Quote from: Archiecomicxfan215 on October 05, 2018, 12:51:02 PM

Hmm. Not quite what I expected. They changed the basic body colors, squared off his head a little, and gave his eyes kind of a more sinister look. I never did see Space Jam; no real interest in any sports-related stuff, plus I tend not to like those live-action/animated mashups.

Duck Dodgers the series was good, for a newer cartoon. Wish they'd made more episodes of that, and The Looney Tunes Show.

THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS Deluxe Edition HC - The short and dirty (and somewhat peeved) review:

Here's the contents listing of the new HC edition:
key   DECADE   
SOURCE, title, writer, pencil artist
reprints NEW to this edition in BLUE

   1940s
PEP 36   The 3-11 Club   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
ARCHIE 4   Spring Fever   Ed Goggin   Harry Sahle
ARCHIE 16   Monkey Shines   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
ARCHIE 7   Time for Trouble   Harry Sahle   Harry Sahle
PEP 48   Camera Bugs   Ed Goggin   Harry Sahle
   1950s
LITTLE ARCHIE 2   The Cook-Off   Bob Bolling   Bob Bolling
JUGHEAD'S FOLLY 1   no title   Joe Edwards   Joe Edwards
   1960s
LIFE WITH ARCHIE 16 Hi-Jinx and Deep Divers   Sy Reit   Bob White
ARCHIE'S PALS N GALS 29   Beetlemania   Frank Doyle   Samm Schwartz
JOSIE 19   The Hold Up   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
JUGHEAD 119   Pardon My Computer   George Gladir   Samm Schwartz
EVERYTHING'S ARCHIE   Visit to a Small Panic   George Gladir   Harry Lucey
   1970s
LAUGH 276   The Bye Bye Blues   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
RIVERDALE HIGH 18   Kong Phoo   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
ARCHIE 264   Minding a Star   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
REGGIE AND ME 104   Costume Caper   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
B&V v1 277   Melvin's Angels   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo
   1980s
ARCHIE 292   Verve to Conserve   George Gladir   Dan DeCarlo Jr.
ARCHIE 331   Saturday's Child   Frank Doyle   Dan DeCarlo Jr.
BETTY'S DIARY 1   The Art Lesson   Kathleen Webb   Dan DeCarlo
GIANT SERIES 590   Back From the Future   Rich Margopoulis   Rex Lindsey
   1990s
NEW ARCHIES DIGEST 10   Mystery of the Mummy's Curse   Mike Pellowski   Henry Scarpelli
CHERYL BLOSSOM 15   Cheryl's Beach Bash   Dan Parent   Dan Parent
   2000s
ARCHIE'S WEIRD MYSTERIES 6   A Familiar Old Haunt   Paul Castiglia   Fernando Ruiz
SABRINA 70   Spell It Out   Tania Del Rio   Tania Del Rio
   2010s
JUGHEAD 200   Something Ventured, Something Gained   Tom Root   Rex Lindsey
ARCHIE 636   The Great Switcheroo!   Tania Del Rio   Gisele Lagace
COSMO 1   no title   Ian Flynn   Tracy Yardley
BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER - AT THE MOVIES 1
   Riot on the Set!   Bill Golliher   Dan Parent
   Movie Mix-Up!   Bill Golliher   Dan Parent
ARCHIE v2 32   no title   Mark Waid & Ian Flynn   Audrey Mok

And now, the BURN -
(Stories from the 2013 Best of Archie Comics TP edition which were dropped from the new HC edition in order to make way for those reprinted stories listed above in blue)
ARCHIE 2    Sir Archibald of the Round Table   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
PEP 37   Oscar   Bob Montana   Bob Montana
ARCHIE ANNUAL 8   Poor Little Rich Whirl   George Frese   George Frese
ARCHIE 123   Over-Joyed   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
JUGHEAD 120   Voice Control   Frank Doyle   Samm Schwartz
ARCHIE 178   Stick With It   Frank Doyle   Harry Lucey
TV LAUGH-OUT 86   (JOSIE in) Scratch One Clown   unknown   Dan DeCarlo Jr.
ARCHIE AND ME 144      Plight of the Perilous Pike   Bob Bolling   Bob Bolling

