Bronze Age swag (and a couple of Silver Age) that I got at Boston Comic Con today:

Out of the fifteen you listed, you kind of made it easy for me by only including a couple that would have been contenders, like Cosmo and Ginger, so I picked the Hangman (good thing you didn't list any of the 30 or so other superheroes, or it would have been a lot tougher for me to pick just one).

The real answer would probably have been Sabrina, though. Melody and Pepper would probably have tied for second place. Though the first two have obviously appeared in stories with Archie and the gang, none of those characters can be considered spinoffs or supporting characters from ARCHIE, any more than Wilbur, Ginger, Suzie or Katie Keene (who have also all appeared in Archie stories). In fact, if you consider "Night at the Comic Shop", then MOST of those characters have appeared in an Archie story at one time or another, except for The Twiddles (whoever they are). I assume that Sabrina (1962) and characters from JOSIE (1963) are just as fair game as characters like Cosmo (1958) or Young Dr. Masters (1964), since they were first published in the same time period.

Is there a cutoff date for these characters, or can it be just any non-Archie character like JINX (2010)?

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 12, 2016, 08:46:24 AM

Quote from: JonInIowaCity on August 11, 2016, 10:31:28 PM
Jon's on vacation right now. I can write up a poll when I get home, but there's tons of old MLJ and Archie characters. I'm not so rigid that people can't answer in the way that feels right to them though.

I totally get it.  For me, it would just be nice to see the top three or four or more in any poll.  On another forum we've done this to place the top SA, BA, or FF titles for example.  In this sort of environment I'd rather polls always give multiple options.  FF is my all time favorite comic, particularly from the 60's, but I'd hate for ASM, Action, or Lois Lane to be excluded from that list.

If we were to select a favorite Archie artist of all time and the votes went to DeCarlo we'd never know maybe Fernando or Lucey finished third (or whatever). I like the idea of "standings" if you will.

Enjoy your vacation. 

The thing is that there has to be some sort of winnowing process before you can even whittle it down to a list of manageable size for rankings. I don't think the forum polling allows for that large a number of multiple-choice responses. In the case of a favorite MLJ or ACP character apart from those appearing in the main long-running Archie-related titles, there are just too many of them to include in a multiple-choice poll, and that's equally true of the artists who worked at MLJ/ACP over the past 75+ years. I forget what the max number of voting buttons is for polling, but certainly it's only a fraction of the number of well-known artists or characters.

EDIT: I checked into this in the SMF Help section, and it does say:

QuoteTo offer more than five choices in a poll, users should simply select Add Option as many times as desired.

Is it really unlimited? Could someone running a poll add as many as 50 or 100 options, or just add as many options as posters happen to mention by name in their posts? I could probably list 50 different non-Archie MLJ/ACP characters just after thinking about it for 10-15 minutes. Even if you could add all those, it might seem a little impractical or wonky in actual use.

Yesterday, I got JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE ANNUAL #22 in the mail and started reading that.
Also attended Boston Comic Con on Friday and found a number of deals, including a big pile of Archie Comics in VF/NM condition for $1 each:

B&V SPECTACULAR #76
BETTY AND VERONICA #196, 198, 199, 231, 250, 253, 256, 259, 260, 265
VERONICA #43, 71, 72, 74, 75, 134, 136, 209var (KEVIN)
KEVIN KELLER #2
JUGHEAD #187, 188, 200var*, 211 (had the #200 variant cover signed by Dan P.)


The best find: ARCHIE: THE BEST OF SAMM SCHWARTZ VOL. 1 hardcover (slightly dinged lower right-hand corner) for only five bucks!!

Also found a copy of that Papercutz THREE STOOGES "Bed Bugged" TPB by George Gladir and Stan Goldberg for $5. The only other things I bought worth mentioning were a TP reprint of ZORRO newspaper strips by Don McGregor and Tom Yeats, and a couple of manga TPs.

