Here's two for the price of one.   Left: Rich Koslowski.  Right: Kate Leth.

Quote from: Mr.Lodge on April 08, 2016, 09:31:43 AM
I would love to see the "Freshman Year" for her they were going to do but never did 

Batton Lash seemed to be off in his own little pocket dimension of the Archie Multiverse, and nothing he devised for the mythos seems to have been taken to heart by any of the other Archie writers and acknowledged or incorporated in any way. "The Missing Chapters" seems to have been the last of his work for Archie, as well. In fact, as far as I can tell, Archie Meets The Punisher, "House of Riverdale" (a.k.a. Archie's Haunted House), and "Freshman Year" and its sequel "The Missing Chapters" seem to comprise the entirety of his work for ACP.

I suspect Lash's main connection with ACP was through a previous editor who is no longer employed by the company.

Quote from: nuageo on April 08, 2016, 07:27:23 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 05:26:02 AM

Quote from: nuageo on April 08, 2016, 04:31:47 AM
Classic Archie or New Archie are not selling enough.
Archie is dying slowly! 
Maybe Riverdale TV Series is the last chance to save Archie. 

That would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. 

Sometimes, the cure has a horrible taste, but it helps a lot. 

Depends on your definition of "it helps". If the cure for ailing Dr. Jekyll involves his transforming into "healthy" Mr. Hyde, then I'm gonna say... let the patient die a natural death with dignity.

What is the max size limit for uploading images? I've tried uploading some images and get a warning that the file is too big, but it doesn't tell me what the max size allowable is per item, or the max total for batch uploads.

How come albums I've created don't show up when I choose "See Albums" from the dropdown menu under Media?

Quote from: nuageo on April 08, 2016, 04:31:47 AM
Classic Archie or New Archie are not selling enough.
Archie is dying slowly! 
Maybe Riverdale TV Series is the last chance to save Archie. 

That would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. 

Quote from: Mr.Lodge on April 08, 2016, 02:46:51 AM
How many copies of the new Jughead selling? Probably a LOT less than 18K? I'll guess around 10K.

Sales estimates for the rebooted titles (source: www.comichron.com):

ARCHIE #1 (July 2015) = 101,488
ARCHIE #1 (Aug. 2015) = +2,860 (reorders)
ARCHIE #2 (Aug. 2015) = 30,642
ARCHIE #3 (Oct. 2015) = 27,734
ARCHIE #4 (Nov. 2015) = 25,824
ARCHIE COLLECTORS EDITION [$9.99] (Dec. 2015) = 3,405
ARCHIE #5 (Jan. 2016) = 20,677
ARCHIE #6 (Feb. 2016) = 18,401

JUGHEAD #1 (Oct. 2015) = 32,118
JUGHEAD #2 (Nov. 2015) = 15,973
JUGHEAD #3 (Dec. 2015) = 12,229

No sales estimates available for March 2016 as yet. It would be fair to say there's a general downward trend in effect here, though. Exactly when or at what number it will level out is anyone's guess.

Comparative historical sales data provided for putting these sales figures in perspective:
http://www.comichron.com/titlespotlights/archie.html
Keep in mind that the last recorded years of sales data for the classic Archie series logged sales of 11,098 (2013) and 9,052 (2014).

Based on the trend of ARCHIE sales figures, a run of about 12-15 issues in total seems about right.

Another idea... ACP should partner up with Scholastic Books, the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books for grades pre-K through grade 12. Scholastic Books also holds the exclusive publishing rights to the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series, as well as owning other companies and publications like Reader's Digest, Grolier, and Klutz. They also promote Reading Clubs and Book Fairs in schools. This would allow ACP to distribute its trade collections through school systems. That would be an absolutely major inroad for ACP as far as distribution is concerned. With IDW covering the comic shop and bookstore markets, and Scholastic covering distribution through school systems, that would be a quantum leap as far as ACP getting their product in front of the audience.

Probably go into partnership with IDW as far as editorial and distribution. Floppy comics are probably non-workable as far as comics shops go, so I'd try to concentrate on new formats and penetrating new markets. Maybe original graphic novels (100 pages +/-) are the way to go as far as new Archie Classic stories are concerned, and more pages (10-15) of new stories in the regular digest titles. I'd try to concentrate on always having some continued stories going that could be recycled as later collections, too. More crazy crossovers with other companies' characters, too (that's the only thing that might work in floppy format). They could do a lot more with their classic library material too -- I'd try to work with Craig Yoe on developing books of cherry-picked stories and archival/chronological reprintings of some classic past titles, beginning with the Silver Age material.

At the rate they are going, I'll be surprised if the reboot outlasts the run of KEVIN KELLER.

Quote from: Oldiesmann on April 08, 2016, 12:44:30 AM
They're bringing in a new artist, at least temporarily, for Jughead. I still wish they'd just use Dan or Fernando instead. Both have proven they can draw the "new" style just as well as the classic style.

