Quote from: Barbaric William Dreadbeard on June 22, 2016, 09:21:19 AM
WISH THEYD GET NEW COVERS FOR THE DIGESTS, ALL BUT ONE ARE RE-USED COVERS :ANGRY: :TICKEDOFF:

Not reused. These two covers were supposed to appear on digests that were solicited last year, but they never made it. By the time the original issues they were solicited for came out, Halloween was long past, so they never actually got used.





This latter one was supposed to appear on the cover of last years ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #17. That was solicited before the frequency of the title was downgraded to 6 times per year, instead of the former 10 times per year. I think by the time #17 came out it was January of this year.



Looking forward to this one for Halloween... YES, that IS a re-used cover.

Quote from: irishmoxie on June 23, 2016, 05:16:43 AM
I didn't really understand the story at all and I haven't read much of Magick Chicks. I liked Fernando's story better. The art is great in all of Pixie Trix's comics but I think I just don't get or like Dave Lumsden's writing style.

I guess that pretty well proves the point I was trying to make. If by "soft reboot" they meant "jump-on point", then this story isn't very accessible to new readers. You need to know too much backstory going into it to understand what's going on.

Let's see, where did I leave off...?

Monday 06/20:
BETTY AND VERONICA SUMMER ANNUAL #244

Tuesday 06/21:
WORLD OF ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS #60
INVINCIBLE #0 (2005)
DARK HORSE PRESENTS: (THE ONCE AND FUTURE TARZAN) #23
LORDS OF THE JUNGLE #4 (of 6)
THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE SHADOW # 3 (of 4)
STEAM WARS PRINCESS LEGENDS #1
ALL NEW CLASSIC CAPTAIN CANUCK #2
DARK NIGHT: A TRUE BATMAN STORY HC OGN by Paul Dini & Eduardo Risso
ARCHIE'S PAL JUGHEAD ARCHIVES VOL 2 HC

Wednesday 06/22:
JUSTICE LEAGUE #51 & 52
ACTION COMICS #958
FLASH (2016) #1
WONDER WOMAN (2016) #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #935
AQUAMAN (2016) #1

... Already starting to lose interest in a couple of those newly-"Rebirth"ed DC universe titles. FLASH and AQUAMAN were both kind of 'meh'. I think #52 was the last of the current JUSTICE LEAGUE series, and it was (oddly) kind of a prequel to ACTION COMICS #957 (which came out a couple of weeks ago). #51 was a semi-confusing fill-in issue in which remnant characters from different prior iterations of the DC universe appeared, which just leaves you scratching your head as to what that was all about. Maybe it'll be followed up on elsewhere, or after the JUSTICE LEAGUE REBIRTH #1 issue comes out, who knows? That issue #51 Justice League team seemed to have the old Superman (which is to say, the New 52 Superman, the one they started with) in it, so it had to have taken place before his recent death. The DC Universe is just a confusing place sometimes. ACTION COMICS is still interesting to me, with Lex Luthor putting on an S-shield symbol on his power armor, and attempting to take the deceased Superman's place (meanwhile, over in the regular SUPERMAN Rebirthed title, it's the old pre-New 52 DCU Superman taking his place). They meet in this issue, and have some conflict over that. DETECTIVE COMICS has Batwoman leading a team of Gotham-centric Bat-spinoff characters that includes Spoiler (Stephanie Brown, daughter of minor Bat-villain The Cluemaster), Orphan (Cassandra Cain, one of the former Batgirls), Red Robin (Tim Drake, formerly Robin III), and Clayface II (Matt Hagen). While the idea of having a title with a permanent assemblage of Bat-allies is the kind of no-brainer that makes you wonder why it never happened before, I have to question the inclusion of bat-villain Clayface. I can see where they'd want at least one character with actual superpowers, but if they wanted a monster-type guy, Man-Bat (a.k.a. Kirk Langstrom) was definitely the way to go. While Matt Hagen's origin seems kind of tragic, he's always been presented as pretty irredeemable bad guy, so his inclusion smacks of a really arbitrary, illogical editoral decision. The non-inclusion of the better-known and more popular Batman sidekicks Nightwing (Dick Grayson) and Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) was sort of understandable as they both have their own teams (Titans and Birds of Prey, respectively).  Don't know how long I'll stick with these books, as I'm already thinking about dropping FLASH and AQUAMAN from my reading list. I might stick with ACTION, DETECTIVE and WONDER WOMAN for a few more issues.

