Quote from: The Downloader on July 30, 2016, 07:46:03 AM
Ya'Know, This might be an unpopular opinion, but I can actually see "Riverdale" lasting as long as GoT has...  Perhaps... it would spawn even new interest into Archie Comics, and they would make more titles.  I'd get behind something like that.

Well, if you just bing'd "Betty and Veronica porn" you could see Mr. Weatherbee "get behind something like that". 

Making more titles sounds good, but making more titles like RIVERDALE sounds bad.

Thursday 7/28
B&V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #248 - This was a good one. Only one or two stories in here that I'd read before previously. Loved the lead story with Ethel at an open mic comedy night (and it was really nice to see new kids Chloe Mancuso and Carla Teal in a story, hanging out with B&V). There was another 10-page story in here starring Ethel too (Jughead was barely even in it, although she mentioned him several times), and it was a pretty good story. I think that the first Ethel solo story I've ever seen that wasn't a 1-page or 1/2-page gag strip. There were a lot of good stories in this one, and one that was particularly good, written by Kathleen Webb, titled "There's This Triangle", which was so well written it seemed almost like one of those early 1960s Frank Doyle stories where he used to do a little breakdown of the basic premise of the Archie/Betty/Veronica relationship, and in this one it gets a little meta with some 4th-wall breaking stuff. That really impressed me. I always thought Kathleen Webb was one of the better writers, but this story just raised my estimation of her, as far as the 1987-present ACP writers are concerned. I'd rate her just below Craig Boldman and Dan Parent overall, but this story could compare to one of the better ones by either of them.

Thursday/Friday
B&V FRIENDS JUMBO COMICS #250 - This is getting to be problem for me in general with any of the Jumbo digests, but there were quite a few stories in here that I'd read before. It was still a pretty good digest, though. Plenty of good stories even if I'd read maybe a half-dozen or more of them before. It was really nice to get a double dose of my fix of Josie stories with the previous issue together with this one. Both digests had Cheryl stories in them too, which is never a bad thing. I'd point out a few of the better stories in #250 but I don't have the digest here with me at the moment. There are a lot of summertime/beach stories, which I always look forward to at this time of year. The lead story, "The Perils of Pet Sitting" wasn't particularly noteworthy from a writing standpoint (Alex Simmons isn't one of my favorite ACP writers), but boy am I loving every single new story I see that's drawn by the Kennedy brothers. That is some stylish artwork. The Kennedys seem to be the most fashion-conscious of all the 21st century Archie artists (Dan P. is too, but mostly that shows more in his covers and pin-up/fashion pages rather than the stories themselves), and there's this one page where Veronica shows up in a brand-new outfit (it's the first panel on the page, and it takes up an entire third of the page) and she looks absolutely stunning in her ensemble as drawn by the Kennedys. But whether the characters are dressed casually or dressed to impress, the Kennedys always make them look good. They love drawing those sneakers, too. I also need to mention Dan Parent's cover, which while just a simple iconic image of B&V in their swimsuits is probably my favorite digest cover so far this year. I really like that background with the palm tree icons and the white outline around the figures of B&V which if you look at it for a few seconds, almost gives the cover a 3-D effect where the figures of B&V look like they're on a separate plane. I wouldn't be surprised to see this cover show up again on a B&V digital exclusive or trade paperback collection sometime down the road.

Not to me. Maybe $25-$30, tops. It's not even that large. 3 x 5 feet, bath towel size.

Veronica probably wouldn't have to think twice about the price, but she'd be put off by the fact there are 4 images on that blanket of Betty together with (or kissing or embracing) Archie, and only 2 of Veronica together with - but not actually kissing - Archie (that's not counting the ones where the three of them all share a panel equally).

Quote from: steveinthecity on July 29, 2016, 08:25:48 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 28, 2016, 05:49:42 PM

Quote from: steveinthecity on July 28, 2016, 05:25:46 PM
I concur with most of DCR's comments above, but want to give props to Adam's writing overall on the first issue.  Not as funny as Chip's Jughead, but the best first issue of the three reboots imo.

Yeah, I still think I'm going to lean slightly toward Chip Z's 1st issue of Jughead, as far as the writing, but point taken -- averaging out the writing and art together, B&V#1 is probably the best first issue so far. Maybe if Derek Charm had been the artist on Jughead from the outset, I'd still say Jughead #1. Hughes really has to pare down those wordy word balloons and concentrate on having some more things actually happen in 22 pages. There were places in there where it sort of felt like a chore to read it.