My #1 choice for the definitive living Jughead artist would be Rex Lindsay. My #2 choice would be Fernando Ruiz. They both did a great job and are the two living artists (other than George Frese and Samm Schwartz) that I most associate with Jughead. Fernando also does a great job on the occasional Chuck Clayton or Reggie story, so those are 2 more characters I primarily associate with him. Dan Parent I associate more with Betty & Veronica, as the best artist for those characters.

The new artist replacing Erica Henderson is Derek Charm. At least it's a definite improvement.

Who is better? GINGER.
And why? HARRY LUCEY.

Quote from: invisifan on April 07, 2016, 01:28:39 PM

Quote from: kassandralove on April 07, 2016, 12:09:26 PM
The jughead artwork was so brutal I didn't even finish reading issue one- I can't believe they hired that artist. It looks like scribbles
Even in the new Archie relaunch I find that some areas are really sloppy and rushed- Like they forget how to draw thing proportionally.

If one intends to draw a comics that's intended to look like more than kids cartoons you really need to have a basic understanding of anatomy — which Henderson does not demonstrate ... and even for a completely surreal cartoon you have to be consistent to make it work — again, not evident in her work ...

it's more like bad fan art from someone with raw talent, but no training.

I don't find the artwork in ARCHIE to be much better, frankly. I guess it is, on a technical level, closer to representational art, but I just find Fiona Staples' work to be kind of bland and boring. The best looking artwork I've seen associated with the reboot are a few of the variant covers, like that Andrew Robinson guy who did one of the recent variants.

Read today...

SABRINA'S HOLIDAY SPECTACULAR #2 (1993) - There's a 3-part new story that takes up about half the issue; the rest are reprints (that I'd mostly read before). The new story tries to cover Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, all in one story (the previous issue's story was completely Halloween-based). Just need to find the third issue now.
REGGIE'S REVENGE #1 (1994) - One new 8-page story, plus a bunch of Reggie-centric reprints. Surprisingly (they're all sourced), none of them originally from REGGIE's own series. All of the reprints have the "Reggie's Revenge" logo pasted on them, though.
WORLD OF JUGHEAD (Archie Giant Series) #542 - "Throughout History With Jughead!" - A bunch of short stories with Jughead existing in different time periods... no other explanation offered. (I was sort of hoping it could be retroactively explained by way of the Time Police, but... nah.)
FACULTY FUNNIES #1-5 (1989) - The complete series, which strangely enough, has both an "origin issue" and a final issue where the "Awesome Foursome" lose their superpowers for good. You don't see that often in a comic book series.
WORLD OF ARCHIE (Giant Series) #587, 599 - Two issues that introduced the EXPLORERS OF THE UNKNOWN, by Rich Margopoulis and Rex Lindsay (the same people responsible for JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE). Kind of a shameless rip-off of Jack Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown, even to the point of the team having their secret base inside a mountaintop. It's surprising that DC's lawyers never sent ACP a cease-and-desist letter (or maybe they did, and that's when the series ended).

It's always fascinating when reading these older Archie Comics to look through the ads and see not only what they were publishing at that time, but what they were selling. 1990s Archies seem to have all kinds of merchandise offered through mail-order. These had some ads for things like the Riverdale High "Archie Romance Novels", t-shirts, hats, watches, a 1990 calendar, and posters, including two 6-foot tall posters of Archie and Jughead!

Quote from: JonInIowaCity on April 07, 2016, 09:30:30 AM
I read Archie #7 last night. Hopefully I'll read the latest Uncanny X-Men and Die Kitty Die! #2 tonight or tomorrow.

Uncanny X-Men #6 is some kind of lead-in to another massive crossover story, "Apocalypse War". As such, I'm already losing interest (the first five issues were better than I expected them to be), and having art by a couple of fill-in artists didn't help much. That's pretty much been the story of my X-Men reading experience though -- I read 6 or 8 issues, then there's some lousy crossover tie-in issues, and I quit reading.

Quote from: BlueBomber2015 on April 06, 2016, 09:56:49 PM
I;m reading some Star Trek Books, as well as Star Trek Memories by William Shatner, and I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy.

Star Trek memoirs by the original cast members have practically become a mini-genre of their own. Here's a few others:

I AM NOT SPOCK by Leonard Nimoy (1977) [I guess he changed his mind by 2015...]
BEYOND UHURA - Star Trek and Other Memories by Nichelle Nichols (1994)
STAR TREK MOVIE MEMORIES by William Shatner with Chris Kreski (1994)
TO THE STARS - Star Trek's Mr. Sulu by George Takei (1995)
BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY: Star Trek's "Scotty" - in his own words by James Doohan (1996)
GET A LIFE! by William Shatner with Chris Kreski (1999)
I'M WORKING ON THAT: A Trek From Science Fiction To Science Fact by William Shatner with Chip Walter (2002)
UP TILL NOW - The Autobiography by William Shatner with David Fisher (2008)
SHATNER RULES: Your Key To Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World At Large by William Shatner with Chris Regan (2011)
OH MYYY! - There Goes the Internet by George Takei (2013)
LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS - Oh Myyy! Volume 2 by George Takei (2013)
LEONARD: My Fifty-Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man by William Shatner with David Fisher (2016)