Quote from: Thrillho on July 06, 2016, 06:15:57 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 06, 2016, 04:03:51 AMSo you see me heaping scorn on Veronica, when all I'm really doing is criticizing the writing of the story. You're just hypersensitive to anything someone says about Veronica, even though she's often written in such a way as to portray her in the worst possible light.

I don't care that people will dislike/hate Veronica or judge her harshly but these two stories don't even rank as any of Veronica's worst moments, especially not "Beach Blanket Babysitters" where you know, she didn't actually do anything to warrant Jellybean being mean to her.

Where did I say that they were among the worst examples of Veronica's behavior? I can think of many worse examples. Just because "Nanny Boy" isn't among the worst, doesn't mean that it automatically should be held up as an example of the opposite. It's true that in "Beach Blanket Babysitters", Veronica doesn't actually DO anything to warrant Jellybean being mean to her. But children like people to pay attention to them, and will often do things to GET attention. The other thing that would help to explain that somewhat is Jellybean's continuity of character from previous stories with Veronica, like "Nanny Boy". Jellybean's character in that story doesn't contradict her character (at the beginning of the story, before she changes her mind) in BBB, it reiterates it, as Jellybean not having a good relationship with Veronica, just as the Veronica/Jughead feud is reiterated in certain stories, including NB, HS and BBB. The "continuity of character" thing has less to do with when the stories first appeared than it does with how it agrees or disagrees with the story currently under examination. To the extent that aspects of Veronica's character or Jellybean's character in other stories agree with the one you're looking at right now, to the degree that those details reiterate, reinforce, echo, help to explain or contextualize the same characters' behavior in the story now in question, it applies.

To the extent that it disagrees with or contradicts the characters' behavior in the story under examination, you have to reject it. What the story tells you is paramount -- including things that the story specifically omits telling you, which would otherwise tend to give a more balanced picture of one character, or two characters' relationship to each other. If there's contradictory behavior between a character in one story and another, then continuity of character from the contradictory story doesn't apply. For example, in "Hey, Sister" Veronica's behavior towards Jellybean doesn't align with or help us understand her behavior towards Jellybean in BBB, it contradicts it. In HS, she's getting somewhat obsessed with Jellybean, and treats her like her own little sister. In BBB, she's not doing that at all (at the beginning of the story). Then later in the story, she TRIES, and makes an EFFORT to build a relationship with Jellybean -- something she did NOT do in NB, where she regards children as too much work (by contrast to goldfish). I prefer these type of Veronica stories, where she's shown as being less one-dimensional than she is in others like NB, and has redeeming character traits. When those redeeming character traits aren't shown in the story, then they don't apply in that story.

If continuity of character applies to the Jughead/Veronica feud in all three stories, then why don't I just accept the premise that Jughead has "poisoned" Jellybean's mind towards Veronica in BBB? Simple, because what the story tells you about Jellybean contradicts that directly -- it shows you that Jellybean is capable of making up her own mind about whether or not she likes people, and is not just Jughead's little minion. Did she just somehow magically gain the power of free will the moment she announces to Jughead "NO! Veronica is my FRIEND!"? No, she always had it. She's still a child, but also a human being who has free will. She made up her own mind about how she felt about Veronica in NB, and she does the same in BBB -- and she has the ability to change her mind as well, when Veronica's behavior towards her changes for the better. It's far easier for me to accept that premise than it is to accept the idea that Jughead (who has never shown much ability to manipulate people psychologically to do things against their will, like say, Trula Twyst has) is even capable of doing this, never mind that he's able to issue a complex series of instructions to Jellybean, a young child, in regards to how to go about tormenting Veronica at the beach, which she in turn is capable of following to the letter. Nor are we shown any of that "mind poisoning" in the story. At best we can tell he's given her a plasic spider, and possibly suggested to Jellybean that she use it to pull a prank on Veronica. The rest of the stuff with Veronica deciding to take a nap and Jellybean throwing cold sand on her, and then burying her in the sand, doesn't seem reasonable to believe that Jughead can foresee or control. Jellybean's attitude towards Veronica in the story has a lot more to do with how Veronica treats her (even if it's just that Veronica ignores her, before Veronica makes an effort to be friends with her) than it has anything to do with Jughead, and Jellybean changing her mind to become Veronica's defender proves it. When she pulls those pranks on Veronica on the beach, it's because she wants some attention from Veronica, not because she's programmed to think of her as "the enemy". She doesn't have any idea that she's "being mean", because she's a child that doesn't have a fully-formed sense of right and wrong (but later in the story, we get the idea that she's beginning to develop that). She just doesn't like being ignored, she wants to interact with people. When Veronica shows her some positive attention, she decides she likes Veronica, and refuses to do those things any more, when she recognizes her as a friend. It's a really sweet story, and I like it a lot, both as a Veronica story and as a Jellybean story.