Quote from: nuageo on June 22, 2016, 06:50:58 PM
A funny picture from ARCHIE #9

Hey, I have one of those!

Quote from: invisifan on June 21, 2016, 03:20:53 PM
The 10th (last) page of the story is up now. New Arc starts in July.

Read it, loved it! As an aside, that makes TWO homages to I Dream of Jeannie for Dan Parent in a single month (the other was in the new story in this month's BETTY AND VERONICA SUMMER ANNUAL #244). Not sure if Dave Lumsden wrote that scene in there specifically for Dan, or that's just the way it turned out. Technically, in this story there's no genie... but a magical girl in an Arabian harem outfit is close enough.

I question why they're calling this a "soft reboot", though. If it's NOT a reboot (and it isn't) then the word "reboot" shouldn't even be in there anywhere. That just causes a small twinge of panic for readers who've been following the series regularly up to that point -- like the Red Alert signs start flashing and the "AAAOOOOOHGAH! AAAOOOOOHGAH!" klaxons start going off.

I don't even know that there's any consensus on what the term "soft reboot" means, or what people might think it means. It seems to imply some kind of "minor" reboot, like a slight adjustment where there's a continuity implant and/or some sort of vague "selective amnesia" by which they're agreeing to forget about certain overly-complex recent events, like "We shall never speak of this again." The only real thing that comes to mind that might fit that description is something like Spider-Man's "Brand New Day", after Mephisto selectively tinkered with Peter Parker's past history (or memories -- I'm still a little vague on that).

I've seen it used in a couple of instances to indicate what's known as a "jump-on point" -- i.e., a point in an otherwise complex storyline that's kind of a "lull" between major arcs where it's designed to be accessible to new readers... the perfect place to start reading, if you haven't been following up to this point. And obviously, by using classic Archie artists like Fernando Ruiz and Dan Parent, you might hope to lure fans of classic Archie stories. As it turns out, Fernando's story functioned pretty well at that, but I don't know about this one. While I loved it, and understood everything happening with no problem, I wonder if someone reading Magick Chicks for the first time would. It just seems like this little story casts the focus on what might be construed as the most complicated parts of Melissa's backstory, but doesn't go a long way to explaining how things got that way for new readers.

At any rate, this story just seems like a "bonus story", like something you'd find in the back of an Annual that came out in-between story arcs in a series that had fairly complex continuity. Sort of just like a little "afterstory" or coda to the climactic events that just wrapped up, before launching into a whole new series of adventures.

Quote from: Jabroniville on June 20, 2016, 01:46:28 AM
BETTY COOPER: A) The scheming, somewhat-dim loser ('40s & '50s); B) The All-Around Girl-Next-Door Nice Girl Tomboy (most eras)

I really HATE it when someone refers to Betty as a tomboy. Sure, she likes sports, and is good at most of them, and she can fix a car or play videogames. That doesn't make her a tomboy, just talented.

To me tomboy implies a girl that gives no thought to typically "feminine" things, like hairstyles, makeup, clothes/fashion/shopping, looking pretty, romantic movies and books, domestic stuff like cooking/baking, sewing, artsy/crafty stuff, etc. Betty cares a lot about what guys think of her and whether they find her attractive, and all things "girlie" like drooling over male celebrities, gossiping with her gal-pals, and so on.

It always sounds to me like Betty's getting slagged simply for being capable of doing something as well as a guy can. She's NOT a tomboy. She's just what they call in England "sporty".

Quote from: Jabroniville on June 20, 2016, 02:41:50 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 17, 2016, 06:49:58 AM
Jabroniville is referencing a fairly recent (2013) warts-and-all (totally unauthorized) company history, MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY by Sean Howe. An excellent book, by the way, that gives us more of an unvarnished picture of events in that company's history. While there are laws written to prevent slander and libel, there are none preventing people from telling the truth. If the Disney/Marvel legal department couldn't stop Sean Howe from writing a book, what do you think ACP's chances would be?

