BILL GALVAN

Wow, what are the odds? Last week I mentioned the (probably overlooked by most Archie fans) work of George Gladir and Stan Goldberg on Papercutz two original Three Stooges graphic novels in 2012. So what are the chances that the next sighting I'd make of an ex-Archie creator's work would also be in another THREE STOOGES comic book? I mean, let's consider that apart from the aforementioned graphic novels, there have only been a bare few original (non-reprint) Three Stooges comic books produced since 1972, when Whitman published #55 of a fairly long series which originally began with comics published by Dell and later Gold Key (which is really the same company as Whitman in all but name).

American Mythology Productions (www.AmericanMythology.net) now has the license and recently released a new THREE STOOGES #1 that contains an 8 page story with artwork by Bill Galvan. I'm not sure if Bill's work will be a regular feature in that comic, but American Mythology Productions is apparently expanding its comic line with lots of new licensed titles like Edgar Rice Burroughs' THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, STARGATE ATLANTIS, and (getting back to Bill Galvan again) THE PINK PANTHER, which will also be a FCBD 2016 offering.



Interesting footnote: When I headed over to American Mythology's website to see what info I could find on their comics, they also list our old friend HOLLY GOLIGHTLY among their list of creators contributing to their titles. Frustratingly though, after a brief profile of Holly's previous work, they never actually mentioned which title she's slated to be working on! A mystery for another day... stay tuned.

Quote"...well, they can't replace Fernando and Dan. They can't replace Gisele and-"

Well, they can and have tried to replace them with "plenty of nice kids"... and while those nice kids have to make a living too, that doesn't mean I'll necessarily want to read whatever comic book they produce for Archie Comics. But I'm sure they're still nice kids and all.

Quote from: kassandralove on April 30, 2016, 04:44:06 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 30, 2016, 02:14:24 AM

Some great issues from the 1970s there! I see an issue of DC's GHOSTS in that basket, but what's the other DC comic in back next to it? Can't quite make it out.

Other comic was Batman!!

Cool! That was really a fun DC comic back in the day. Maybe I just get too jaded from reading so many comics, but it doesn't seem like there are as many fun comics published today as there used to be overall, despite the huge number of titles out there. You can still find some ones you missed out on in the back issue bins, I guess!

Quote from: daren on April 29, 2016, 02:56:47 AM
My offer's open for DKD 3 too (which was even better than the last one)!

I honestly don't know how they do it. Issue #1 was great, and a worthy addition to any comic fan's reading list, but they've consistently managed to top themselves with issues #2 and #3 (and I have every expectation now that they'll do it again with #4). It's like they keep ratcheting up the FUN level!

Just read it about an hour ago. It just keeps getting better. I don't even have the time to go into detail about all the great stuff on every single page. I mean, you could do annotations every other panel or so, commenting on all the in-jokes, references, homages and observations about the industry and fandom. There are just LEVELS to this thing that give me so much appreciation for it. I love the whole retro comic-within-a-comic "then-and-now" setup. I really feel like this is a comic made by fans who also happen to be pros, FOR fans. I mean that in the best possible sense of old-school fannish enthusiasm and a real love for comics, with just a twinge of "seen that, done that" and a knowing wink to the wise. I want to gush about it more, but words fail me at the moment. I'm just loving it in every possible way!

I was stoked to read the announcement at the end that KITTY had been picked up by Chapterhouse as a print comic. Whether that will be new material beyond the original Kickstarter miniseries, or just print versions of the individual issues, I'll be there ordering copies of it, because this book deserves all the support I can give it. I might have wished ideally for a larger publisher like IDW with better exposure in comic shops and more resources to promote the title, but I'm not going to quibble, this is definitely a win.

I'm going to separate my list by 20th Century and 21st Century (although the 1990s is obviously a period where the two generations of Archie artists overlap).

20th Century
Betty - #1 DAN DeCARLO; #2 AL HARTLEY

Veronica - #1 DAN DeCARLO; #2 HARRY LUCEY; #3 DAN PARENT (he was at a slight disadvantage, having "only" worked on her for 10 years at this point)

Cheryl - #1 DAN DeCARLO; #2 DAN PARENT; #3 HOLLY GOLIGHTLY (I was thinking of her as mostly a "modern" Archie artist, but her work on Cheryl was mainly in the 20th Century)

Sabrina - #1 should be DAN DeCARLO, but I wish he'd drawn the character more than he did in the early years. As it is, he did more Sabrina pages in the late 1990s. #2 STAN GOLDBERG; #3 DAN PARENT (1990s)

