Here's one you might have overlooked, from the Dynamite Entertainment solicitations:

RED SONJA & VAMPIRELLA MEET BETTY & VERONICA #1
(W) Amy Chu (A) Maria Sanapo

Mystery, murder, and mayhem descends on Riverdale as four of your favorite comic book women meet for the first time. A string of paranormal, unsolved murders leads the vampire hunter Vampirella and her sword-wielding barbarian partner Red Sonja to the small, sleepy town where things always seem to happen... There they discover Betty and Veronica, investigative reporters for the high school newspaper, also hot on the trail of the same killer.

In Shops: May 08, 2019
SRP: $3.99

MAR191040  Fay Dalton cover A


MAR191041  Francesco Francavilla cover B


MAR191042  Robert Hack cover C


MAR191043  Paulina Ganucheau cover D


MAR191044  Laura Braga cover E


MAR191045  Dan Parent cover F

^ Well, I know which cover I'll be getting.

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 03, 2019, 04:09:10 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 03, 2019, 12:55:27 PMACP continues to confuse the $#!+ out of me. What the heck is bannering a certain few titles with the logo "Archie Forever" supposed to mean, anyway?

Just "Yeah, Archie forever, woo-hoo!" That's it. Nothing more complicated than that.

So "Woo-hoo!", Rah, rah, go ACP! Unless it's a horror title, or a classic Archie title. Then I guess it's "Archie... whatever". Since they're just putting the banner on a few titles, if it were truth in advertising it should really say "ARCHIE FOREVER EPHEMERAL" It's pretty much the exact opposite of "forever". Everything is transitory, and they're building nothing lasting, or of an even semi-permanent nature. Or let's say, only permanent enough to fill the pages of a single trade paperback collection. You could also say that the new Sabrina comic doesn't have a bloody thing to do with Archie. Completely meaningless.

ACP continues to confuse the $#!+ out of me. What the heck is bannering a certain few titles with the logo "Archie Forever" supposed to mean, anyway?



When both ARCHIE #700 and BETTY & VERONICA #1 (of 5) came out around the same time, with both of the series' characters beginning their Senior year of school at Riverdale High, I assumed it meant that these titles were vaguely related somehow, i.e. they shared a common universe. Except now it doesn't seem like that can be the case. It took the previously-numbered ARCHIE series from 2015 to 2018 (and 32 issues worth of comicbook-time) to get through their Junior year, and it doesn't look like time is moving all that differently now in the new Archie series re-numbered from #700 onwards. Yet Betty & Veronica, who started Senior year in their issue #1 around the same time as Archie 700, raced through two semesters in 5 issues and are already ready for Graduation Day. Meanwhile, Sabrina is doing the girlfriend-boyfriend thing with Archie over in his title, but in her own title, she just seems to be arriving in Riverdale for the first time (and is it just me, or does the cover image above make Sabrina look Asian?)... so it doesn't seem like any of these books can inhabit the same continuity. So what the heck's the "Archie Forever" banner supposed to signify? It's not on other floppy-format comic titles that they publish, so it's not just some line-wide rebranding thing.

Quote from: Oldiesmann on February 22, 2019, 07:48:47 PM
Archie's Big Book #6: High School Yearbook (TR)
Archie and his friends have forever been stuck in the latter portion of high school, but now the complete story of how the gang all met up is finally being told! See the beginning of the eternal love triangle, the introduction of Mr. Weatherbee as principal of Riverdale High, the formation of Moose and Midge's relationship (and Reggie's subsequent schemes to split them up) and other Archie staples!

And now they're just down to recombining older TPB collections into somewhat larger collections. This one looks to be FRESHMAN YEAR (Books 1 & 2) + NEW KIDS. Both good stories, though the Freshman Year plot points introduced by Batton Lash never seemed to ever be referred to in any subsequent stories. It did seem to be a little 'rebooty' at least in certain respects, like introducing Cheryl to Riverdale High in the gang's freshman year.