Well, they sacrificed quite a few GOOD stories in there in order to utilize the newly-added pages as an advertising tool. And not just those pages, either. There were several other stories that WERE included again, that COULD have been dropped because they appear in other collections like Archie Americana, etc. But no... if ACP still has those TPs in stock, then the stories still might function to sell some dusty old copies of Sabrina manga collections or something. In other words, what's included or not included in this "Deluxe Edition" isn't being determined on a basis of what is best or NOT best, but what best functions to sell you other Archie Comics trade collections. That's how "The BEST of Archie Comics" is determined by ACP. So when it came to cutting stories from the older edition, rather than keep in reprints that were unique to that volume and appear in no other collections, they left in stories like "Kong Phoo" (recently reprinted in the ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH TP collection), and "Costume Caper" (which also appears in ARCHIE AMERICANA: THE BRONZE AGE - along with "Kong Phoo" again). And you know, even before the cutting began, THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS 3 was not as strong a collection of stories as the previous two books. Now, they've made it even worse. And I DID expect them to include recent reprints at the end (no gripes about COSMO or B&V), but an issue of ARCHIE (#32) from two months ago, plus the same 5-page preview of ARCHIE 1941 #1 that we've already seen in ALL their floppy comics?    

Keep your old TP edition, if you have it.  I'm not inclined to buy a Deluxe Edition Vol. 4 HC, if there ever is one.

As an aside, there's a quote in the book from Victor Gorelick in reference to ARCHIE 1941 as being "... one of the best things Archie Comics has ever done. In fact, it may be the best thing." That is either complete BS snake-oil salesmanship, or jf he really believes that, VG has completely lost it.

Quote from: Archiecomicxfan215 on October 04, 2018, 07:27:58 PM
Looney Tunes Playboy Penguin Funko Pop collectible

That was a San Diego Comic Con exclusive, right? I had to look it up because I wondered if it was the character I was thinking of (from the Bugs Bunny cartoon, the title of which I can't recall off the top of my head). Usually I've been immune to the attractions of Funko Pop vinyls (my tastes just run to toys having a more accurate representation, rather than an interpretive one), but in this instance the character as realized in vinyl actually looks fairly close to its on-screen counterpart (except for having no irises, for some reason). Probably a total fluke that the original animation character design just happens to be closer to the usual Funko Pop style than would normally be the case. Such an obscure WB character, too.



Hey, here's a question that just occurred to me... did Funko ever do a Marvin the Martian Pop vinyl figure?  It just hit me that the relative head-to-body proportions of Marvin's original character design are pretty much Funko Pop standard, or close enough, anyway.

ARCHIE #699 - So now I know what happened in ARCHIE #1-32. Of those, I'd only read #1, 2, 20-22 and 32 prior to this, and it seems like more pages of this condensed reprint were devoted to that issue #32 than to any other single issue. It was a little "the story so far"/"previously in ARCHIE...", but I bet you could have shrunk the essential stories of those first 32 issues of ARCHIE down to about 8 issues, and they'd have read perfectly fine as normal comics. I already ordered #700 (more to get the Mike Allred variant cover than anything else).

DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES #1 - They're just dropping "Walt" and the possessive 's from the title and renumbering it. Otherwise the same as the previous WDC&S.

ASGARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #2 - Kinda bored with this; it might be my last issue.

    A bunch of this year's Halloween Comic Fest issues (these ship to comic shops weeks in advance of the actual week of Halloween, so I got to read them earlier than most people):

APOSIMZ SAMPLER - HCF 2018 - Not sure if it was enough to convince me totally, but I took a chance and ordered the first volume of the TP collection.

SHIBUYA GOLDFISH #1 - HCF 2018 - I think this is the first horror manga I've read that's drawn in a traditional shonen manga ("boys' comics") style. Most horror manga I've seen has been in the generally less-cartoony/more realistically-drawn seinin manga ("young men's comics") style. It's a weird contrast, with high school sophomores as the main protagonists. The plot is simple enough: on an afternoon daytrip to Shibuya (a trendy shopping district), all of a sudden monstrously huge goldfish appear, swimming in thin air, attacking people and eating them, and talking. A weird premise for sure. Not sure how I feel about this one. The art style is just "okay". May have to think about it a while before ordering the TP collection.

