Age Collections probably killed it, or maybe it had something to do with the launch of Archie Digital around the time after the first group of CD-ROMs came out.

I would normally tend to give the benefit of the doubt to a Tom DeFalco-written comic, but I'd sure like to see what the artwork looks like first. I have never heard of Sandy Jarrell -- what comics has he worked on previously? Anyone know?

Quote from: steveinthecity on September 22, 2016, 12:48:16 AM
Regarding Reggie's 80-page Giant Comic #1, I didn't quite catch on from the original link JoninIowaCity posted, but the Reggie comic is reprint material(not sure about the cover).

I asked in the shoutbox what prompted a return to the "classic" art, and while not exactly a return as it's reprint material, ACP apparently thinks there's still a market for this beyond the digest format.  If successful maybe they'd consider doing other "Giant" editions on even a quarterly basis featuring other characters.  It'll be interesting to watch the sales of this issue.

Now THERE's a Reggie comic that's going on my pull list. (Hopefully the thing will actually get published. I was surprised to see the return of classic Archie stories to the floppy comic format.)

EDIT:  Now that I look more closely at that Reggie's 80-page Giant Comic #1 cover, I'm wondering if this isn't the print version (compacted to one-shot size) of the formerly Digital-Exclusive 4-issues miniseries Reggie and Me, released digitally only in 2012. (See https://library.comicsplusapp.com/product.php?product_id=com.iversecomics.archie.comics.reggie.me.one.09092012 if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

I say that because Bill Galvan drew the cover, and he also drew the DE miniseries, and because Reggie's dog Runty (rarely seen elsewhere since that miniseries) is also on the cover. So even though the solicitation credits say "various" for writer and artist, I think it should probably more accurately say "Writer: Bill Golliher;  Artist: Bill Galvan".

Plus, it just kind of makes sense that this is the sort of thing ACP would pull out of the drawer (it was already paid-for, four years ago) to cash in on the publicity attending the launch of a New Riverdale Reggie series. So in a sense, if you didn't read it as a digital exclusive comic already, then it's "NEW classic Archie" to you. I still plan on buying it, even though I read the first 3 issues of the miniseries for free on the old Archie Digital app.



I had to laugh when I saw the ARCHIE and B&V cover art books. I predicted it a while back, when discussing the pros and cons of variant covers with @irishmoxie. Presumably these are available in the digital format as well, so now it really seems wasteful to spend another $4 on a copy of a comic whose story you already own (but with a different cover). Cost to buy 1 copy of all 25 cover variants of B&V #1 = $100, cost to buy 1 copy of Betty & Veronica: New Riverdale Cover Book #1 = $5 (plus you get all the variant covers to B&V issues #2 and 3, as well). I actually just thought they'd throw the variant cover art for the respective issues into the TPB collections.

ASTONISHING ANT-MAN #12
PUNISHER #5
UNCANNY X-MEN #13
MICRONAUTS #6
KINGSWAY WEST #2
EMPRESS #6 (of 7)
UNCLE SCROOGE #18
SAVAGE DRAGON #216
BLACK HAMMER #3
PATSY WALKER AKA HELLCAT #10
KONG OF SKULL ISLAND #3 (of 6)
KAIJUMAX SEASON 2 #4 (of 6)
SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN: FALL OF MAN #3 (of 5)
SUPERF*CKERS FOREVER #2 (of 5)
LOST IN SPACE: THE LOST EPISODES #4 (of 6)

Quote from: steveinthecity on September 20, 2016, 11:19:24 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on September 20, 2016, 03:19:38 PM
That's an interesting POV, one which took me by surprise. In what way (or what story situations) do you perceive Betty or Midge as being a jerk?

I'm not speaking for Bluto, but I think Midge can be a jerk by the way she manipulates Reggie despite knowing Moose will knock him into left field. Yeah, at times she's just standing there, entertaining Reggie's come ons, but in others she's certainly not a passive participant when Moose catches them and she never shows remorse or comes to Reggie's aid. 

I don't dislike Midge, just addressing what I consider a pretty big failing in her behavior.

"Manipulates" might be a little bit skewed. That would tend to imply that Reggie is being victimized somehow, or tricked into acting against his will, and I've never seen a story that reads that way to me. (Of course, I'm talking strictly about Midge here -- Jughead does that sort of thing to Reggie on a regular basis.)

On the other hand, it never seemed to me that there was any general agreement among the writers as far as the handling of Midge's character was concerned. Some stories seem to say that she can easily get Moose to do whatever she wants him to, while in others, it seems like she's almost a prisoner of Moose's obsession for her. One thing that does seem fairly consistent in the early stories is that Moose treats her like a possession -- he's constantly referring to her as "MY Midge".

One possible interpretation of her behavior is that Midge is genuinely not immune to Reggie's charms (such as they are), but on the other hand, if he's unsuccessful in being stealthy about it, there's little she can do without admitting her complicity and possibly sharing the resulting fury of Moose's wrath. Of course, the problem being there's nowhere further you can take that nebulous idea in a classic Archie comic story, because there's certainly nothing 'comic' about the implications. At the very least however, it tends to imply that Midge (strictly in the early stories, when a physical beating was a very real, and not merely implied, consequence of Moose's anger) is nowhere near as committed to Moose as he is to her, or that his very possessiveness is what's driving her to sneak around behind his back. And if she fails to defend Reggie in any way when they're caught, maybe it's the only way she can maintain any plausible deniability of her own guilt. It also makes it an interesting Chicken-or-the Egg question as to whether Moose's seeming paranoia actually has a very real underlying cause -- or is it Moose's paranoia that is causing Midge to behave that way?