Yeah, I think the art on Jughead has been it's weak point. I have enjoyed Chip's stories, so no complaints there.  As for B&V being wordy, I'll re-read #1 in a day or so as it didn't really "feel" that way to me, and I'm usually sensitive to that stuff (i.e. Claremont). The pace and flow of the book was just fine for me.

Well, obviously it doesn't compare to the extreme of something like a Chris Claremont comic. On average for a comic book, the word count isn't that high, but IMO, it's mostly unnecessary wordage that doesn't really add much in the way of characterization or exposition. It mainly seems that there's a lot of talking going on by way of trying to divert your attention from the fact that there's not much really happening in the story. What was the point of having Hot Dog narrate the tale, other than for a cute effect? It's just useless verbiage for nothing. It doesn't advance the story or reveal anything (other than the mere fact that Hot Dog is an intellectual talking dog) of the slightest importance, and it doesn't even appear that Hot Dog will have any active role in events (other than to eat the story pages when the writer gets stuck for an interesting idea). Another example is Archie and Jughead's conversation about "Who would win in a fight: Archie, or Jughead?" Someone like Chip Zdarsky might be able to pull that off, but here it just smacks of some sort of faux hipsterism. Then there's the other "cutesy" boondoggle of "Hot Dog ate pages 19 and 20 so Betty will go meta and read the script while she and Veronica lounge about in bikinis -- because that's what you were expecting an Adam Hughes B&V comic to be like, am I right?". That's ONE drawing per page (and a WHOLE lot of word balloons), as opposed to having to actually advance the plot through graphic storytelling. All sort of "funny bits" designed to distract you from what should be the plot of a six-page short where Pop Tate is (again) going out of business. If there's humor in the story, it should arise organically out of the progression of story events, but a lot of these tangents just feel forced to me, a way to pad out what's essentially a humdrum retread of a standard Archie Comics plot for a short story.

Compare to Frank Doyle, who was able to write stories both interesting AND funny using NO words at all. Or maybe just two, repeated for effect... "VERONICA?  --ARCHIE!  Veronica!! ... Archie.  VERONICA! Archie?", etc. Doyle could write an interesting six page story using only two words or less in which about ten times more happens than in Adam Hughes full-length story using hundreds of words. That's because Doyle only used the words that were needed to tell the story.

Quote from: Purgatori on July 29, 2016, 03:22:15 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 28, 2016, 03:47:40 AM
I'd have had no problem with this title being in its own separate continuity, but it's like it's got one foot in, the other foot out, of ARCHIE's continuity.

In the old days, continuity played almost no part in Archie comics so I'm all for the new Betty and Veronica having only a passing relationship to the Archie and Jughead titles. Neither of them seem to have a great deal of crossover, so it's possible they're all being treated as alternate versions by editorial

It wants not to be, yet it wants to be. What's with the near-subliminal dialogue reference to Principal Stanger's attempt to turn the school into some kind of military academy over in JUGHEAD (check it if you missed it)? Yet over in ARCHIE, if I've heard correctly, B&V aren't friends. So IS it in continuity with those titles, or NOT? Either way they want to do it. Just make up their minds. It's like... for storytelling purposes, it's a lot more convenient if the different titles are not in continuity with each other, but for marketing purposes, it's far better if they appear to be -- which to me, just makes it annoying. At this point, the only explanation that might possibly work is that both JUGHEAD and B&V take place sometime in the future relative to ARCHIE -- but it can't be very far in the future because it's the same year of high school for all the titles. There's probably some things that that doesn't account for though, like Hot Dog being a hyperintelligent mutant dog in B&V, but only in that title (maybe someday it can all be explained away as some temporary experiment in raising animal intelligence by Dilton or something). It's not even the kind of thing I'd think about questioning if we were still in the cartoon world of classic Archie, but dialogue and characterization are leading us to believe they're trying to create a more 'realworld' New Riverdale here. At least Chip Zdarsky was playing it cagey about "is it real, or only fantasy?" over in JUGHEAD -- maybe we're just seeing things from Jughead's perspective. It's like on some level the thinking here is that the New Riverdale titles can somehow manage to be all things to all readers, but what really happens is that the realistic elements and fantasy elements work at cross-purposes to each other and step on each other's toes. Personally, I'd ditch the drama in a heartbeat for the out-and-out fantasy, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Here's to there never being any kind of story that crosses over between the titles -- then it will go from being merely irksome to being super-annoying, and probably the point at which I write them all off altogether.