JUNJI ITO'S FRANKENSTEIN - HCF 2018 - I've been a fan of Junji Ito's work for a while now. Already pre-ordered the hardcover collection that this is a preview of. His art style looks a little different here. It might be an earlier work of his, before he quite refined his current style, or maybe it's just that this work is set in the late 1700s, while most of his other horror manga is set in modern-day Japan. And of course, the style of horror (since it's an adaptation of Mary Shelley's book) is different than the type of stories that Ito writes for himself. I must own at least a half-dozen comic adaptations of the original novel, but I never seem to tire of reading the story again, as long as I like the artwork. Each adaptation tends to focus on different things from the original story, to a certain extent, so they're all different to some degree.

BATTLE ANGEL ALITA: HOMECOMING - HCF 2018 - I've already been getting all the ALITA deluxe hardcover collections, so this one is a no-brainer. (I'd already pre-ordered the HC). The full version is also a deluxe HC collection of four stories which haven't previously been translated into English.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS UNIVERSE: GENESIS #0 - HCF 2018 - This one was just sample pages from earlier-published American Mythology ERB comics, no new material.

PELLUCIDAR: FEAR ON FOUR WORLDS #1 (Part 3 of 4)
ZORRO: THE SWORDS OF HELL #1 (of 4)
LONE RANGER VOL 3 #1
NEW LIEUTENANTS OF METAL #4 (of 4)
GAMMA #1 (of 4)
TANK GIRL ALL STARS #4 (of 4)

Other stuff I got which haven't read yet:
THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 03 - I've only had time to skim it quickly. They added more recent reprints of the complete stories from COSMO #1, BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER - AT THE MOVIES #1, and ARCHIE #32 (one of the half-dozen issues I'd actually read before) at the end of the book. Other than that, I can't say exactly what might have been added, or more importantly, omitted,  from the prior Best of Archie Comics Book 3 TP collection just yet, until I do a page-by-page comparison. Full review to follow sometime within a week or so. At any rate, there are few (if any) hardcover collections of comics you can buy with comparable page count, for a cover price of only $20. Similar items from most other publishers can run anywhere in the $40 to $75 cover price range (usually depending on the anticipated number of copies they will sell, and how "deluxe" the book is). Even some of the larger trade paperback collections of older comics now retail for $35-40.

THE COMPLETE COSMO THE MERRY MARTIAN TP and COSMO VOL 01: SPACE ACES TP - I actually got the first of these a while ago when it first came out, but I thought (since I'd already read the whole thing in digital format a few years back) I'd wait until the rebooted COSMO came out in trade collection and review them together. Not sure how long it'll take me to get to these, but I guess it'll depend on which of this stuff I decide to read first. Also, at this writing, I'm about 1/4 of the way through the complete 26XX-page DEATH NOTE, and I'm sure I'll be wanting to read more of that this week as well.

MENAGE A 3 GN VOL 02 (by Dave Lumsden and Gisele Lagace) - Reprinting volumes 3 and 4 of the earlier, smaller-sized paperbacks at about twice the former page size. I like seeing Gisele's art at the larger size.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on October 03, 2018, 03:47:07 PM
Betty and Veronica is the last digest I'm subscribed to and I'm not sure why.  My subscription has another 10 issues or so and I'll probably renew it, assuming they're still publishing it, just to have a digest coming in.  I can't quite cut the cord all the way for some reason even though I've seen most of what's in all of them.

Same for me, I let all the other digest subs expire. I figure it's still worthwhile even if I've read half the stories before. The reason I let my sub for B&V Friends expire was, for some reason I don't quite understand, it seems to be mailed from some place different than the regular B&V digest. I've noticed even the plastic bags and the labels are slightly different. That alone wouldn't cause me to let the sub expire, but for some reason it always seems to arrive a week or more late (probably because it's mailed from somewhere else), and more frequently suffers damage from P.O. handling as a result. The regular B&V digest always seems to arrive on time (or at most a day or two later than comic shops), and if anything, is likely to arrive even earlier than in comic shops. So I just let the B&V Friends sub expire, and now order it through my LCS.