Quote from: Thrillho on July 06, 2016, 06:15:57 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 06, 2016, 04:03:51 AM
Note that while YOU'VE started threads about Archie being an a-hole or whatever, I've never started a thread about Veronica that encourages people to heap scorn on her.

That's because there already was/is a Worst of Veronica thread, and pretty much a negative thread for every character. Why should Archie be left out of the fun? 

Right. And I didn't start that Worst of Veronica thread, or any other thread devoted to her behaving badly. But somehow when examples are posted of her behaving badly, I'm just supposed to shut up and not comment about it, because there are other stories where she doesn't behave badly. The fact that people overwhelming choose to post those stories where she behaves badly, as opposed to the ones where she doesn't, is hardly my fault. That's about all I have to say about it, except that there's usually a direct correlation between stories where Veronica behaves badly (and no redeeming qualities are shown) and she comes out the loser, and those where she shows the better aspects of her character and comes out the winner -- "Nanny Boy" versus "Beach Blanket Babysitters".

Today, July 6:
HILLBILLY #1
FLINTSTONES #1
SILVER SURFER #15
MOON KNIGHT #4
PUNISHER #3
DAREDEVIL / PUNISHER #3 (of 4)
CAPTAIN AMERICA STEVE ROGERS #1
SUPERMAN THE COMING OF THE SUPERMEN #6 (of 6)
EMPRESS #4 (of 7)
UNCLE SCROOGE #320
DONALD DUCK #382
LOBSTER JOHNSON METAL MONSTERS OF MIDTOWN #2 (of 3)
WILL EISNER'S THE SPIRIT #12 (of 12)
THE BADGER #5 (of 5)
FUTURE QUEST #2
BATMAN '66 MEETS STEED & MRS. PEEL #1 (of 6)
INVADER ZIM #11
KIM & KIM #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE REBIRTH #1
AQUAMAN #2
CAPTAIN AMERICA SAM WILSON #11
TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #29 & 30

Quote from: daren on July 06, 2016, 03:44:18 AM

Im talking about how you implied Mrs. Jones would be justified if she went ballistic on her.

I'm sorry, Daren. I didn't mean to imply that.

I meant to be a little more definitive in stating that as a fact, and If I was unclear on that, let me restate it differently. Mrs. Jones would be perfectly justified on going ballistic on Veronica for deceiving her into thinking that she cared about Jellybean, when in reality all she wanted to do was use her to get a date. Perfectly justified.

Quote from: daren on July 06, 2016, 03:44:18 AM
let me refresh your mind, do you remember that you actually criticized her once for liking Kevin so much but not being the one to save his life at the end of The Married Life? I remember reading that on the old board and it was an old thread so I didn't answer it but I couldn't believe my eyes, I guess Veronica adoring him is supposed to give her psychic powers to sense a gunman suddenly appearing at a party out of her range of vision. I could name many more but I'd like to know how you answer that.

I said it in the context of, if you look at Kevin's own title, it's ARCHIE'S PAL KEVIN KELLER, which is like... wtf? Archie's barely even IN it. No, if the title were accurate, it should be VERONICA'S title-stealing PAL KEVIN KELLER. It's Veronica who claims she's his BFF (or he's her other BFF, or something like that). Of course it's "Archie's Pal" because the other title isn't very sell-able. How do I know he was out of her range of vision -- she's his campaign manager, shouldn't she be right there with him? But really, even though it's Archie who has to die, him doing so by saving Kevin doesn't have the gravitas it would if Archie had died saving Veronica or Betty (because it doesn't matter who the gunman was trying to hit), or if Veronica had died saving Kevin (or vice-versa), because honestly, Archie and Kevin just are not that close.

So you see me heaping scorn on Veronica, when all I'm really doing is criticizing the writing of the story. You're just hypersensitive to anything someone says about Veronica, even though she's often written in such a way as to portray her in the worst possible light. Take it up with the writers. Note that while YOU'VE started threads about Archie being an a-hole or whatever, I've never started a thread about Veronica that encourages people to heap scorn on her. The writers do more of that than is necessary already. Or used to, whatever. I'm not sure if new classic Archie stories are pretty much headed for the last roundup here, but it looks that way. It's as if I'm supposed to read every story where she's written in a negative light and say it isn't so, she's really NICE deep down, even though that story says otherwise.

