On this week's Riverdale Podcast, Jonathan had a number of interesting speculations about what the financing of ACP could possibly mean in practical terms:

   
• More diversification of titles? (horror, superhero, licensed, etc.)
• More New Riverdale titles?
• More new stories in the digests?

It will be interesting to see whether any of these things actually materialize. We can only hope, I guess.

After watching the first Shout Factory DVD volume of MIRACULOUS episodes, I discovered that the last 10 episodes of the series are up on the Nick website for streaming viewing (http://www.nick.com/miraculous-series/episodes/), so I'll probably watch those later today or early tomorrow.

Just watched ARCHER: The Complete Season Six DVD Disc 1 (7 episodes)

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on June 03, 2016, 02:20:11 PM
I wish someone would buy ACP. New owners who would bring back Classic Archie.

I'd like another comic book publisher (not Marvel or DC) to buy them, but not some corporation, because chances are nobody at a big corporation is going to care about the characters one way or another, just about whether they can make some money off the purchase or not.

Quote from: Thrillho on June 03, 2016, 01:08:24 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 03, 2016, 01:56:49 AM

Quote from: Thrillho on June 02, 2016, 07:05:02 PM
For the shipping part of this thread...

What story is this from? I'd like to read that.

I got it from a Betty and Veronica digest years ago, since I had the Archie digital subscription I was reading a ton in quick succession. I can give you a synopsis but I didn't record where I got it from, I think that info was on the old site.

Betty and Veronica want to audition for a play, Betty wants the Veronica-like role and vice-versa, but Ms. Grundy isn't convinced they can pull it off so they just use their acting chops in the real world.

Oh, so it's almost like one of those stories where they trade places. Not literally, but essentially they're each acting like the other normally does. Well at least that explains what's going on there. Hopefully they'll reprint it again some time.

Quote from: BlueBomber2015 on June 03, 2016, 05:28:42 AM
We're gonna have to wait and see how they will pull it through.  Remember, ACP is not owned by a major corporation, in fact, it is the oldest Indie company.  They're Indie before it was cool.

It's not the oldest indie company -- because when they first started out (before ACP), DC and Marvel were "indie" (i.e. privately-owned) too. If ACP is still "indie" after all these years, it's simply because no corporation has made an attractive offer. (If that had happened in the last few years, they'd probably have jumped at the chance.) There was a brief period, beginning in 1969, when Archie sold stock and was a publicly-traded company, though, which kind of ruins their 75 year streak of private ownership. That's only a year or two after DC and Marvel were sold to big corporations.

Quote from: BettyReggie on June 03, 2016, 06:23:19 AM
I just wish they were done with High School. I want to know did they go to college? Are they still crazy about Archie, he's not the only fish in the sea. Maybe have Betty her old flame date Adam or Trey. Where did Adam disappear to? After the one story about Betty dumping Archie for Adam you never saw him again. I hope would they have more problems besides who Archie going bring to the dance. That's so played.

Yeah, apart from the main Archie title, which will probably always be that, they don't need to treat the other characters like spinoffs of the first series. Let them be the stars of their own books and do their own things (which doesn't mean Jughead, Archie and Reggie can't be in there somewhere, just that they don't need to be as prominent or have the same status quo as in the main ARCHIE title. There may be people who like the other titles that don't like the main Archie title, and vice-versa.

Whatever variations they make while experimenting a little don't need to be cast in stone as permanent, anyway. If it doesn't seem to be grabbing enough of the audience they need to get, they can always further tweak it a little this way or that, until they find the right mix that works.

Quote from: spazaru on June 02, 2016, 07:37:09 PM

Quote from: BettyReggie on June 02, 2016, 07:21:52 PM
I really want to see them out of High School. No prom stories, I'm tired of them.

I don't think you'll see them out of high school in this book since it replaces the regular Betty and Veronica series.

It's not such a bad idea. I wouldn't mind if they became college students or young 20-something besties. It would actually be cool if they left Archie out of the book, or if not totally out, then just not having them both competing over him. Just something to throw a little spin on it. It's a fresh start, so they should be flexible to experiment a little bit, as long as their personalities remain the same and they're still best friends & rivals.

As an example, the last classic B&V story arc, "Farewell, Betty & Veronica" was already a slight departure from the standard formula, while still nominally within 'classic Archie', so why not use the opportunity of a new #1 to mix a new wrinkle or two into the old standard. It's a fresh retake with a largely new audience, anyway.