Josie, Melody, Valerie, Alexandra, Alex,  Pepper, Sock, Albert and Alan M. - #1 DAN DeCARLO
Josie & the Pussycats - #2 STAN GOLDBERG

Archie - #1 BOB MONTANA (the newspaper strip, 1946-1975); #2 HARRY LUCEY; #3 BOB WHITE

Jughead - #1 GEORGE FRESE; #2 SAMM SCHWARTZ

Reggie - No one in particular. I haven't noticed any "main" artist on Reggie solo stories, nor have I read that many of them. Possibly the two names that come to mind first are GEORGE FRESE and BOB WHITE

Ginger Snapp - # HARRY LUCEY (no contest)

Wilbur - #1 DAN DeCARLO ("The NEW Wilbur", beginning in 1958)

That Wilkin Boy - #1 DAN DeCARLO; #2 STAN GOLDBERG

Madhouse Glads -  #1 DAN DeCARLO; #2 STAN GOLDBERG (beginning to sound like a broken record here, but it just shows how important these two artists were)

...

21st Century
Archie - #1 PAT & TIM KENNEDY; #2 DAN PARENT; #3 GISELE LAGACE

Jughead - #1 REX LINDSEY; #2 FERNANDO RUIZ (a very strong showing mainly in JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST stories)

Reggie - #1 FERNANDO RUIZ

Chuck - #1 FERNANDO RUIZ

Dilton - #1 FERNANDO RUIZ

Betty - #1 DAN PARENT; #2 JEFF SHULTZ

Veronica - #1 DAN PARENT (...and here's where Veronica truly became his character. Full credit to Dan for fully developing her.); #2 JEFF SHULTZ

Cheryl - #1 DAN PARENT (and while Cheryl dwindled somewhat in importance following the 1990s, again, Dan deserves a lot of credit for developing her as much as she was)

Kevin - DAN PARENT (He doesn't even need a number here. It should go without saying, and I almost forgot to mention it.)

Josie & the Pussycats - #1 HOLLY GOLIGHTLY; #2 DAN PARENT; #3 GISELE LAGACE (only the one story)

Sabrina - #1 HOLLY GOLIGHTLY; #2 GISELE LAGACE (and she only drew her twice!); #3 DAN PARENT

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I need to make special mention here of Gisele Lagace. She put a very strong individual artistic stamp on these characters, in only a VERY small number of stories, while still keeping them true to the classic Archie style. That's a tough balancing act. This is true as well, to a somewhat lesser extent, of Holly G, whose work with the company was unfortunately too brief. Dan and Fernando put in more than 20 years with the company, and over the course of that span, you can see a real development of their individual styles, constantly honed over those years (particularly when the company loosened the reigns at little at the beginning of the 21st Century), but they've both contributed hundreds of pages over that span of time, so it's not surprising that they'd be among the most popular artists who are well-identified with these characters. That's true of Rex Lindsey as well.

If time and space were no obstacle to casting, Nancy Kulp (Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies) could have fit the part of Miss Grundy perfectly.

Quote from: kassandralove on April 29, 2016, 02:27:18 AM
I got a huge gift basket from being at home with hurt food!





Look at all those new comics!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Some great issues from the 1970s there! I see an issue of DC's GHOSTS in that basket, but what's the other DC comic in back next to it? Can't quite make it out.

Yesterday I finished reading ARCHIE'S PAL JUGHEAD ARCHIVES VOL. 1. There's a second volume of this series coming in June, and I plan to get that too. I'd love it if Dark Horse Archives produced volumes of REGGIE and ARCHIE'S GIRLS BETTY AND VERONICA too. I haven't gotten any of the ARCHIE ARCHIVES volumes they did (which begin at the beginning, in 1941), but that's mainly because I have a low tolerance for the 1940s Archie stories. The quality of the art and stories seemed to vastly improve by 1949, where the first Jughead volume picks up in the chronology, plus I just find Jughead more intrinsically interesting as a character.

The exception, for me, would be Bob Montana's comic strip Archie, the first IDW volume of which (beginning with the first strip in 1946) I greatly enjoyed -- but it's worth noting that the characters at that point hadn't quite evolved into the versions that we know today. Some of their characteristics are in place right from the start, but others hadn't really begun to be emphasized yet -- notably, Veronica in the strip seems a much more benign or innocent character than she later became. Betty doesn't get a lot of focus, relatively speaking, but the strips where she does show the beginning of her character development, and even then she seems like a sweet kid. I was surprised at the number of plots (or variations on same) that I can recall seeing used in later comic book stories. Montana was a great gag writer too, and the strip format seems to showcase his strengths. His daily strips seem a lot funnier to me than the comic book stories that were being published at the same time.