Quote from: rusty on February 22, 2019, 12:44:20 PMArchie 3000 is scheduled to get a collection in the near future

VERY near -- next Wednesday! I never thought the original ARCHIE 3000 was as interesting in the execution as the two Rich Margopoulos titles (JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE and EXPLORERS OF THE UNKNOWN), or even the mostly Mike Pellowski-written DILTON'S STRANGE SCIENCE. ARCHIE 3000 was more a product diverse hands -- the stories shorter, with no real running plotline other than "Archie in the future". In other words, if ARCHIE 1 was ACP's answer to the Flintstones, then ARCHIE 3000 was ACP's answer to The Jetsons. More could have been done with it, I think, but it was early in Dan P's career. I'll probably review the trade collection whenever I can get to it.

Ah heck, since they're going there, why not line up new miniseries for ARCHIE 3000 and DILTON'S STRANGE SCIENCE while they're at it? Hey, even BIG MOOSE got a one-shot.

Help! POLICE! I've been robbed!! Somebody cleaned out my bank account! I used to be a multimillionaire, but now I'm Only A Poor Old Man. I lost all my karma, too. I'm flat busted. O, woe is me.

Well, that's pretty cool. I wonder if "Jughead Prime" is the same one from the previous JUGHEAD (2015-2017 R.I.P.) series? Too bad it's only a miniseries, but then again, I guess so was the previous JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE!

Here's some classic early Dan DeCarlo, from KATHY #10 (Feb. 1952, Standard Comics). The basic formula for all teen humor gags is the same. "Janey" could be Veronica, and "Leroy" could be Archie, and "Jasper" could be Reggie.

Out this week:

ARCHIE & FRIENDS MUSIC JAM #1

Apparently (I didn't think too hard about it at first, since I'm used to seeing seasonal one-shots for Xmas and Halloween) this is the start of a companion "ongoing" series of one shots, analogous to BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER, where they reprint 4 recent stories (this time from the ARCHIE digests instead of the B&V ones) of Archie & Friends, each issue having a different theme. All four stories in the first #1 issue are written & drawn by Dan Parent, but there is a teaser ad at the back of the book for the next forthcoming Archie & Friends one-shot, so I'd say it looks like another ongoing series (if people buy them) of one-shots. The stories all seemed mighty familiar (not surprisingly, since I read them all quite recently in the ARCHIE MODERN CLASSICS VOL. 1 TP), but presumably future issues in this series would be released before the "best of year" TP compilation.

I can't recall seeing any subscription ads anywhere for BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER, but they might just be waiting a while until the 'ongoing' status of these "one-shots" is firmly established before putting that option out there. Or maybe at $2.99 cover price, they can't really make a subscription price that seems attractive and still allow a decent profit, what with mailing costs for overhead. Then again, where are they going to place the ads... not in the digests, since that would tend to point out the obvious... that these stories are in fact recycled from VERY recent new digest lead stories. No, they should probably only advertise subscriptions for these titles in their floppy-format comics. It's a dilemma, but a subscription to the B&V FRIENDS FOREVER and ARCHIE & FRIENDS one-shots would solve the problem for those who like classic Archie stories, specifically in the floppy comic-book format, but don't necessarily care to spend $7 per issue on a reprint digest title, just to get ONE new 5-page story.

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 06, 2019, 11:15:05 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 31, 2019, 11:21:50 AM
MONICA ADVENTURES VOL. 1 & 2 (PapercutZ/CharmZ)

I'm really intrigued by this. Too bad it doesn't come digitally. Is it similar in tone to B&V or too kiddish? I've read some things from Papercutz. The Barbie series was definitely for kids while I enjoyed Chloe (originally a French comic).

Huh! Now THAT is weird. According to the Papercutz website, their books are available digitally on ComiXology, Amazon Kindle, iBooks, GooglePlay, Nook, etc. ... BUT no MONICA ADVENTURES to be found among the many other Papercutz titles available. I wonder why?  Monica is distributed by Panini (one of the world's largest publishers of comics internationally) in Brazil, and at one time there was an English-language version of Monica Teen (their preferred title; translation software calls it "Monica's Youth Group" or "Monica's Young Gang" or something like that) being produced by Panini for distribution in South America (*see below*), but apparently that is no longer the case (which may or may not have anything to do with Papercutz acquiring the North American rights). For some reason I'm guessing, digital distribution was not included in the rights granted to Papercutz. Either that or Papercutz does not do same-day-and-date digital releases with the print comic versions of their titles - which I thought was industry standard now, but I could be wrong (?)