Quote from: daren on July 06, 2016, 02:10:19 AM
I have a problem with you saying that Ronnie doing a few mildly bad things and saying she doesn't want kids in "Nanny Boy" means we should assume she's rotten and deserves someone to go ballistic on her.

Who went ballistic on her? She got embarrassed, and got revealed as the big phony that she was (in THAT story). Big whoop. Nobody laid a finger on her. It's not like Jughead faked evidence of her kidnapping Jellybean and turned her into the police. All he did was ruin her chance with one guy.

Seems like you're hypersensitive here to any possible damage done to Veronica, and insensitive to any damage Veronica may do to anyone else. Basically you maintain that she deserves to get away with using Jellybean to convince Brad that she cares about children (which she doesn't), and that she deserves to get hooked up with him. You even try to imply that she's calling Brad for JELLYBEAN'S benefit. If that's what you believe, there's no point in further discussion.

If there's NO continuity, then the Veronica in this story is NOT the same as the Veronica in any other story, Daren. No matter how much you'd like to believe it.  Because just the idea of having SOME continuity of character is there does NOT mean that that character cannot or does not ever change.  You're saying that whether there is continuity between the stories or not, the characters remain unvarying, they have consistency and never ever change, not even in context with the events of the story that surrounds them, and that's complete BS. Where there is conflict between the behavior of a character in one story and the behavior of the same character in another story, the character in relation to the events of the story being considered takes precedence over any other characteristics that character might have in another story, because the characters are allowed to change. The nature of continuity of character in Archie Comics is this -- the aggregate of common characteristics of any character is subordinate to any specific characteristic, which is always subordinate to the needs of the plot of the particular story under consideration. That's why there can be 12 different stories where Veronica's character experiences changes in exactly the same way, 12 different variations on "A Christmas Carol" where she starts out Scrooge-y and ends up a changed person.

On the other hand, sometimes she can just behave badly, and NOT learn a lesson in the story, where in another similar situation in a similar story she DOES learn a lesson about the exact same thing. The lesson that she learned in the second instance (or the specific aspect of her character that was changed for the better) does not retroactively apply to her character in the story where she didn't learn a lesson, but just behaved badly. The character is always subordinate to the actual story under consideration, and what that story is about. In other words, the aggregate of common characteristics from other stories only applies contextually to what they DIDN'T tell or show in the story itself. Information in the individual story supersedes that of the composite characteristics, unless the common characteristics are merely supporting what the story is showing or telling you. If they appear to be contradictory, the immediate story under consideration takes precedence. The characteristics can change for the specific story, but it might fall into a pattern for a particular story trope, like "Veronica behaves selfishly" or "Betty shows poor judgment because of her desperation to compete with Veronica". Well, you might say why isn't it "Veronica shows poor judgment because of her desperation" or "Betty behaves selfishly" instead? Don't ask me, I didn't write them. In most stories, Betty is the underdog. Even in the stories where Betty does something stupid, she's rarely portrayed as entirely unsympathetic, she's usually shown with some redeeming aspects to give it some perspective. Veronica doesn't always get that in a story. Sometimes she's just bad, and no contrasting redeeming qualities are shown to balance that. Blame the writers. And you know what, now that I think on it a little more, the trope about Veronica that's being reiterated here in this story isn't so much "Veronica behaves selfishly" or "Veronica is spoiled", although it overlaps that trope somewhat. It's a little more specific than that, and it doesn't just apply to how Veronica relates to children. It's more like "Veronica has poor interpersonal communication skills" or "Veronica has poor social skills" or "Veronica is not a people person". That shows up over and over in Veronica stories, whether it's how she treats her cousin Marcy that idolizes her, or Betty in some stories, or Archie in some stories, or some random character written into a one-off story. There are many stories that show she's capable of being charming and likable when she wants to be (and before Jughead shows up here, she's almost got Brad charmed), but she's just not motivated to be charming to Jellybean or Marcy. And then in the "Sisters" story, she IS motivated to be charming and have good interpersonal communication skills with Jellybean. Like I said -- I don't write them. But most of the B&V stories are about showing how the two girls contrast and are opposite in some way, so here it's that Betty has good interpersonal communication skills with children and Veronica doesn't. They're alike in the way that their competition with each other and weakness for cute guys causes them both to try to take advantage of Jellybean (although that in itself isn't hurting Jellybean) to get close to Brad, but Betty and Jellybean actually DO have a relationship and a friendship here, and Veronica and Jellybean do NOT, and that doesn't change for either of them in this story. What's hurting Jellybean as far as Veronica is concerned is that Veronica won't bother with Jellybean for herself, only to get close to Brad. So she's trying to deceive both Jellybean and Brad into thinking she likes children, when she doesn't. That isn't the case with Betty, who genuinely LIKES Jellybean, so she's not deceiving Jellybean OR Brad into thinking that she does, solely for the purpose of meeting him. Betty would have been deceiving Mrs. Jones though, if Veronica hadn't beaten her to it first. So there's the ethical difference -- Veronica is attempting to deceive 3 people, while Betty is really only deceiving 1 person (or would have been, if she had succeeded in asking Mrs. Jones first). Although, who knows? Since Mrs. Jones told Betty that Veronica had already taken Jellybean, we don't get to read what she would have said to Mrs. Jones if Jellybean had been home. Maybe she would have gone into an explanation of Brad, but we don't get that far, so we don't know. We also can't presume to know that Betty would have called Brad and told him the same lie that Veronica did about having a crisis that required his help. We just don't know that. We can probably presume that she would have called him I guess, but what she would have said is complete speculation. There's simply no proof that she would have lied to him. She might have called and told him that she was sitting with Jellybean that night, and asked him if he could come over to teach her something about pediatric emergencies, so she could become a better babysitter. There's no reason to think "Yeah right, that's a load of bull, what does Betty care about pediatric emergencies?" even if it DOES serve the purpose of getting Brad to spend some time with her.