Dan Parent has the blank cover and convention exclusive variants of the Chapterhouse Comics DIE KITTY DIE #1 at his table at Boston Comic Con, so I'll probably pick those up on Sunday -- I also already picked up my Kickstarter rewards package from him at the show (minus the commission piece that I'll hopefully also pick up on Sunday). Haven't had time to look through it much, but I did read the Gisele backup story exclusive to the DKD hardcover collection. Got a couple of nice original Dan P. Archie and DKD art pages in there. I'll see what I can do a couple days later when I get some time about posting some pics of those.

Mark Waid and Erica Henderson are also at Boston Comic Con and were together with Dan Parent on an Archie panel on Friday afternoon. Adam Hughes was originally scheduled to appear but had to cancel (due to his workload) a month or two back.

Had my eye on some older Silver/Bronze SABRINAs and JOSIEs, but didn't buy them on Friday. I'll check back again on Sunday and if he still has them I might try to haggle with the guy for some kind of package deal for a dozen issues or so. We'll see.

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 13, 2016, 09:54:35 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 12, 2016, 09:14:52 PM

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 13, 2016, 09:54:35 AM
I thought it was that group that sang "Muskrat Love"

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 12, 2016, 09:14:52 PM
The Captain and Tenille. They had their own TV show at one time (as did Tom Jones, and Donny and Marie Osmond). Then again, so did Pink Lady and Jeff, so I guess it goes to prove nothing. Prize to the first person to identify Pink Lady (no fair Googling) 

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 12, 2016, 09:01:40 AMI used to buy wholesale clothing from Jackie Goldberg "The Pink Lady" based out of LA.

You never addressed Sheilds and Yarnell or the amazing popularity of Moby Grape tribute bands in the 70's.   
I don't know why I cannot quote this properly.

I don't know anything about Moby Grape tribute bands, but it must be true. Does this work for ya?

(JK!   )

I would have addressed Shields and Yarnell, but it's hard to mime on an internet forum like this one. I will say that to the best of my knowledge they were the first, last, and only mime group to headline their own television series, but unlike the previously-mentioned acts, they weren't pop musicians who made the transition to headlining their own TV series, so I'm not sure how they got lumped in with the others.

PINK LADY, by the way, was a Japanese pop duo (similar to The Peanuts, who preceded them in the early 1960s by starring as the the Alienas, or more familiarly, the "Twin Fairies" in the 1961 Toho Films kaiju eiga, MOTHRA). Pink Lady (who spoke no English) were given their own television series on NBC in 1979, co-starring alongside second-string comedian Jeff Altman. The show was infamously pulled from NBC's lineup after only airing six episodes.

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 12, 2016, 09:01:40 AM
I thought it was that group that sang "Muskrat Love"

The Captain and Tenille. They had their own TV show at one time (as did Tom Jones, and Donny and Marie Osmond). Then again, so did Pink Lady and Jeff, so I guess it goes to prove nothing. Prize to the first person to identify Pink Lady (no fair Googling).

Quote from: BettyReggie on August 12, 2016, 05:54:25 AM
Nah, I have 2 of books that say 75th year anniversary. One of those 1000 page that relate to the 75th year & 75 Years 75 Stories. Plus I have a lot of digests & 1000 page books that I'm still reading. So I'm going skip getting that.

That doesn't mean it's going to be the same old stories you've read in other digests or trade collections recently... but we'll see. This is not an ongoing digest series. They're only doing 12 issues. So it's sort of the first digest maxi-series.

I don't know what the sunday stumper is, but if it means we're supposed to try to identify the photos, then it's Donnie and Marie Osmond.

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 11, 2016, 08:38:40 AM
Yeah Jon, we need a popularity poll. The last few days I've thought about Katy , Sabina, and Josie(!) in particular,  and read a couple Pat The Brats yesterday.  There's some great stuff out there.  I think it's important to define the cutoff date for inclusion as an MLJ character, though.

Well, the topic heading does say MLJ, but in his original post Jon sort of leaves it open as "MLJ/Archie Comics", so I get the impression that what he really meant was any title (or character) that wasn't a direct spinoff of Archie. If we are strictly defining what an MLJ character is, that would be any character created before the company changed its name to Archie Comic Publications, Inc. in 1946 (which of course includes Archie and the gang, which Jon specifically meant to dis-include).