I let all three Archie digest subs expire even earlier (well, Funhouse was just cancelled on me, and I never subbed to Archie and Me), but I'm thinking of maybe starting to get the 1000 Page Comics bricks again. One thing I noticed about those is that they don't reprint any of the non-Archie/B&V/Jughead/Archie & Friends stories, so I feel like I still want to get both B&V digest because of the Sabrina and Josie stories (and possibly Cheryl; I don't know if those make it into the 1000-pagers). But it seems like anything non-Archie (like Wilbur or That Wilkin Boy) had stopped being printed in the three Archie digest titles some while back, so it wouldn't be a concern, and at least that way I'd get to (eventually) read the new lead stories from the Archie digests.

BETTY & VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #267 - Got this one in the mail yesterday, a week early. Usually I'm anticipating getting the newest B&V digest in the mail, so I'm hoping to see it every day when I look in the mailbox, but this time it was so early that I wasn't even thinking about it - a nice surprise. Nice Halloween cover by Jeff Shultz. Too bad there were only three reprints in here that were Halloween stories. One is "Monsterbash", a 12-page B&V story from one of those Halloween Comic Fest giveaways from some years back. The second one's a Sabrina story from the 90s, and the last one's a Cheryl Blossom story from the 00s (both 6-pagers). I'd read all of those before. The new lead story by Dan Parent didn't have a Halloween theme (drat!). In it, Betty gets a part-time job working for Lodge Industries. Mr. Lodge is impressed with Betty's work and gives her a raise the first week. Mr. Lodge really seems to like Betty (but why wouldn't he). Is it my imagination, or does she look like she's drawn a little bustier than usual in this story? Maybe it's that white shirt and tie. There are few stories that stood out from the rest, but I don't have it right in front of me at the moment. I always look forward to stories written by Kathleen Webb, and there were a few of those. In one of the best ones, she explains to the readers the differences between girls and boys (get your mind out of the gutter) and it's pretty funny. Apart from the handful of stories that were standouts, it's a fairly average issue. It came at a good time, because I really needed a fix of classic B&V.

DEATH NOTE [ALL-IN-ONE EDITION] - Started reading it yesterday, and read the first 22 chapters or 518 pages. This is a huge brick of paper with over 2600 pages. I don't think I have any other comic book with this many pages. It's kind of heavy, and because of the smaller paperback book page size, I have to hold it up closer to read it, because the artwork isn't as simple and the text is smaller than an Archie 1000 Page Comics digest. I'm going to see how much more of it I can get read today. A lot happens just the first 100 pages. It starts when a super-smart high school student named Light Yagami finds a notebook, which turns out to belong to Ryuk, one of the Japanese death gods. Anyone's name whose face he can think of when when he writes it in the notebook will die of a heart attack within 40 seconds - unless he specifically writes some other method of death. It gets more interesting from there, as he decides to make the world a better place by killing off known and/or convicted criminals. All of these criminals suddenly dying of heart attacks does not go unnoticed by law enforcement agencies, and soon he's the object of an intense manhunt, and becomes drawn into a cat-and-mouse game of moves and countermoves by "L", another teen genius detective who's assisting law enforcement by running the task force hunting "Kira" (sounds the same as "killer" in Japanese). It's a real page-turner, I have to admit.

Quote from: ASS-P on October 01, 2018, 08:54:43 PM
...(I lost another draft )...I don't know whether this phone has that...and if it does, I might not be able to do it . I am REALLY I xersupplied with tech know-how .........

It really sounds like you'd be better off trying to access this site on a regular computer with a real keyboard.

Quote from: ASS-P on September 30, 2018, 08:13:53 AM
...Oh. God, another carefully written draft fell victim to this crappy phone!

Isn't there a notepad app on your phone you can use to type out replies in? Then you can copy&paste the finished text into the browser window for post replies. If you somehow lose it in the browser window before it actually posts, then you can go back to your notepad app and try copy&paste again until you actually get it to post.