On the other hand if there IS continuity of character, then not only IS this the same Veronica as exists in the other story, but she's allowed to change her behavior over time, and to be mean, cold, aloof and irresponsible sometimes, and then to learn a lesson and become more responsible. In another story, but not here. In this story she doesn't do that. She doesn't do anything nice at all. There's absolutely no proof in this story that she cares one iota about Jellybean, except to use her for her own selfish purposes. It's not anything negative in particular that she does to Jellybean, it's the lack of anything positive, the fact that at no point in this story does she ever acknowledge that Jellybean is any different to her than a goldfish, by her treatment of her. There is a distinct lack of evidence in this story that Veronica thinks of Jellybean or treats Jellybean as a person, that's what I mean. That's entirely an assumption on your part, and the goldfish comment, in which she acknowledges her own lack of responsibility or lack of any desire to take on responsibility (which is what a babysitter is really for) is saying something about that lack of any positive interaction between Veronica and Jellybean in this story. That makes Veronica irresponsible as someone who is supposed be the guardian of a small child. That's not to say she'd mistreat a goldfish she owned either, but is she really that concerned about the goldfish? I don't think so, because the preference for goldfish over human children is based on "less work" for Veronica, and that's exactly the qualifications she brings with her in her role as Jellybean's babysitter -- she does nothing, she makes no effort.  She simply sits far away from Jellybean on the couch, and leaves Jellybean to her own devices. No different than a goldfish she might own. Dan Parent might as well have drawn a goldfish bowl around Jellybean sitting in the middle of the floor by herself. If the goldfish remark is simply some topical humor, a bit of commentary about Veronica's future plans regarding having children of her own, and otherwise has no bearing on the rest of the story, and specifically the part of the plot that requires Veronica to babysit Jellybean, then the removal of that panel should result in a story that reads exactly the same. However, if you remove that panel, then very little about the story makes sense, at least as far as Jellybean not liking Veronica goes.

In "Beach Blanket Babysitters" Veronica's behavior is different. It starts out with her behaving towards Jellybean much as she does in the earlier story. She just wants to nap on the beach, and leave Jellybean to play by herself, as long as Jellybean is quiet and doesn't disturb her nap. Once again in that story, she's just not even paying attention to Jellybean. Jellybean could be choking on a lego block, as long as she did so quietly. All of Jellybean's pranks and teasing of Veronica is Jellybean trying to get some attention from her, and she's testing her a little to see what kind of attention that will be. Will Veronica lose her temper, and be upset with her, or will she show patience and her better nature by putting up with it? The beginning of the change in her relationship with Jellybean is signaled in the story when Veronica says "See? Now we're getting along." At least she's showing that she's paying attention to Jellybean now. As the teasing goes on, Veronica does start paying more attention to Jellybean, and wins Jellybean's approval as a good sport by enduring her pranks. By the end of the story, Veronica has changed. As a result of the fact that she's changed her attitude towards Jellybean, Jellybean becomes Veronica's defender against her own brother. Jellybean doesn't just change her mind arbitrarily, it's in response to the changed relationship between Veronica and Jellybean.