Clearly LIFE WITH KEVIN isn't going to be in the same continuity as ARCHIE, and it's still debatable whether JUGHEAD is in the same continuity as ARCHIE, so why should B&V have to be? Not sure why that seems so important to people given that they can accept and enjoy titles as diverse as classic Archie, New Riverdale Archie, Life With Archie, and Afterlife With Archie -- each of which is clearly different from each other. Not sure why there seems to be this general feeling that all of the New Riverdale titles need to occupy the same space and time. I feel like that just hampers the creators in each trying to find their own audience for each particular title, which may not be exactly the same. Diversity just seems a better way to go to me, all things considered.

To answer the question, I'm not particularly excited about the new B&V book, just more curious than anything else. Still not sold on a semi-realistic take on B&V. It will be Adam Hughes' job to get me excited about it, I guess.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 02, 2016, 03:47:40 PM
MIRACULOUS: TALES OF LADYBUG & CAT NOIR, a CGI-animated kid superheroes series.

I watched the 7 episodes on the DVD, and was absolutely charmed by this show. A Vol. 2 DVD is due at the end of August. The show began airing in December 2015 on Nick at noon on Sundays, and the complete first season will have 26 episodes, 12 of which still have not aired on Nick (they air earlier on TB1 in Paris, where the series began in October 2015).

The CGI animation is movie-quality, looking something like a Dreamworks or Pixar animated film, as opposed to the sometimes lower-budget quality you usually get for television animation.

There were something like 7 or 8 different companies involved in producing and/or funding this series, which is shown in 120 countries worldwide. The basic concept is similar to something like Barbie in Princess Power, but otherwise that comparison does Miraculous a disservice. The superheroes here are a fusion of American style with their Japanese counterparts, the highly-stylized magical girl/henshin hero genres (which basically use the same tropes but the magical girl genre is almost completely anime, while the henshin hero genre is almost completely tokusatsu). Like the latter, all the episodes have a rigid (but comforting) format, in which certain things will always occur, and in a specific order. A good deal of emphasis is placed on the ritual of the transforming sequence, with its codified poses and movements, each hero has an "akuma" (a magical creature/pet), a "miraculous" special transforming totem (earring/ring) which absorbs their akuma to transform them, a special weapon (yo-yo/baton), and a 'final move' superpower (lucky charm/catastrophe) - after using which, they'll use up their power and be shortly forced to transform back to their everyday selves.

There's some rom-com stuff in here too, with Marinette (Ladybug) having a secret crush on 10th-grade classmate Adrien (Cat Noir), that leaves her tongue-tied and flustered in his presence, acting all shy and goofy, while Cat Noir is brash and boastful when with Ladybug, and totally smitten by her. Marinette is klutzy and insecure, but as Ladybug she's competent, confident and the natural leader of the pair. Since she has a crush on Adrien (who's a male model when he's not being a student) she holds the overeager Cat Noir at arm's length. You can get some of the flavor of this from clips of the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiq2qS1Alzw

from Wikipedia:

QuoteSet in modern-day Paris, the series focuses on teenageMarinette Dupain-Cheng and her classmate and crush Adrien Agreste.When evil arises, Marinette transforms into her secret superhero persona Ladybug, while Adrien transforms into his superhero persona Cat Noir, using powerful objects known as the Miraculous. Oblivious to each other's true identities, the two work together to protect Paris from the mysterious villain Hawk Moth, who covets and attempts to steal their powers by using his akuma, butterflies infused with black energy, to influence and transform everyday citizens into supervillains.

This is the cover of Action Lab's upcoming trade paperback/graphic novel comic adaptation:

Quote from: Thrillho on June 02, 2016, 07:05:02 PM
For the shipping part of this thread...

What story is this from? I'd like to read that.

Quote from: Thrillho on June 02, 2016, 06:29:46 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on June 02, 2016, 06:13:32 AM

Quote from: Thrillho on June 01, 2016, 07:27:37 PM
Meanwhile, there is no evidence to indicate that she called anyone else. Occam's Razor, the hypothesis with the least assumptions should be selected.