You can browse the past editions (in Portuguese) in the Monica Teen series (Turma da Mônica Jovem in Portuguese) at Panini's Brazilian website (just ask your browser to translate the page; it seems to work fine in Chrome) at https://loja.panini.com.br//panini/vitrines/msp-revistas-turma-da-monica-jovem.aspx  just to get some idea of what the series is like. It seems there have been three separate series of Turma da Mônica Jovem in Brazil since 2008; the first series is now simply called "First series", and it was followed by a "Series 1" and a "Series 2". I don't know if that means that there was a little bit of a reboot after the initial series, but I can see that the character designs changed somewhat between "First series" and "Series 1". The characters seem to be extremely adaptable to either the standard high-school life/rom-com situations, or to more 'fantasy adventure'-type stories. Some issues are standalone stories, while others are part of multipart story arcs (and there does seem to be some continuity within each series that leads me to think the stories should be read in the order published). The crossover with the Justice League happened because Panini also distributes Portuguese-language versions of DC Comics (and Marvel's too... not surprising since they were once OWNED by Marvel -- long story). The Monica's Gang-related titles (kid version, teen version, and several individual character spinoff titles) had 8 separate titles or issues crossing over with the DC characters.


And oh yeah -- THAT happened, too.

I've been spending a lot of time over the past week or so sifting through scans of Golden Age, public-domain comic books. In this specific instance, it's the comics published by Harvey Comics between the years 1941 and 1951. I can't recall what started me on this little project, but somehow I was on the ComicBookPlus website, and I happened to notice that they had scans of the entire run of Harvey Comics' GREEN HORNET title. A few years back, all that was posted was the covers and the "backup features" of each issue of Green Hornet. I should mention that GREEN HORNET was not a title that consisted entirely of stories about the Green Hornet. Instead, it had between 16 and 24 pages (more often on the lower side) of GH stories, and some of those were text stories of from 1 to 3 pages. It was a 52-page comic (64 pages during WWII), yet less than half those pages were devoted to Green Hornet. I'd always wanted to read all those Golden Age Green Hornet comics, but there was no way I could afford to collect that run of 47 issues (the first 6 were actually published by a different publisher than Harvey Comics). They're reasonably-priced compared to DC or Marvel Golden Age comic books, but there's just so few pages of Green Hornet in each issue. Anyway, I guess The Green Hornet Incorporated (which owns the rights to the character) had formerly objected to sites like Digital Comic Museum and ComicBookPlus posting scans of the Green Hornet comic books, even though (legally speaking) the copyrights on those comics were never renewed and had expired. Those sites just don't want to piss off the rights-holders and get involved in some legal contentiousness, even if they're completely within their rights in posting those scans. Anyway... maybe it had something to do with Dynamite Entertainment's active license in publishing Green Hornet comic books. Activity on that character has died down quite a bit now, and maybe GH Inc had a change of heart and relented. SO here was an opportunity to finally read (and own digital copies of) all those stories. I like to sift through each book individually, saving only the specific pages I'm interested in, and sorting them all into file folders by character. To make a long story short, not only did I sift through issues 7 through 47 of Harvey's GH title, saving just the Green Hornet stories, but I decided to take the opportunity to do the same with another long-running Harvey superhero title, BLACK CAT (which ran 29 issues as a superhero title before changing to BLACK CAT MYSTIC, a horror/suspense comic which no longer featured the title character). Then I went on to research other Harvey anthology titles of the Golden Age like SPEED Comics, CHAMP Comics, ALL-NEW Comics, and others that had a variety of different characters in each issue, some of the features being superhero stories. I made a list of the superheroes and which issues they appeared in, and then saved all those stories in their own folders, a complete archival collection for each character. At least, aside from Black Cat and Green Hornet, all the superhero characters who made less than twenty or so appearances, which amounted to less than 20 characters. That leaves only half-a-dozen relatively long-running characters for me to sort through issues of SPEED and GREEN HORNET and save copies of their stories in their own folders: Shock Gibson and Captain Freedom from SPEED Comics, and Spirit of '76 & The Zebra (both of whom continued from the first 4 issues of POCKET Comics), and Blonde Bomber from GREEN HORNET. I'm not trying to save every feature that ran in every title, not even every non-humor feature. Just the superheroes, which account for maybe 20 to 25 percent of the story pages of a typical Harvey comic from the 1940s. There were a LOT of short-running superhero features, a few medium-length runs, and very few long-running superheroes -- just the six I mentioned, plus Blonde Bomber which wasn't really a superhero feature, but I can make up my own rules about what to save, so I'm doing it!