Of course, Marvel & Disney are unlikely to want the bad publicity associated with going after a piece of journalism. ACP seems to have no such restrictions holding them back- they have a tendency to go after people who merely PARODY them.

I think their lawyers would probably advise them to pass, if they have no legal grounds (as in the case of Sean Howe's book). The sort of publicity associated with a lawsuit tends to shine a spotlight on the defendant's book, which if legally blameless, only gets more attention from more people, and more attendant sales. So they would, in fact, be doing the book's author a big favor. Lawsuits cost money too, and ACP isn't doing so well that they can afford to pursue harassing someone when they have no chance of winning. They could recoup their legal expenses if they could win such a suit, but unless there is actual slander or libelous statements contained in the book (and most authors, or publishers, of these type of "tell-all" books have them legally vetted before publication), ACP would only wind up throwing money in a sinkhole.

Quote from: irishmoxie on June 19, 2016, 12:47:44 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 19, 2016, 11:42:25 AM

Quote from: irishmoxie on June 18, 2016, 06:25:00 PM
Anything special in those Betty and Veronica digests? I've been reading some older Betty and Veronica digests and they used to publish some Josie stories.

Don't really know. I'll let you know after I read them. I have a game plan for collecting digests... apart from only a few very-short-run titles, I'm only collecting digests from the period of 2005 through 2014 (I didn't start getting the current digest titles until January 2015). 2005 is when LAUGH COMICS DIGEST and JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST were cancelled and replaced by TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST and JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST, respectively. Both of those titles distinguished themselves from the ones they replaced by featuring (then-)new stories in every issue. Looking at other digests from the around the same time, I noticed that other titles also began featuring new stories. BETTY AND VERONICA DIGEST had new stories from at least issue #185 (that's the first one I'm sure of, at any rate), which was "Betty and Veronica Meet Betty and Veronica", the second in a series of four Memory Lane stories, so that's the point I picked to go back to as a starting point (good luck finding a non-digital copy of 185, though I've read the story in question). It's a short run to the end after that, since BETTY AND VERONICA DIGEST ends (after getting a brand-new logo in issue #188) with #208, and is thereafter replaced by B&V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #209 (which I'm also collecting beginning with that issue). I think I mentioned this before, but B&V FRIENDS has Josie stories in every issue. Still missing a couple dozen of those.


Archie Digests history at a glance:
http://www.archiefans.com/index.php?media/file/archie-digest-history-as-of-2016.323/

I think new lead stories were featured in the early Betty and Veronica double digests a lot more often than we previously released or at least the lead stories don't seem to be reprinted. I have almost all these DD's and I've been perusing them looking for Josie and Sabrina stories.


I've been going through trying to find all the Josie and the Pussycats stories. In Archie and Friends, each issue had a Pussycats long after they disappeared from the cover.

I read those issues of BETTY AND VERONICA DIGEST today, and I think out of the three digests there were maybe two stories that I hadn't read before. They all contain 12-page JOSIE sections (two issues with stories from the ARCHIE & FRIENDS issues, only one with classic-era J&TP stories - that I'd read before). They all contain SABRINA sections (but it's *UGH!* "The Animated Series" Sabrina, so I skipped them). There were probably some new-at-the-time stories in there, but the only notable one was Dan Parent's 24-page "Sleeping Betty" (1st appearance here in #207 [from 2010], with a great cover) -- but again, it's one I'd already read.


B&V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #236 [from 2013] was far superior, containing mostly stories I hadn't read before, including a JOSIE section with stories from (I'd guess) the 70s or early 80s. No Sabrina in this one, but there were also separate sections for LI'L JINX (skipped it) and CHERYL BLOSSOM (hadn't read it, and loved it), plus the usual mix of more recent stories and even a couple of classic era ones (none of those in the other B&V digests I'd read earlier). It not only had a new lead B&V story (by Dan Parent), but new (at least I assume) stories with GINGER (Lopez, not Snapp! - 6 pages, Dan P again) and ...hold on to your hat ... NANCY!! By Holly G., no less! (5 pages) Looking cuter than I've ever seen her, with a unique frizzly 'do and some big hoop earrings --just Nancy, and her cat, no Chuck! I practically fell off my chair -- I think I might have seen a Ginger solo story before, but I've never seen a Nancy solo story! (I swear, if I ever saw a Midge solo story, I'd probably die of a stroke or something.)