I'm saying that the characters do not exist as some immutable prototypes that never ever change any of their characteristics. They are capable of doing bad things and good things, sometimes in two different stories -- which makes them seem like two different people, and sometimes in the same story, where they start out one way, and can change by the end. Veronica is capable of being a good person, but she doesn't always ACT like a good person. That is the difference. It's not some Veronica "hate campaign". I dislike Veronica's treatment of Jellybean in the first story, and like her behavior towards Jellybean in the later stories.

For some reason this was a topic that popped into my head today, and I started to think about how I'd estimate that number, because... well, for me at least, it's a little like someone asking me how many TV programs I've watched in my lifetime, or how many hamburgers or slices of pizza I've eaten in my lifetime. Nobody (or practically nobody) keeps count of these things from the time they first started reading comics. You might know how many comics you OWN, but that's not quite exactly the same thing as how many you've READ. I mean different comics, not reading the same one over again. Then you have to ask, well what is meant by "a comic book"? Does one of those 16-page Halloween ComicFest issues count as "1 comic book" and one Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest count as "1 comic book" also? That doesn't seem right, and I have read comics in about as many different formats as there exist. But really I'm thinking of the standard format floppy comic of approximately 20-25 story pages as "1 comic book" so whatever the equivalent of that is. An Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest would be equal to about 40 or 50 standard comic books, so let's split the difference and say 45 comics. So there's the yardstick I'm going to use.

I then tried to figure out how long I've been reading comics, and how many years, and then how many weeks, that amounted to. Then I tried to estimate on average (conservatively) how many standard-size comics I'd read over that time in a typical week. Of course the average number of comics I read per week might be different now than it was at another time when I was reading more comics or less comics, so I tried to take that into account as well.

Long story short, the number of distinct standard page count comics that I've read over the course of my lifetime after doing the mental guesstimation and the math turned out to be about 40,000 -- or about 1 million pages of comics. That sounds like an exaggeration I'm sure, but after double-checking all my estimates, I feel confident that that's still on the conservative end of an estimation (it might even conceivably be 1.5 times that in actuality, but there's no way for me to be sure).

Quote from: Gisele on June 28, 2016, 10:10:36 PM
My issue was more about losing existing sales to Amazon. Current buyers might prefer to go to Amazon 'cause they can get free shipping and bundle it up with something else. If I get too many of those, I almost have to sell double what I do now to make up for it. If I don't sell double, I'm losing. Sure, I might get more sales, but that doesn't mean more money. In any case, like I said, I'm considering it. I'm just very slow at doing this 'cause, well, I do everything myself for the most part, and have a lot of the go. It's no surprise people like to use publishers to put out their work as they don't have to worry about this stuff, but when you get 10% of profits as a creator when using a publisher, you have to sell a whole lot of books, and I know that there are many creators out there who sell more books than I do but are poorer 'cause of the way the system works. But again, I may jump in once I feel it's safe hehe

As a print publisher, I've heard that Image Comics has some kind of different system than I think almost any publisher uses. All of their books are creator-owned, which is why they seem to be releasing brand new titles almost every single month. While I'm not privvy to the exact details of how it works, I've been told that there's some sort of buy-in cost to the creators for start-up costs on launching a new title.

In effect, you the owner of the property are paying Image Comics as a "publishing service" for handling things like accounting, printing, advertising & promotion, editorial services, distribution. Once the book is launched, if it makes a certain minimum sales, then you the owner get a much larger percentage of the profit than would be the case with other publishers, but retain 100% ownership and control.

Just having the Image logo on a title and being under their aegis for solicitation purposes seems give a comic more notice and opportunity for serious consideration by potential readers in the current marketplace (ironic, I know, considering what they started out publishing, and in a few cases, still do). Not trying to sell anyone on the idea, because I don't know anyone who works there, but the concept sounds intriguing to me, if that situation as it exists is what I've been told it is.

Quote from: spazaru on June 25, 2016, 07:49:25 AM
I think I like Afterlife more because it's campier.  I'm not a horror fan at all.  I AM a huge fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and will probably stick with that book because of that.  I don't mind Hack's art, but I do prefer the more retro style of Francavilla.