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 11, 2016, 09:01:13 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 11, 2016, 06:31:33 AM

Quote from: Purgatori on August 11, 2016, 03:55:43 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 10, 2016, 02:32:55 PM
I'm glad you mentioned SPIRIT OF WONDER...I liked the artwork, but I can't remember much about the story other than it had a little bit of a steampunk feel to it (before that genre had become as popular as it is today)

I realised when I read this, that I couldn't remember anything about the story either. So I'll have to dig out the issues and add them to the reading pile (Judge Dredd: The Uncensored Cursed Earth Saga is on top at the moment).

I am also a big Judge Dredd fan, although I find it difficult to keep up with the various Rebellion releases, but I've been reading Dredd (and other 2000 AD series like Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, A.B.C. Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock, etc.) since the Titan Books albums released in the 1980s.

Dredd can be a bit hokey and over the top with some plots and the "Law" thing, but it's a great series overall, imo, but well worth reading.  Additionally, anyone who can get these at their libraries should check it(them) out.  Probably falls mostly under the "hero" genre beyond the action-sci-fi futuristic thing for those interested.

I don't recognize Nemesis The Warrior.  Was that originally a Starlord magazine character?

NEMESIS THE WARLOCK is another great strip from 2000 AD, created by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill (who once had a DC Green Lantern Corps story of his rejected by the Comics Code Authority purely on the basis of his art style, because they found it repugnant). The same team later went on to create the equally great (creator-owned) MARSHAL LAW, sort of a cathartic avatar for all the comics creators who hate superhero comics but are forced to work on them if they expect to make a living in the American comics industry. Marshal Law was a hero-hunter who skewered superheroes, both in the visceral and the satirical senses of the word. And of course, O'Neill went on to illustrate Alan Moore's Victorian-era "superhero team", THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.

A sample of the Mills/O'Neill NEMESIS:



One of the great things about the early 2000 AD characters was that a number of them didn't need to "spin-off" from one of the more popular features in order to inhabit the same universe. The above image shows Mek-Quake, Ro-Jaws, and Hammerstein, who also featured (individually, or together) in other 2000 AD strips like ROBO-HUNTER, RO-BUSTERS, and A.B.C. WARRIORS.

Quote from: Purgatori on August 11, 2016, 03:55:43 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 10, 2016, 02:32:55 PM
I'm glad you mentioned SPIRIT OF WONDER...I liked the artwork, but I can't remember much about the story other than it had a little bit of a steampunk feel to it (before that genre had become as popular as it is today)

I realised when I read this, that I couldn't remember anything about the story either. So I'll have to dig out the issues and add them to the reading pile (Judge Dredd: The Uncensored Cursed Earth Saga is on top at the moment).

I am also a big Judge Dredd fan, although I find it difficult to keep up with the various Rebellion releases, but I've been reading Dredd (and other 2000 AD series like Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, A.B.C. Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock, etc.) since the Titan Books albums released in the 1980s.

I'm glad you mentioned SPIRIT OF WONDER. I remembered that as being one of the last manga I purchased new in the floppy comics format (all the way back in 1996). I liked the artwork, but I can't remember much about the story other than it had a little bit of a steampunk feel to it (before that genre had become as popular as it is today), and I'm not sure that I ever finished reading it, since I recall that I'd missed an issue or two somewhere. I must have found them since  then (the copies I have of #1, 2, and 5 are bagged and boarded, but issues #3 & 4 aren't boarded, so I must have found them much later). I was able to locate the whole set and put those aside to read later.

Today my subscription copy of WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #61 arrived, and I read that. I'm guessing it's been almost 2 weeks since I've read an Archie digest, when my copies of B&V FRIENDS #248 and 250 arrived on the same day. Even though I'd read at least a half-dozen of the stories in there before (including both of the long ones, part 2 of "The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." and "The Archies in London"), at least there wasn't any space taken up in the digest with Little Archie or Li'l Jinx stories, and I always look forward to reading the Archie 1 stories in the back. Hopefully I'll be getting my subscription copies of ARCHIE BACK TO SCHOOL ANNUAL #271 and JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE ANNUAL #22 sometime in the next week.