Then there was VERONICA'S PASSPORT DIGEST #2 [Dec. 1993], which reprinted 4 early issues of VERONICA, complete with fashion pages (issues #4/"in Hollywood"; #7/"in Australia"; #8/"in Mexico"; and #13/"in Canada"). That one was pretty amazing -- not only 4 early issues of VERONICA, none of which I'd read before, but the pages were bright white like it had just rolled off the presses yesterday (not the cheaper paper you see used in a lot of the older digests -- in fact it might even be better than the paper stock they're using today).

Quote from: SAGG on June 19, 2016, 04:22:11 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 19, 2016, 11:12:44 AM

Quote from: spazaru on June 19, 2016, 07:43:13 AM

Quote from: SAGG on June 19, 2016, 07:00:02 AM
I still can't quite believe I'm reading that Ruiz, Gisele, and several of the other current Classic Archie artists are no longer at Archie Comics. It still hasn't really hit me yet...

It's a drag for sure.  I really enjoy the reboots but I hold out hope that a place will be made for more classic stuff in the future.

Man, I don't know. Goldwater was pretty brutal on everything the company published before he got there in 2009 in that article you linked. He practically disowns it, and in the process gives classic Archie creators a backhand slap in the face. Pretty much grabs the lion's share of the credit for KEVIN KELLER for himself in the process, too.

That sounds an awful like what Stan Lee did, taking credit for creating the Classic Marvel superhero characters in the early 60's and leaving Jack Kirby in the dust....

Um... not really, though. At least Stan Lee was there, he edited and wrote the actual books (or many of them, anyway). He never really tried to grab the credit for creating everything. He gives credit to the artists involved. It's just that it's difficult for people to understand the process by which these things came into existence, and in hindsight after so many years, it's really difficult to make people understand that it was a collaborative process. Of course, Marvel owns everything... but even Stan Lee has had his legal battles with Marvel over things. As a writer/editor, he had his fingers in a lot of those characters, but he never claims that people like Kirby and Ditko were some sort of 'art robots' who just did what he programmed them to do.


The REAL analogy here? "Like father, like son" (or grandson). Or, "The leaf doesn't fall far from the tree." The Goldwaters are the business end. They're publishers, not writers and artists. They don't "create", they merely issue directives or give approvals on ideas. So if Jon Goldwater is trying to puff himself up as some sort of visionary who is responsible for introducing Kevin Keller to the world and Dan Parent is just a cog in his machine, it's no different than John L. Goldwater claiming to be the "creator" of Archie, and Bob Montana was just a guy who dreamed up faces for the characters, a footsoldier following Goldwater's marching orders. Fernando Ruiz was right -- ACP treats and has treated its creators horribly.

  More Josie awesomeness by Gisele:

Quote from: irishmoxie on June 18, 2016, 06:25:00 PM
Anything special in those Betty and Veronica digests? I've been reading some older Betty and Veronica digests and they used to publish some Josie stories.

Don't really know. I'll let you know after I read them. I have a game plan for collecting digests... apart from only a few very-short-run titles, I'm only collecting digests from the period of 2005 through 2014 (I didn't start getting the current digest titles until January 2015). 2005 is when LAUGH COMICS DIGEST and JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST were cancelled and replaced by TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST and JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST, respectively. Both of those titles distinguished themselves from the ones they replaced by featuring (then-)new stories in every issue. Looking at other digests from the around the same time, I noticed that other titles also began featuring new stories. BETTY AND VERONICA DIGEST had new stories from at least issue #185 (that's the first one I'm sure of, at any rate), which was "Betty and Veronica Meet Betty and Veronica", the second in a series of four Memory Lane stories, so that's the point I picked to go back to as a starting point (good luck finding a non-digital copy of 185, though I've read the story in question). It's a short run to the end after that, since BETTY AND VERONICA DIGEST ends (after getting a brand-new logo in issue #188) with #208, and is thereafter replaced by B&V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #209 (which I'm also collecting beginning with that issue). I think I mentioned this before, but B&V FRIENDS has Josie stories in every issue. Still missing a couple dozen of those.