I'll also save any work I find (and I'm surprised by how many different companies this guy worked for) by cartoonist Ed Wheelan, simply because I like his style, and there's never EVER been a collection of ANY of his work, to my knowledge. Wheelan's best known (if at all) by collectors for his work on a parody/melodrama strip called Minute Movies (originally "Midget Movies") that seems to have been the prototype that E.C. Segar followed when creating Thimble Theater (which later became just POPEYE). Wheelan was super-talented, easily on a par with Segar, but never seemed to find that magical character to make one of his strips a big hit with the public.

I did something like this once before when I sifted through all the Golden Age MLJ titles and saved all the superhero stories in their own digital collections. It's kind of labor-intensive, but it interests me and I learn a lot about the company and characters in the process. I already started saving a few characters out of Crestwood Publications' PRIZE Comics (Dick Briefer's New Adventures of Frankenstein and Ken Crossen's Green Lama) and I may extend that to all of the other Crestwood superhero characters, too.

Another interesting phenomenon to note is that while many trademarked characters from long-running newspaper strips (like DICK TRACY) are not posted on these scan-sharing sites, many ARE, so you can read newspaper reprints like Milton Caniff's TERRY AND THE PIRATES or Ham Fisher's JOE PALOOKA (both of them published in a long-running series by Harvey Comics) on DCM or CB+. One such strip I found while sifting through Harvey's titles was INVISIBLE SCARLET O'NEIL, Russel Stamm's newspaper strip which I've long wished for a collection of. Now I have (a digital) one, because I made it myself!

Quote from: SAGG on February 02, 2019, 08:09:27 PM
I prefer reading it on a smartphone. Much better for me... 

It's kind of an Apple design/control philosophy though... that sort of thinking of "let's reduce the number of user options or controls; we're not worried about flexibility or offering different choices for different users, let's just make a one-size-fits-all thing that fits the profile of the majority of users". If that doesn't happen to fit your preferences or type of use, too bad. It's obvious that the user interface is designed to fit a portrait mode screen, as opposed to a landscape mode one. So they're automatically dismissing potential readers using laptops or PCs as a statistically negligible audience. The print comic analog to this reading experience is... a roll of toilet paper, where the panels can take up any number of sheets. Okay then, there are other webcomics sites, too.

Quote from: SAGG on February 02, 2019, 04:53:30 AM
Anyone reads Webtoons? There are some terrific stories on there from South Kore (translated, of course), such as Lookism, True Beauty, Unordinary, and others...

"Adventures of God" looks pretty good. How did THAT not get made into an Adult Swim or Comedy Central animated show?

Oh, and Dean Haspiel (THE FOX) is on there, too -- with his "New Brooklyn" superhero universe that includes The Red Hook (since issued in print as a graphic novel by Image), and the most recent sequel, Warcry.

On the technical side, you can tell Webtoons is aimed squarely at tablet and smartphone readers, because the reader interface works pretty crappy on a landscape-mode screen on a laptop or desktop (I can't even view a full panel vertically top-to-bottom without reducing it in size). Webtoons' vertical scrolling of panels might be fine for swiping in portrait mode on a smaller screen, but I find it annoying to have to keep scrolling, because it's a mouse button I have to keep holding down to keep moving the slider bar. Left-to-right horizontal panel progression with simple back-and-forward buttons to click would make the reading experience a lot less tedious. And THAT makes me not want to spend much time on the site.

Quote from: rusty on February 01, 2019, 11:58:00 PM
I won an auction for books 3-10 of the Archie Riverdale High series by Mike Pellowski.  I already had two of the books, but needed the rest.  I still need the first two books and there was a special as well.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of information out there on the series, but I think there were only the 11 books.

If/when you get around to reading those, a comparison between the original novels and the "New Look Archie" digest comic adaptations (also written by Pellowski under a pseudonym) would be interesting. What was left out/added or changed (besides the titles) in the decade or more between the two versions?