Quote from: steveinthecity on July 28, 2016, 05:25:46 PM
I concur with most of DCR's comments above, but want to give props to Adam's writing overall on the first issue.  Not as funny as Chip's Jughead, but the best first issue of the three reboots imo.

Yeah, I still think I'm going to lean slightly toward Chip Z's 1st issue of Jughead, as far as the writing, but point taken -- averaging out the writing and art together, B&V#1 is probably the best first issue so far. Maybe if Derek Charm had been the artist on Jughead from the outset, I'd still say Jughead #1. Hughes really has to pare down those wordy word balloons and concentrate on having some more things actually happen in 22 pages. There were places in there where it sort of felt like a chore to read it.

Quote from: irishmoxie on July 28, 2016, 03:41:49 PM
I thought about subscribing but I'm gonna wait and see. While I enjoyed the 75 years, 75 stories book I like reading back issues of Josie and Sabrina better. I am interested in that magic, music, and mayhem book minus the little Archie part. I wish that was a digest line.

It's more like the Giant Comics Digest (which they don't offer subscriptions to, either). It does say "Vol. 1", so presumably if enough people buy it, they'd make more (although not every volume would necessarily spotlight the same characters). Yeah, I could do without the Little Archie as well. They just don't want to do any single-character collections except for Archie or B&V, though. That's "Magic (Sabrina), Music (Josie), and Mischief" (Little Archie). If it were Mayhem, then it would probably be Sabrina, Josie and Afterlife With Archie. 

Hopefully, they found room to work the ghost of Cab Calloway in there, singing "St. James Infirmary Blues" or "Minnie the Moocher"... 

I have these two earlier (non-reprint) comics with Betty, and Ko-Ko the Clown...

Quote from: The Downloader on July 28, 2016, 03:07:20 PM
I plan to.  My grandfather is the one that buys me the subs.  I'm currently only subbed to three (maybe two) digests (was subbed to all, but it ran out).  Ill try this sub, and if it is delivered properly, not out of package, and not obviously read by the mail people, then I will resub to all the digest for 1 more year.  I don't sub to two years, because that is to far into the future to tell if that digest will still be produced or not.

Yeah, but for subscribing to them for two years, you get a lower rate per issue (and if one of those titles were to be cancelled, you could just transfer the remainder of your subscription issues to another title). Plus by subscribing for two years, you're actually helping to insure that a particular title continues to be published. No guarantees, of course, but the less people who subscribe to that particular digest, the more likely it is to be cancelled. The reason the subscriptions are so cheap is because even with additional cost of bulk mailing, and the deep discount to the consumer off the cover price, Archie Comic Publications is keeping a far larger percentage of that cover price for themselves than is the case where they have to share that cover price with a distributor and a retailer.

Haven't done it yet, but I plan to. $2.50 per issue for 12 Jumbo digests (well, 32 pages less than the standard Jumbo Comics digests -- and 32 pages more than a Comics Annual, but still) is too good a deal to pass up. Hopefully we can expect a much higher percentage of older stories (in line with the 75th Anniversary Celebration theme) in these than is the case for a typical digest, as well. Not that there's anything wrong with the more recent stories from the last three decades that usually make up the bulk of the typical digest reprints, but this is a one-time deal, for 12 issues only, so they have to be pulling some hidden gems out of the vault for this. I would bet that the stories selected for inclusion in these digests will run the breadth of most of the teen humor titles published by ACP over the past 75 years, too, not just stories of the Gang of Five. I hope they reprint some stories from Seymour, My Son and More Seymour -- I've always wanted to read those.

My biggest fear would be that they just took the same stories that were in The Best of Archie Comics, and Archie's Favorite Stories and mixed them up a little, then divided them into 12 equal piles of 224 pages each. Let's hope not. Last year there were four Jumbo Comics digests ("We interrupt your regularly-scheduled digest for A Very Special Jumbo Comics Digest presentation...") that did exactly that, but I hope we've seen the end of that sort of recycling.