BIO-BOOSTER ARMOR GUYVER by Yoshiki Takaya (Viz, 1993-1997):
  BIO-BOOSTER ARMOR GUYVER (VOL. 1)
  REVENGE OF CHRONOS (VOL. 2)
  DARK MASTERS (VOL. 3)
  ESCAPE FROM CHRONOS (VOL. 4)
  GUYVER REBORN (VOL. 5)
  HEART OF CHRONOS (VOL. 6)
  ARMAGEDDON (VOL. 7)

That was a great action/SF/superhero manga. Too bad the translated version had to end just when things were really getting good. The Japanese version began running in 1985, and apart from a couple of breaks in continuous publication (1997-99 and 2002-07), is still running today (compiled into 32 tankobon reprint volumes so far). Sure would like to have been able to read more of it in English.

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 27, 2018, 09:05:33 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on September 27, 2018, 01:16:06 AM

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 26, 2018, 02:43:53 PM

Love Tokyo Tarareba Girls! Did you like it?

[...] Mixed feelings. There is something I like about it, but it does seem weirdly 30-something angsty, and as a result of that feels somewhat emotionally exhausting to read.

The other thing I noted here is that while on the one hand, the author wants to maintain a certain degree of realism/verisimilitude, on the other hand, she's cast her main character into a role as the heroine of the kind of romantic soap-opera (with a much younger male model pursuing her), which is the exact opposite of a realistic scenario -- it's exactly the romantic fantasy that is being critiqued (via the screenplays of the main character as a writer). It's confusing to me whether the author has some ultimate purpose in these clashing elements, or if it's more of a commercial concession to the perceived audience, sort of a "have your cake and eat it too" thing.

I loved it because of all the Sex and the City spoofs. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it did. The younger male "fantasy" is very popular in Asia particularly in K-dramas known as "noona dramas."

Tokyo Tarareba Girls is, in fact, the very first josei manga I've read. My confusion here stems from trying to decipher whether the manga is intending to be a "realistic slice-of-life dramedy" or a traditional romantic fantasy story, because it has elements of both. In diametric opposition to the fantasy of Rinko, an unmarried older woman (possibly) finding love with a younger, idealized fantasy lover, the unrealism of the romantic fantasy is pointed out by the "what if" duo of Tara and Reba, and the direct critical comments of "Key", the fantasy lover himself. Also directly contrasting the romantic fantasy are the (incipient) relationships of Rinko's friends, Kaori (possibly rediscovering a lost lover she regrets having broken up with... but I foresee complications) and Koyuki (who finds her ideal type, who seems like a nice guy... but he's married). These seem like more realistic relationships where everything isn't so perfect, not like in romance comics. So it seems to me as though there are mixed messages in this manga, but the manga seems to lean a little more heavily on the side of "realistic slice-of-life", so maybe the Rinko/Key fantasy-romance angle won't work out after all. It feels to me like if it does, it kind of betrays the other side of what's going on here. What I'd like to see instead is that it doesn't work out, but instead Rinko discovers something about herself, that allows her to become more aware/open to a more realistic type of romantic relationship. The major point being made here so far, it seems to me, is that these women aren't giving themselves a chance for realistic relationships by cloistering themselves off together in a small bar, gossiping, and commiserating "O, woe is us" and getting drunk to escape dealing with living life.

I've never seen Sex in the City, so that whole subtext was lost on me.

X-MEN BLUE #36 (final issue)
THE SENTRY #4
THE TERRIFICS #8
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #7 (of 12)
HEROES IN CRISIS #1 (of 9)
LOONEY TUNES #245
UNCLE SCROOGE: MY FIRST MILLIONS #1 (of 4)
IMPOSSIBLE INC #1 (of 5)
VAMPIRELLA/DEJAH THORIS #1
HILLBILLY: RED EYED WITCHERY FROM BEYOND #2 (of 4)
RICK & MORTY #42
RICK & MORTY VS DUNGEONS & DRAGONS #2 (of 4)

manga:
  ALL YOU NEED IS KILL TP by Hiroshi Sakurazaka & Takeshi Obata
  WORLD'S END HAREM VOL 03 [tankobon] by LINK & Kotaro Shono
  PRECARIOUS WOMAN EXECUTIVE MISS BLACK GENERAL VOL 02 [tankobon] by JIN
  20th CENTURY BOYS: The Perfect Edition TP VOL 01 by Naoki Urasawa
  GOLGO 13 VOL 01: SUPERGUN [tankobon] by Takeo Saito

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 26, 2018, 02:43:53 PM

Love Tokyo Tarareba Girls! Did you like it?