The evidence would be Veronica's sour mood. If she only invited Jughead and he showed up, she should be satisfied with that. The fact that she's unhappy about the situation seems to indicate she hoped someone else would show up to eat the big breakfast she made. Or if she didn't invite anyone else, she seems to feel like this solution to getting rid of her big breakfast isn't much of an improvement on shoving it all down the garbage disposal.

Her intended guests were her parents but they left instead of eating the breakfast Veronica cooked, that's in the story, hence her bad mood at the end. I agreed with you, she likely just invited Jughead and Hot Dog to get rid of it, but there is no indication she called any of her other friends, and as I said before this is also a shipping thread and we're just having fun, there's no need to read too much into every comment that's made here.

Just her father, really. Mrs. Lodge doesn't seem to be in it, unless she made her excuses on a previous page. It does seem to be a lot of pancakes, sausages, fruit, and ... whatever that orange lumpy stuff is supposed to be (scrambled eggs, oatmeal, or hash browns?) just for Mr. Lodge, though. The way he takes off with "But I have to run now! -- Boy, life is full of all kinds of crazy surprises!" and a big smile on his face (he seems relieved) as he's leaving makes me think he's just looking for an excuse to get out of eating Ronnie's cooking. Or maybe he's pleased to see she made the effort, and it's the thought that counts, so he really is kind of proud of her, regardless of whether her cooking's any good or not. Hard to say if the "crazy surprises" he's referring to is the reason he suddenly has to rush off, or the fact that Veronica did something for him without help from the household staff (although wouldn't that be Gaston's job, not Smithers'?) ... could be both, but now that I think about it, I'm more inclined to think the latter. I'm actually not sure what Mr. Lodge is talking about in that first panel about Smithers' day off, since she'd already obviously prepared the breakfast.

The fact that she would make that much food for just him also indicates she doesn't know anything about cooking. She should know he couldn't eat all that by himself, even if it didn't turn out to be inedible. Of course it's no problem for Jughead, and even enough to share it with Hot Dog. The irony is that if Hiram had stayed and eaten her breakfast, she would have wound up with most of what she made still left over and had to throw it out anyway.

Speaking of Ronnie/Juggie shipping, when you get a really GOOD one, why is it posted over in the Reggie Mantle thread? 

That may be the most genuinely heroic thing I've ever seen Jughead do (because there's no indication he's aware of Reggie's prank) outside of a Captain Hero story. And more than that, Ronnie's affectionate gratitude here is 100% gen-u-wine, no "reader imagination" needed. She doesn't just kiss him, she kisses him at least three times. But they both thought it was a REAL shark, so he really is a hero, and deserves it, even if he's flinching. For Jughead though, that's a pretty weak example of flinching. Even though it's just the one panel, that one should be in the V/J shipping hall of fame. Betty just calmly stands there and calls him a hero. Veronica was obviously just looking for an excuse.

I love how Archie interprets these events ... he thinks he needs to invest in a spear gun (but only so it will "pay off" in kisses from Veronica) ... he doesn't think about just doing something selfless because it's the right thing to do.

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on June 02, 2016, 05:54:02 PM

Quote from: SAGG on June 02, 2016, 04:11:27 PM
Great story. It's amazing that pantomime can say so much without saying anything. I think DeCarlo did this, right? Harry Lucey also could draw pantomime, probably better than any other Archie artist. I guess someone "wrote" this too. I wonder if it was Frank Doyle?

According to comics.org,  it was written by Frank Doyle.

It seems like most of the silent stories I've seen were written by Doyle, although I've seen at least one by Gladir, so I know he wasn't the only one writing them.

Quote from: BlueBomber2015 on June 02, 2016, 11:20:32 PM
Surprising news-Archie Comics now has money thanks to some help from a specialty finance firm:

http://www.newsarama.com/29559-archie-comics-takes-outside-financing-for-working-capital-and-growth.html

Now, the company has money to branch out into other things like licensing and so forth.  Will it work?

That IS the question.

It smells of desperation... and now they're beholden to Veritas. If they can't manage to turn Veritas' cash infusion into profits that will both keep ACP in the black and pay off for the investor, it opens the way for ACP to be acquired by, and then sold off by, Veritas.

I'll be interested in seeing what kind of publications Archie Comic Publications solicits in the latter half of 2016, to see whether they're really going to use this money wisely.

MIRACULOUS: TALES OF LADYBUG & CAT NOIR, a CGI-animated kid superheroes series.