I'm not getting the "campy" part of AWA at all. What I'm getting from AWA is some kind of feeling of perversity, a basic wrongness about it -- and that's what's giving me the feeling of horror -- that makes the whole thing feel creepy. In fact when I first read the series I didn't get it at ALL, because campiness/parody and some sort of black sardonic humor is what I was expecting and not finding (you wouldn't know this, but this is the sort of thing you find in the old E.C. Tales From the Crypt, etc.) -- everything just seemed to be treated so straightforward and seriously.

The sole exception to that may be the decidedly ODD way that Francesco Francavilla draws Jughead's hat. Everything else about the series is rendered in a typically realistic illustration style, but then whenever Jughead appears... there's that HAT. It's like some little 2-dimensional cardboard cutout that he has pinned on top of his head (in fact, it looks more 2-dimensional than it does in classic-style Archie stories). Frankly it kind of bugs me.

TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #25, 26, 27 & 28 - #25 had a new 12-page story of Dilton, drawn by Fernando Ruiz, and #26 had a new 11-page story of Reggie, also drawn by Ruiz, but written by George Gladir. All these issues had reprinted Moose stories (not just the one-page gag ones, although those show up randomly in a lot of issues), and I recall one of the earlier issues also had a reprinted Moose story as well. It appears I was mistaken in my earlier post about Sabrina the Animated Series being in every issue, as with #25 it is gone, and replaced by an Archie's Weird Mysteries section (starting with reprints of the 1st issue of that title). #27 has another appearance by Wendy Weatherbee (in another story written & drawn by Ruiz) that tells about her father, Tony Weatherbee, who's Waldo Weatherbee's (almost-)identical twin brother. He has a full head of hair and facial hair, and is into motorcyles, so he opened a motorcycle sales and repair shop. The two brothers had grown apart over the years because of their opposite interests (and Waldo was jealous because his brother never lost his hair like he did), but they reconcile in this story. In a flashback to the brothers' younger years, we get to see a young Geraldine Grundy (sometimes called Gerri) and a young Hirarm Lodge. Geraldine has red hair and Hiram's hair is black, in case you're wondering. By #25, the new 5-6 pagers are gone - only the 11-12 page lead story is new. In addition to AWM, these all have Josie and the Pussycats sections (reprints of Stan G. stories from the '90s). #28 has a new Archie lead story by Ruiz.

Quote from: daren on July 03, 2016, 04:41:11 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 01, 2016, 02:36:02 PM

Even Jellybean understood exactly what Veronica meant. Note that out of the entire story, these are the only three panels where we can see her face where Jellybean appears unhappy or anxious. In the rest of the panels where we can see her face she's smiling, but in all those other panels, there's someone else around to protect her from Veronica. And there's no doubt exactly what Jellybean thinks of her. She clings to her mother as if to plead, "Please don't leave me alone with her!" Some children may be naturally shy or apprehensive that way, but clearly Jellybean isn't one of them. She recognizes Betty, Jughead, and even BRAD as people she can trust to care about her, but not Veronica.

Toddlers arent the best judges of character, Jellybean doesn't like Veronica because of the goldfish remark, but Veronica was just tactless not insulting or showing some evil flaw. Like I said Jellybean doesn't show much reaction besides looking sour, if she was afraid to go with Veronica she'd be whining or screaming, so its not a big deal.