[...] Mixed feelings. There is something I like about it, but it does seem weirdly 30-something angsty, and as a result of that feels somewhat emotionally exhausting to read.

The other thing I noted here is that while on the one hand, the author wants to maintain a certain degree of realism/verisimilitude, on the other hand, she's cast her main character into a role as the heroine of the kind of romantic soap-opera (with a much younger male model pursuing her), which is the exact opposite of a realistic scenario -- it's exactly the romantic fantasy that is being critiqued (via the screenplays of the main character as a writer). It's confusing to me whether the author has some ultimate purpose in these clashing elements, or if it's more of a commercial concession to the perceived audience, sort of a "have your cake and eat it too" thing.

Quote from: irishmoxie on September 26, 2018, 02:43:53 PM
I have that Back Issue #107 but I haven't started it yet because it seems so overwhelming with information. From what I read of it I didn't understand the older non-Archie comic book references but I'll get to finishing it eventually. I really liked that Dan Parent interview in that other comic book store magazine you recommended. I didn't know he was bisexual.

Me neither!

ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66 #3 - Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson insinuate themselves among the Riverdale teens to try to discover clues to the United Underworld's dastardly plot. (Cue those hearts in the eyes of Archie and Betty for the new arrivals, respectively.) The United Underworld (as seen in the 1966 Batman movie) consists of The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, and Catwoman. In this series they are joined by The Siren (portrayed in the TV series by Joan Collins) because they need the power of her hypnotic siren song to control Hiram Lodge and the other Riverdale adults. Meanwhile back in Gotham City, Batman tracks down The Bookworm (played by Roddy McDowell), who is also somehow involved in the plot. The Siren's hypnotic song has Riverdale's adults under the UU's control, but they won't be satisfied until those pesky teens are also brought under control (although Riddler has already succeeded in making Reggie Mantle his new henchman). A curious (and hungry) Jughead attempts to sneak into Pop's (closed by Pop Tate on the UU's orders so they can use it as their HQ in Riverdale), only to be captured by The Joker. Holy hamburgers! Is this the end of Forsythe P. Jones?!

MEGA MAN by Ian Flynn (w), Ben Bates & various artists:
MEGA MAN #01-04 - Let the Games Begin
MEGA MAN #05-08 - Time Keeps Slipping
MEGA MAN #09-12 - The Return of Dr. Wily
MEGA MAN #13-16 - Spiritus Ex Machina
MEGA MAN #17-18 - Proto-Type
MEGA MAN #19-20 - Roll With It + Rock of Ages
MEGA MAN #21-23 - Countdown
  - At this point, I quit buying Mega Man from issues #24-27 until the crossover with the Sonic titles ended. I wasn't going to buy all those extra comics with characters that didn't interest me (which would have amounted to 4 issues of Sonic the Hedgehog plus 4 issues of Sonic Universe) just to follow the story in those four issues of Mega Man.
MEGA MAN #28-33 - Blackout: The Curse of Ra Moon
MEGA MAN #34-36 - Shadow of Ra Moon + The Trial of Dr. Wily
MEGA MAN X FCDB 2014 - The X Factor
MEGA MAN #37-40 - Dawn of X
MEGA MAN #41-44 - Legends of the Blue Bomber
MEGA MAN #45-48 - The Ultimate Betrayal
MEGA MAN    #49 - Prisoners of War
MEGA MAN FCBD 2015 Worlds Unite Prelude
MEGA MAN: WORLDS UNITE BATTLES #1
  - Once again, I skipped buying Mega Man #50-52 because the story was a crossover with the Sonic titles.)
MEGA MAN    #54 - Red Shift (story takes place before issue #53)
MEGA MAN    #53 - Blue Shift
MEGA MAN    #55 - Everlasting Peace
- Unfortunately, the final story arc of MEGA MAN never concluded due to the interruption of the plot by the "Worlds Unite" crossover with Sonic in issues #50-52. The final MEGA MAN story's plot had Proto Man tricked by Dr. Wily into kidnapping Dr. Cossack's daughter Kalinka, and Wily holding her hostage as leverage to coerce Dr. Cossack into attacking Mega Man with a new group of Robot Masters. After unburdening himself to Dr. Noele LaLinde and discovering Wily's deception, Proto Man vowed to correct his mistake and rescue Kalinka from Wily's clutches, but we never got to see that, or Mega Man's battle against Dr. Cossack's Robot Masters. The crossovers with Sonic really were an annoying interruption, because in both cases all the characters involved are returned to their respective universes moments after they left, with no memory of the events which had transpired, picking up the plot exactly where they'd left it prior to the crossover. As it was, it looks like the decision to end the title was made at the last moment, and knowing there was no way of squeezing a hurried confrontation and climax into the single issue #55, instead that issue's story was sort of a hallucinatory homage where Dr. Light has visions of the future -- which were all full-page panels showing the characters from the many Mega Man sequels in the franchise, along with minimal caption text boxes -- as a tribute/send-off of the title. Had those four issues (50, 51, 52, and 55) also been devoted to advancing the plot begun in issue #49, Ian Flynn could easily have wrapped up the series and ended on a satisfying conclusion, and Dr. Light's final vision of the future could have been condensed down to a half-dozen pages or so with smaller panels.