Archie Digests history at a glance:
http://www.archiefans.com/index.php?media/file/archie-digest-history-as-of-2016.323/

Quote from: spazaru on June 19, 2016, 07:43:13 AM

Quote from: SAGG on June 19, 2016, 07:00:02 AM
I still can't quite believe I'm reading that Ruiz, Gisele, and several of the other current Classic Archie artists are no longer at Archie Comics. It still hasn't really hit me yet...

It's a drag for sure.  I really enjoy the reboots but I hold out hope that a place will be made for more classic stuff in the future.

Man, I don't know. Goldwater was pretty brutal on everything the company published before he got there in 2009 in that article you linked. He practically disowns it, and in the process gives classic Archie creators a backhand slap in the face. Pretty much grabs the lion's share of the credit for KEVIN KELLER for himself in the process, too.

JUGHEAD & ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #5 - I've been trying to fill in the few issues I was missing of this digest title. As it turns out, I'd already read all of the stories in here, probably because I'd read them earlier in one of those 1000 Page Comics Digests or Giant Comics Digests, so nothing to remark on here. Only missing one issue of this series now, and two issues of ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE to complete the set.

Quote from: nuageo on June 19, 2016, 03:33:26 AM

Quote from: Gisele on June 19, 2016, 02:41:38 AM

Quote from: irishmoxie on June 18, 2016, 06:27:05 PM
Yeah Gisele is obviously heavily inspired by Josie and the Pussycats. I wish she would do a more musical themed comic about a girl band. Do the Magic Chicks form a band?

I probably will eventually. If it's not with Zii, it'll be with a new creation more than likely. I won't lie, I would've enjoyed doing interiors on Josie, but it wasn't in the cards. In regards to SuperTeen Betty, I did get to draw her 2 more times in commissions since I did that quick sketch. She's pretty fun to draw. Since I don't know how to attach images here, here are links to my tweets:
https://twitter.com/GiseleLagace/status/662710202244931584
https://twitter.com/GiseleLagace/status/732779410424651776
(The second one is less on model, but it wasn't requested to be, so I took some liberties)

Archie Meets Ramones is not about a girl band but at least it's about music, which I enjoy. I'm also working on another project that has some music in it. It should be announce fairly soon.

This cover is very good! 

Funny... if the ARCHIE #1 blank sketch commission hadn't been signed, I wouldn't have been able to tell it was Gisele's. Reminds me a little of an Andrew Pepoy drawing, actually. I like it, but not as much as the 2nd one (never been a fan of the bell-bottomed costume variant for Superteen, I'm afraid).

I love the 2nd one, with Superteen rescuing the cat -- and it's a signature Gisele cat, too -- no problem identifying that one!  "Off-model"?  Well, certainly not compared to... er, all things re-booty. Slighty more detail in the facial features than is traditional for classic Archie style, but I had to look twice to even notice that. It's definitely Betty all the way, as well as being easily identified as Gisele's style. I'd kill to read that as a comic book from ACP.  Instead I just get to read articles where Jon Goldwater pats himself on the back for what a genius he is, and disses everything they published before the reboot. 

Quote from: irishmoxie on June 18, 2016, 06:18:28 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 18, 2016, 02:37:19 PM

JUGHEAD (1987) #89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 160 - I'll be reviewing these in detail later in another thread.

The Trula Twyst issues. Woot woot. I've been meaning to get my hands on these eventually. They are not available digitally .

Yeah, I noticed that. I can't believe they haven't reprinted those somewhere, or done a digital exclusive themed collection of Jughead vs Trula. I've got plenty of reprints of later Trula stories in the digests, but I've not seen the original 5 reprinted anywhere. Comics.org couldn't help me there.