You give too little credit to toddlers as human beings. In THIS particular story, Jellybean turns out to be a better judge of character than her own mother, who really should have paid attention to what Jellybean was trying to tell her in that second panel above. So let's break down exactly what going on with Jellybean in this story, in each of the panels above. In the first panel, where Veronica makes the remark about children being too much trouble, so she'll stick to goldfish, she's not just talking about her own personal feelings about marriage and children. No, she's talking from her usual selfish perspective. She'd rather not acknowledge that children exist in her world and have needs -- there's one sitting right next to her when she makes that insensitive comment. Isn't that the kind of chore that we usually have servants for? The expression on Jellybean's face could be somewhere between "HEY! I'm sitting RIGHT HERE!!" and "YOU'RE not my FRIEND!" Jellybean doesn't really understand the analogy Veronica's making with her goldfish remark, but she does pick up on the visual and verbal clues that tell her all she needs to know. Jellybean appears to be a happy, sociable child in all those other panels where she's smiling, and the people around her like Jughead, Betty and even Brad respond to her, and engage with her. They smile back at her, or talk to her, or hold her or play with her. What Jellybean is responding to is Veronica's complete indifference to her presence -- Veronica doesn't interact with her and acknowledge her presence, she acts like she isn't even there. Jellybean isn't happy with her, because Veronica is not nice to her. Of course she doesn't mistreat her -- until she finds something that Jellybean is useful to her for (i.e meeting Brad), she doesn't even bother with her at all. Jellybean is a good judge of Veronica's character IN THIS STORY. You don't agree with that because you and Thrillho, despite the fact that you're insisting that there's no continuity between this story and "Beach Blanket Babysitters" are paradoxically insisting that there IS continuity between Veronica's character in THIS story, where she shows us (and Jellybean, who's forming a first impression of Veronica in this story) no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and OTHER stories where Veronica displays redeeming qualities that go into making up your composite mental picture of Veronica's character. So mentally, what you're saying is "That's ridiculous! We ALL know that Veronica isn't AS BAD AS SHE SEEMS in this story, so she can't possibly have done anything here to warrant making Jellybean not like her." Jellybean has NO composite picture of Veronica's character. All she knows of her in this first story where the two appear together is what's in THIS story, and NOTHING else. Not all the stuff YOU know about Veronica's character from other stories. All Jellybean knows is that Veronica has not been nice to her, she doesn't respond positively to her the same way other people do. Her feelings are hurt by this. If Veronica is paranoid that Jellybean's mind has been "poisoned against me" in "Beach Blanket Babysitters", she need look no further than that panel there. If she wants to know the name of the person who poisoned Jellybean's mind against her, her name was Veronica Lodge.

Moving on to the second panel above, once again, Jellybean is put off and alarmed (the look on her face is frantic) by Veronica's over-the-top phony performance as she rushes towards her, for the benefit of impressing Mrs. Jones with her affection for Jellybean (which doesn't exist in this story, she admitted to it with the goldfish remark). The expression on Mrs. Jones' face in that panel is bewildering, and the fact that she doesn't recognize Jellybean's silent cries for help, her pleas to keep Veronica away from her. Jellybean looks very scared by this sudden unexpected turn of events. The expression on Mrs. Jones' face is bizarre. She looks kind of blissed-out on medication or something, especially when you take into account the expressions on Mrs. Jones' face during her phone conversation with Veronica -- doubt and concern, that something doesn't seem quite right here about this situation. But I guess you have to chalk it up to the fact that there's no way to explain Mrs. Jones' lapse in parental judgment here logically, in letting Veronica take Jellybean anyway, despite what she both seemed to suspect, and should have confirmed for her by Jellybean's reaction to Veronica's appearance. It's simply something that has to happen for the sake of the plot in this story. Were it not for the fact that the story has to continue to its conclusion, Mrs. Jones should be listening to her parental instinct and coming to the conclusion that Veronica is an irresponsible teenager (not a responsible and caring babysitter like Betty). As an aside, Betty's lapse in ethical judgment in this story can be put down to (as most of her infrequent lapses in good judgment can) the way that her competition with Veronica sometimes causes her to use poor judgment -- in this case, seeing Veronica's display of hubba-hubba goo-goo eyes when she spots Brad causes Betty to lose her better sense (knowing that once again, it looks like Veronica is going to try to grab Brad before Betty can even have a chance with him), and not to think things through. Her conscience usually tells her better, but in this case, she's a little too weakened by her attraction to Brad (with whom she otherwise seems to have a good deal in common) to pay attention to it. But I digress. Really, what this story comes down to is not the overall quality of Veronica's character, as composited from what you and I and Thrillho know about her from reading other stories. This is one of those stories where she's in her selfish "It's ALL about ME!" moods, and unfortunately, there's no balance here where she shows both positive and negative sides of her character. It's pretty much a wash, with none of her more redeeming traits on display in this story. The reason that's important here, is that's ALL she's showing of herself to JELLYBEAN, it's all that forms Jellybean's impression of Veronica in THIS story. Jellybean doesn't LIKE her, and why should she? Veronica doesn't do a single thing to MAKE Jellybean like her in this story, and she doesn't even TRY. She barely interacts with Jellybean at all, and the entirety of that in this story is shown in JUST those three panels above. Veronica has several stories like this, but she gets away with a lot because boys will give her a pass on her actual behavior due to her beauty, her wealth, and how impressive she looks to them in her expensive clothes. None of those things mean a thing to Jellybean. She's only impressed with people who are NICE to her. It doesn't matter that Veronica never actually mistreats her. That's completely beside the point. The only time she actually speaks to Jellybean in this story is in that second panel above, where she puts on a badly-disguised phony performance of niceness, and Jellybean isn't fooled by it for a second. Veronica isn't even actually talking TO Jellybean, she's talking AT her -- solely for the benefit of Mrs. Jones.