MEGA MAN was the comic book title that made me a regular customer of ACP for the first time since THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS in the 1980s. In retrospect, I wish that ACP had gotten the license to the character 15 or 20 years earlier. It might have made me more aware of what was going on in other ACP titles being published at that time ("Love Showdown", CHERYL BLOSSOM, SABRINA, JOSIE (in ARCHIE & FRIENDS), BETTY & VERONICA/SPECTACULAR, Craig Boldman & Rex Lindsey's JUGHEAD, etc.), and resulted in me becoming an Archie Comics fan much earlier. That, and the fact that I wish I could have read 250+ issues of this title like SONIC THE HEDGEHOG racked up.

I am not a gamer; never have been. What attracted me to MEGA MAN (known as ROCKMAN in Japan) were the appealing character designs and the ongoing theme of robots. I knew virtually nothing about the characters of this franchise prior to having read Ian Flynn's comic stories. As far as the robot theme goes, MEGA MAN carries on where one of my favorite mangas, Osamu Tezuka's ASTRO BOY, left off. Not only are the themes identical, but the character of Mega Man (a boy robot hero who fights bad robots, and feels bad about fighting them because he's pacifistic by nature) has many similarities to Astro Boy himself. Rock (Mega Man's real name) was made to be a helper robot, and it's part of his basic programming to be helpful. He was never meant to be a fighting robot, and in many ways he embodies the innocence, virtue and naivete of a real boy whose age he appears to be. This could have been a very simple comic book with a good robot hero fighting bad robots with varied appearances and special abilities, but Ian Flynn put a lot into making the large cast of robot characters all individuals who act & react differently. Even the evil archenemy Dr. Wily, while still your basic megalomanical villain, is given nuances not necessarily required by the story. He really did a fantastic job writing this, and put much more into it than "just a job" -- you could feel he had real enthusiasm to be working with these characters. Additionally, Ian Flynn added some original characters to the mix that did not appear in the Japanese videogames: Federal agents Rosalyn Krantz and Gil D. Stern, roboticist Dr. Noele LaLinde and her robotic creations Tempo/Quake Woman and Vesper Woman. The addition of new female characters was especially appreciated, since the original Japanese game has very few female characters (being a videogame marketed mainly to younger boys, that's to be expected). As much as I like Mega Man himself, I think my favorite storyline turned out to be "Dawn of X" (and I fervently wished that there had been a MEGAMAN X spinoff series other than the one-shot FCBD 2014 giveaway), and my favorite ongoing character, Proto Man (a.k.a. Blues or Break Man).