GREAT GOOGLYMOOGLY!!

No one told me that there were actually preview pages of the interior art from Roger Langridge and Gisèle Lagacé's new BETTY BOOP comic book (to be published in October by Dynamite Entertainment)!

I'd agree as far as the different look and feel, and different approach to storytelling, but that's exactly what made it hard for me to connect with this on any level. I definitely was not feeling the 'heart and humor', although Adam Hughes turned in artwork that was up to his usual high standards. The problem with the script is that there's way too much dialogue which seems to bog down the pace, and it felt forced and artificial to me, particularly having an intellectual talking Hot Dog narrate the story. Maybe the reboot would have worked if they'd let Dan Parent write the story, and Hughes just draw it, I don't know.

As with the Archie and Jughead titles (even though it varies slightly from issue to issue), there just doesn't seem that there's much happening in 22 pages. Someone else had made the observation that if this is supposed to be the same B&V from ARCHIE, then how did they become friends in the first place? We don't actually see much evidence of the basis of their friendship, never mind any clues to how it began, and then it's straight into B vs V at the end of the story. I'd have had no problem with this title being in its own separate continuity, but it's like it's got one foot in, the other foot out, of ARCHIE's continuity.

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on July 27, 2016, 11:46:35 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 27, 2016, 11:13:23 AM

Wow, looks like Dan Parent is on a roll now. Not only does he have variant covers for all the Chapterhouse Comics in October (All-New Classic Captain Canuck #4, Captain Canuck #10, Northguard #4, and The Pitiful Human Lizard #10 -- all of which feature Kitty Ravenscroft on the covers)...

Dan's definitely busy these days but the variant covers for Captain Canuck#10 and Pitiful Human Lizard #10 are mine.


Here's Captain Canuck:


http://fernandoruizeverybody.com/captain-canuck-10-variant-cover/




Here's The Pitiful Human Lizard:


http://fernandoruizeverybody.com/the-pitiful-human-lizard-10-variant-cover/

Woopsie. Guess I should have enlarged some of those thumbnails, I would have been able to tell. On some of the Kitty art it's hard to tell (or seems like you both worked on the same page or image), but those two are definitely all you. Sorry, I was scanning through a lot of images and those 4 covers showed up in a group, I should have checked.

Cover for the Chapterhouse Comics DIE KITTY DIE #1 -


They also had this exclusive variant for the Montreal Comic Con -


Wow, looks like Dan Parent is on a roll now. Not only does he have variant covers for all the Chapterhouse Comics in October (All-New Classic Captain Canuck #4, Captain Canuck #10, Northguard #4, and The Pitiful Human Lizard #10 -- all of which feature Kitty Ravenscroft on the covers), but the very same month he has variant covers for all of DC Comics' newly rebooted Hanna-Barbera comics -- Flintstones #4, Future Quest #6, Scooby Apocalypse #6, and Wacky Raceland #5.

Also spotted, Dan Parent variant covers for Valiant Comics' Faith, plus BOOM Studios' Goldie Vance and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - Pink #6.


Dan P. appears to be keeping quite busy in addition to his work for ACP.

Not a variant cover (private commission, apparently) but WISH IT WAS!!

GARTH ENNIS' RED TEAM: DOUBLE TAP #1 (of 8 )
POWERPUFF GIRLS (2016) #1
HOWARD THE DUCK #9
RICK AND MORTY #16
SAVAGE DRAGON #215
SHE-WOLF #1 & 2
ARCHIE #10 (just the reprinted story)
TITANS #1
ACTION COMICS #960
DETECTIVE COMICS #937
WONDER WOMAN #3
HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: PINK #2 (of 6)
SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP #17
HANNA-BARBERA FUTURE QUEST #3
THE SHADOW: THE DEATH OF MARGO LANE #2 (of 5)
LORDS OF THE JUNGLE #5 (of 6)
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS' THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT #1
KONG OF SKULL ISLAND #1 (of 6)
DARK HORSE PRESENTS VOL 3 #24
PREDATOR VS JUDGE DREDD VS ALIENS #1
MICRONAUTS #4
ACTION MAN #2
MICKEY MOUSE SHORTS: SEASON ONE #1 (of 4)