Quote from: Queen Cheryl on April 30, 2016, 12:51:19 AM
Maybe he's just horrified at Veronica's awful grey leggings! Or the fact that Betty could do much better... 

You know, now that you called my attention to Veronica's legs, it seems like she's been hitting the sodas pretty hard lately. 

Quote from: Queen Cheryl on April 29, 2016, 11:29:40 PM
I love that one of the accidental Archie/Reggie smooch! And that one of Pop Tate paying way too much attention to Betty/Veronica sharing the shake...    He looks like a pervert, haha.

Your takeaway from THIS is that Pop is paying too much attention to B&V? He seems pretty relaxed about it, all things considered. At any rate, compared to Archie and Kevin's reactions. Waitaminnit... Kevin is standing there with his jaw dropping? His gaydar must have been on the fritz... 

Quote from: JonInIowaCity on April 29, 2016, 03:50:56 PM
I think you're reading too much into the name of her blog.

Could be. In my own defense though, I have to say it's not the kind of thing I'd normally even be pondering if she hadn't thrown it out there. First impressions and all that.

You'd think that having a regular role in the cast of GLEE would have given Jane Lynch a leg up with the writer of RIVERDALE. She'd have been perfect casting for Miss Grundy. And yes, I realize those casting decisions aren't all up to Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, but you'd think he could at least recommend her or something.

Quote from: spazaru on April 29, 2016, 03:08:18 PM

Quote from: JonInIowaCity on April 29, 2016, 09:59:51 AM
I'm pretty sure that her blog title is just an effort at being ironic.

I'm not the biggest Erica fan, but of course you're right.  To me, it's obvious.

Well, she's a success (at least currently) as an artist, in terms of having "made it" as professional (apart from any artistic critiques), but that doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the "life" part. I can think of a number of successful (in career terms) artists who nevertheless had other problems with their lives. In fact, it's almost a cliche that people of an artistic temperament don't always get along smoothly in life. None of us here know her at any rate, so who can say what she is or isn't being ironic about.

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on April 29, 2016, 02:02:04 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 29, 2016, 02:38:57 AM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on April 28, 2016, 08:31:15 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 28, 2016, 04:11:57 PM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on April 28, 2016, 01:08:33 PM
Didn't Veronica calm down once Dan Parent took over? Or did it happen before. By the way, I prefer the old Veronica.

When BETTY AND ME started, that was the beginning of sweet and nice Betty, and the beginning of the end of feisty, wily schemer Betty. Similarly, when Veronica got her own comic, they had to tone down some of her more outrageous aspects to make her more likable and sympathetic. Same thing happened to Cheryl Blossom when she got her own comic. I guess the takeaway here is if you like this or that character, then just pray that they don't get their own comic book.

So Betty changed in the late 60s? Many stories from Betty and Me still had a "crazy" Betty, but I guess those stories were from the first issues. Okay and then Veronica got nicer in the 80s, when, like I said, Dan Parent took over.

It was a slightly slower evolution for Betty, but you begin to see it more easily by tracking the change in "Betty's Diary" stories. The early ones (pre- and early BETTY AND ME) are short gag strips, outrageous exaggerations of small incidents that occur, magnified through the fish-eye lens of Betty's mind to imbue the slightest event as fraught with implications of Archie's burning desire for her. Frankly, they make Betty look like some kind of nutcase who lives in a world of fantasy. Some of them even seem a little cruel, like the other kids are laughing at Betty's naivete behind her back. But gradually, the later Betty's Diary stories become more grounded in realism and portray her more sympathetically, and concentrate on showing her sweet side. At a certain point in the 1970s, Al Hartley took over as the primary Betty's Diary writer, and the change is complete. Kathleen Webb solidified that in longer stories later, and in the actual BETTY'S DIARY spinoff comic book. The changes in the regular Betty stories paralleled that evolution, and perhaps even ran ahead of it in some ways, but essentially, by the late 60s that wily schemer Betty has pretty well disappeared.

I wish they would have brought back a bit of her craziness once in a while, just to add a little spice. I love her either way, but it was very entertaining to see her coming up with wild and crazy schemes.

It's not just Betty though. There's this general shift in emphasis to most of the stories, where once past the mid-1960s, the wilder, woolier, and whackier type of Archie stories just fades. Things had to gear up in the late 1960s when the number of titles increased, and there was also a parallel with the same issue of parental concerns that affected television animation at that time. They knew that parents had their eyes on them and were more aware of the comics than ever before. ACP had a lot riding on those animated cartoons for the better part of a decade, from the late 60s through the late 70s.