MEGA MAN by Hitoshi Ariga:
MEGA MAN MASTERMIX #1-3 (Udon/Capcom, 80 pages)
MEGA MAN MEGAMIX TP VOL 1-3 (Udon/Capcom)
MEGA MAN GIGAMIX TP VOL 1-3 (Udon/Capcom)

MEGA MAN ROBOT MASTER FIELD GUIDE TP (Udon/Capcom, Jan 2012)
MEGA MAN & MEGA MAN X: OFFICIAL COMPLETE WORKS TP (Udon/Capcom)

Just like with Ian Flynn's American comics, you could feel the love that Hitoshi Ariga possesses for the MEGA MAN characters. Hitoshi Ariga's manga version spans the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, but it's hard to tell if Ian Flynn read or was influenced by any of those stories (all had appeared in these translated collections from Udon Studios prior to the beginning of Ian Flynn's ACP comic series). Some of the stories have similar elements to ACP's comic book, but the characters often appear in far different situations, and the specifics of the stories vary greatly. Both authors tell completely different stories based on the game MEGA MAN 4, with the major threat being Ra Moon (in Ian Flynn's version) and Dark Moon (in Hitoshi Ariga's version) -- they have identical appearances -- but the two stories themselves having almost nothing else in common, except that they are both excellent stories. Hitoshi Ariga's manga had greater range (or a less consistent tone, depending on how you wanted to look at it, as a positive or a negative) in that while some of the longer stories (like the aforementioned Dark Moon/To A Shining Tomorrow, which takes up the latter half of Gigamix Vol. 2 and the entirety of Vol. 3) tended towards the ultra-dramatic, some shorter stories in Megamix Vol. 1 & 2, and Gigamix Vol. 1 & 2, were definitely more on the lighthearted, comedic side of things. At the extreme end of the comedy range, some of them were merely a series of short 4-panel gag strips. I didn't perceive this to be a bad thing at all, and enjoyed both types of stories. MASTERMIX (in the traditional floppy comics format, but reading from right-to-left, manga-style) presents the more dramatic stories from both the Gigamix and Megamix volumes at a larger size, and in color for the first time.

Mega Monster Battle: ULTRA GALAXY  - The best superhero movie I've ever seen...

GODZILLA: Planet of the Monsters - Brand new feature-length anime movie. This is a top-quality animated film. They spared no expense. Makes both the recent American (Legendary Pictures) film AND Toho's Shin Godzilla movie (both of which weren't bad) look a little shabby by comparison. This was an ebay purchase (I think it's a Malaysia/Singapore import), but it's both English-subtitled AND English-dubbed, and the dubbing is top-notch, too. I was a little worried about what to expect, since Toho has resisted going the anime route for decades, but the results are very satisfying. There's a sequel anime film to this that I purchased at the same time (haven't watched it as yet).

EDIT:
GODZILLA: City on the Edge of Battle - Sequel to the above. These movies are an interesting blend of CGI and traditional cel animation, with the results (IMO) having the "best of both worlds". It's quite a departure for the Godzilla franchise, in that the premise is that the remnants of humanity (together with the remnants of two friendly humanoid alien races) fled from Earth shortly after the end of the 21st Century in a giant space ark, when the long-running war of humans against daikaiju (giant monsters) had gone so badly that a remaining small group of humans chose to abandon the planet in hopes of finding another world to colonize. Twenty years later, the would-be colonists realized that finding another habitable planet wasn't as easy as they thought, and the recent discovery of some type of warp-drive principle determines them to return to Earth, and try to retake it from Godzilla. Due to the relativistic effects  of warp travel that the space ark people had no control over, when they finally return to Earth 22 years after they left it, they discover that 19,200 years have passed on Earth, and the world has evolved an entirely new ecosystem supporting Godzilla's existence. It's very different from your typical kaiju movie scenario, but analysis of Godzilla himself now reveals why he had been impervious to all prior attacks by even nuclear weapons (G has a biologically-generated force shield, but needs to collapse it in order to generate his atomic breath attack). A plan is evolved to fire an Electro-Magnetic-Pulse harpoon into G's body at the moment when his force shield is down. Triggering the EMP within G's body should set up a chain reaction that will destroy him. It's humanity's only hope of reclaiming their home planet, so the future of everything rests on what they do now. The first film ended on a cliffhanger, and so does the second, which means there should be a third (or maybe more?) in this series. Both movies had a running time of about 88 minutes