I still haven't received my subscription copies of Archie Back To School Annual #271 or World of Archie Double Digest #61 that came out last Wednesday.
In the meantime I've been reading mostly manga.

THE OSAMU TEZUKA STORY: A LIFE IN MANGA AND ANIME by Toshio Ban (Stonebridge Press, 2016) - Finished reading this 865-page manga story. It's a little like a crash course in the history of Japanese comics and animation, and explains a lot about how the industry works and developed over there.

THE ART OF OSAMU TEZUKA by Helen McCarthy (Abrams ComicArts, 2009) - I'd mostly just skimmed this oversize coffee-table book and looked at the art when I bought it, so this was a good textual support to the information in the manga biography, with a little more detail about specific works of Tezuka's. Rather than read it from the beginning though, I'm skipping back and forth through it focusing on the parts of greatest interest. Didn't finish it, so I'll be returning to it a bit later to polish off specific sections at a later time.

THE BOOK OF HUMAN INSECTS by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical, 2012) - Here is Tezuka venturing into the kind of 'alternative' comix pathways trod by Daniel Clowes and Gilbert Hernandez. While the graphic storytelling remains top-notch, it's not one of his better works, IMO - not even if we're confining that comparison to his works aimed at older readers (that would be stuff like the multi-volume PHOENIX and BUDDHA, or MESSAGE TO ADOLF). The whole thing comes off a bit too melodramatically, like an adult soap with a few weird elements (and a lot of implausible circumstances) thrown into the mix.

CAPTAIN KEN VOLUME 1 (of 2) by Osamu Tezuka (Digital Manga Publishing, 2015) - Here's Tezuka in his classic mode, with a boys' SF-adventure manga from 1960-61. It's a space western taking place on the Martian frontier, right down to the Martian cacti, shootin' irons and mecha-horses, and oddly enough with an early (possibly) gender-bending element to the story. Haven't finished this yet, but I put it down to read a few other things.

FLINTSTONES #2 - Still kind of lukewarm on this title. The covers are a lot better than the interior story.

BATMAN '66 MEETS STEED AND MRS. PEEL #2 (of 6) - Not enjoying this as much as previous Batman '66 stories, both because the of the writing (by Ian Edgington, presumably chosen because of his familiarity with Steed & Mrs Peel) and the artwork, which aren't as good as I'm used to for Batman '66. Hope any future B66 miniseries go back to Jeff Parker as the writer.

DONALD DUCK #383 - Pretty weird story, almost Lovecraftian in plot (in a Disney comic?).

THE SHADOW: THE DEATH OF MARGO LANE #3 (of 5) - Matt Wagner does the best Shadow comics, ever.

ONE-PUNCH MAN VOL. 2 - I'd missed this one volume from 2015 earlier in my reading of volumes 1-7, so now I'm caught up. This is probably my current favorite superhero series right now (with the possible exception of Dan Slott and Mike Allred's SILVER SURFER, and Jeff Parker and Evan Shaner's FUTURE QUEST).

Next I plan to finish CAPTAIN KEN VOL. 1, and read a few volumes (#19, 20, & 21) of an older manga from 2006, KNIGHTS OF THE ZODIAC (Saint Seiya) that I found at my LCS.

Quote from: The Downloader on August 08, 2016, 02:44:52 PM
I would.  Make it a digest!!!

Well, if they could make a profit off a digest just by selling it to the people on this forum, they'd have done it already. Not even Josie or Sabrina get their own digests, and they're bigger stars than Reggie. The fact that they never even did a print version of the digital exclusive miniseries, REGGIE AND ME, should be telling you something. Sad, but them's the facts.

I'd buy a Dilton digest too, but then I guess I'm not the typical Archie customer. The typical Archie customer just doesn't care enough about Reggie, or Josie or Sabrina or Dilton or Chuck. Heck, the typical Archie customers aren't buying enough copies of JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE digests for them to publish it more than 6 times a year. JUGHEAD!!

I wouldn't buy a New Riverdale Reggie comic book, but I'd buy a reprint of his original series if Dark Horse decided to do a REGGIE ARCHIVES.