The third panel has the only time that Veronica and Jellybean are actually in physical contact with each other, and it's clear that Jellybean isn't too happy about being held by her. Note that in the other panels where Veronica and Jellybean are together before Brad arrives, Jellybean is ALONE on the floor, playing BY HERSELF, and again not interacting with Veronica at all -- Veronica sits a discreet distance away from her on the couch, not even in physical proximity to Jellybean, well outside the boundaries of Jellybean's personal space. In these panels, we can't see Jellybean's face. So again, in this third panel where Veronica is actually holding Jellybean, she's simply using her as a prop, as if to convince herself of the very lie that she's trying to sell to Brad over the phone -- "Oh look, Jellybean has her frowny-face on. It's a crisis! I MUST get help from Brad!!"

So in conclusion, when Veronica says "I'll stick to goldfish! They're much less work!", she's NOT talking about how she's going to feel about the idea of motherhood when she's say, 25 years old, and possibly more mature and accepting of responsibility. There's NO possible way she can know that. Veronica is speaking solely about how she feels about responsibility RIGHT NOW, at age 16. She couldn't be bothered with it. She's got money, so she doesn't NEED to bother with it. It's an admission that she knows that she's irresponsible, but she just doesn't care. THAT's why it should have/would have been a bad thing to say in front of Mrs. Jones, before she was about to release her child to Veronica's responsibility. Betty's comments about motherhood also reflect how she feels right now, at 16. She may not exactly be ready for the responsibilities of motherhood, but she's already preparing herself, learning about how to be a good care provider for children like Jellybean, and Jellybean clearly appreciates that quality in Betty, as she appreciates the obvious love and concern that Jughead shows to her.

Quote from: daren on July 03, 2016, 04:21:41 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 02, 2016, 04:41:53 PM

Quote from: invisifan on July 02, 2016, 02:15:46 PM
Nurse sharks (and others) are quite large with standard shark-appearance, but are essentially harmless ...

Great white sharks are quite large too, and essentially deadly. But since neither would fit in the Lodge family pool, I'll say neither has any bearing on this story.

How about a Caribbean reef shark. Non aggressive except when threatened and kind of looks like the one in the picture except not as fat. Mr. Lodge can give Jughead a good scare at least and if anything else happens, no liability because Mr. Lodge can say the sharks usually peaceful so Jughead must have got too hungry and attacked it.

See, now that's what I'd call mental gymnastics. You're trying to jump through hoops here to reconcile your composite mental picture of Mr. Lodge's character, which is that he's not the type of person (even though he often gets short-tempered with Archie and Jughead) that would actually do anything to endanger someone's life.

With these earlier stories especially, there really IS no continuity, not even for the purposes of establishing a composite picture of a character. Crazy Betty and nice Betty both co-exist during this time period, as long as they inhabit the panel borders of different stories, along with nice guy Archie and obnoxious, selfish jerk Archie. The characters just do different things in different stories, all ultimately serving the purpose of a funny punchline, regardless of whether it fits their behavior in other stories.

Quote from: daren on July 01, 2016, 06:24:32 AM
I think Ethel might be more in love with being in love, than in love with Jughead.

I've always believed that. Because Jughead avoids dating otherwise, Ethel doesn't have to compete with other girls, which actually makes him a better target for her efforts from her POV. Also why I'm dying to see a Jughead story with both Trula AND Ethel in it, because it would change the usual dynamic between Jughead and either of them alone.

Oh, and Li'l Jinx. Jinx is pretty much in every one of those, but I really like the way it's reprinted here. Instead of bunching all the Li'l Jinx stories up in one 12 or 15 page section, they're all spread out evenly, and for the most part, it's all 1 or 2 pagers, with rare exceptions. So it's just a brief pause before launching into the next couple of longer stories featuring the other characters. That's the ideal way to read Jinx stories as far as I'm concerned. WHAM-BAM. I get too bored when they clump up too many of these together.

Quote from: invisifan on July 02, 2016, 02:15:46 PM
Nurse sharks (and others) are quite large with standard shark-appearance, but are essentially harmless ...

Great white sharks are quite large too, and essentially deadly. But since neither would fit in the Lodge family pool, I'll say neither has any bearing on this story.