Quote from: irishmoxie on August 20, 2018, 09:36:31 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 20, 2018, 08:35:09 PM
None. I've decided to give up reading comics. It's gotten too expensive.

No way!

Yeah, as IF !   

Even if I was able, or was forced to, stop buying them, I'd never stop reading them. If I never bought another comic from this day on, I have enough comics in my house right NOW that if I were to read each one only ONCE again, I'd still never be able finish reading them all before I died. So not only would I have to have NO money before I stopped buying them, I'd also need to lose my house and everything in it, and become a homeless person before I stopped reading comics -- and I'm not sure even THAT would stop me completely. If I were homeless and jobless, then I guess I'd also have plenty of free time for hanging around the public library, and if I could use their computers as well, then I'd be able to find even MORE comics to read online. So I'd say that the only way that I could EVER stop reading comics is if I was dead or totally blind, or all the comics in the world somehow permanently disappeared overnight.

I just stopped reading them for a few hours today so I could read this instead:

None. I've decided to give up reading comics. It's gotten too expensive.

Archie's Rival REGGIE #14 (August 1954)


REGGIE #15 (September 1963)



Dept. of What Were They Thinking?:

So the cover gag on REGGIE #14 didn't exactly attract droves of readers to purchase that issue... to the point where it was the last issue of REGGIE to be published in 1954, with the title going "on hiatus" (a polite way of spinning "CANCELLED") for 9 years... Only to have the title resurrected in 1963 using the very same cover gag AGAIN! I dunno... maybe it's like when a Monday newspaper comic strip redraws the last panel of the strip (complete with identical dialogue) that had appeared in the strip on the previous Saturday when the story was interrupted by a day, as by way of reminding readers:
"Last time (109 months ago), in REGGIE..." (?)

Maybe they just thought there was something wrong with the way it was drawn the first time??

MOST of the problems endemic to the passage of time in the continuity of both the rebooted ARCHIE, and the TV series, could have been easily avoided, simply by throwing out a couple of "traditional" ways of thinking about the characters. Given that that was the main thrust anyway, to contemporize the characters for a different, older audience, and throw out the retro-nostalgic/traditional ways of writing and drawing the characters, they should have realized this. The problems are caused by trying to translate the characters into a more realistic style of writing and art, but still maintaining that the characters MUST remain high-schoolers. They have to be old enough to drive and have serious dating relationships, so that limits the time frame to the last half of their high school education. In addition, they'd always timed the production of stories to reflect the passing seasons and holidays (including school holidays). But that gives them very little wiggle room, when considered in a more realistic context of storytelling.

What they SHOULD have done with the reboot (and the TV show) is to just transplant the school experience from high school to college.  The four-year college experience provides twice as much "wiggle room", and I'd have been very careful about avoiding references that could be pinned down to exactly which grade they were in, apart from the occasional story mentioning mid-terms, finals, or vacations. I'd also pointedly AVOID having the stories sync up with the seasons or holidays when they were being published (and after all, the trade collection sales are much more important than monthly issue sales). The same thinking applies to original airdates vs reruns, later streaming viewing, or DVD/BluRay sets. A good example would be a Christmas story... it could take place in an issue or episode released close to Christmas-time, but why should it have to? If the issue or episode came out in May or September, who really cares? The audience can deal with it. In no way do you want to get tied down to a tradition of always marking the occasion, so that would be something used exceptionally sparingly (and no magical elves or fairies, either), only if it happened to dovetail well with some preexisting ongoing plotlines.

I'd have started them out in the first issue (or episode) as having already met and being friends, except for Veronica, who'd just be arriving as a transfer student from an ivy-league college -- as a form of punishment instituted by Hiram Lodge, in order to get her to buckle down and focus on her studies, rather than her social activities, partying and shopping. In addition to transferring her to a state university, she'd also lose all her credit cards, and be on a fixed stipend of 'cash cards' that carried a fixed balance. Mr. Lodge is now regretting having caved into her every whim and little tantrum since she was a little girl through high school, and is trying hard now to correct her spoiled ways before it's too late. He'd have a mole within the school (could be a student, a teacher, or just someone who works there... just to inject a little dramatic mystery) reporting on her activities, whether she was getting good grades and focusing on her studies, or just goofing off. When she's good, she gets rewards of bigger balances on her cash cards. If she's not... she has to live on that fixed amount, or get a part-time job if she needs more spending cash. Veronica is NOT happy about the situation, but fixes her sights on Archie nonetheless. When they start dating, Hiram hates it --he's afraid that Archie is just the sort of distraction (as well as being NOT a 'good catch') for her that she DOESN'T need, but he doesn't interfere... but neither is he welcoming, and he won't help Ronnie as an enabler in the relationship, either.

Archie, Jughead, and Betty have all known each other and been friends since they were kids, and Archie and Betty have been dating since high school.  Needless to say, when Veronica inveigles Archie with her charms during a minor tiff in the Archie/Betty romance, it's the first big major roadbump in a formerly steady straightforward relationship with Betty, and she's not too happy about it, either. In the beginning, the two girls are bitter rivals (no prize for guessing who Jughead sides with). Reggie, Moose, Midge, Dilton, Chuck, Nancy, Cheryl, and Kevin have all become friends/frenemies just since first meeting each other at Riverdale State (I wouldn't go into details, unless a particular story could benefit from a flashback), and any other familiar name would be characters who are being introduced for the first time in the stories. I wouldn't specify exactly what year of college they were in, but we can assume they've been there at least a semester before the arrival of Veronica Lodge, who shakes up the whole "high school sweethearts" Archie/Betty story. So far this isn't TOO different from what Mark Waid had come up with, but being in college gives the characters a whole new spin. They're away from home now (living in dorms or off-campus apartments), some have regular part-time jobs, they all have different majors and extracurricular clubs and activities, and Archie's thinking about trying to start a band. They're only a year or two older than their traditional classic counterparts, still relatable to a Teen+ young audience, and there's lots of potential still for teen angst and soap-operatics. They're not so far away from home that the parents can't easily be there at college, if they absolutely HAD to for some reason, within a few hours or so, a day at most, and vice-versa for the students' visits back home. That makes them a little more independent than they were in high school, with more active social lives. The quaint retro-nostalgic "Pop's Chocklit Shoppe" is gone -- replaced by Pop's Pub, an eatery local to the college serving beer and wine, as well as food (no ice cream) that is one of the most popular student hangouts (but of course there are others, night clubs with bands, and so forth).

BTW, when I say "Riverdale State", that's just a concession to the identifiableness/marketability of the name, not an indication of the name of the town where Archie, Jughead and Betty grew up together and went to high school. This IS a complete reboot, so no approximation of the situations as they exist in the classic, traditional stories applies, or should be assumed as part of the characters' backstories -- these are RE-interpretations of the original classic versions of the characters. To begin with, the details of their individual backstories are blank slates (to be determined only as applicable to the ongoing stories being told), and the parents, for the most part, will be reduced in their roles to more of an off-stage presence, with exceptions made on a story-by-story basis, filling in a few blanks as the series rolls along. Some might eventually have larger or smaller roles than others, depending on ongoing circumstances of the stories. Betty, for example, may remain closer and lean on her family (including older sis Polly) more heavily than Archie or Jughead, in her day-to-day existence. Weatherbee, Grundy, Flutesnoot, and the rest of the old school staff are just plain out of the picture, and there's no "detention". That doesn't mean there couldn't be new college teachers who share some of the same personality traits as the old RHS staff, though. The main comic-reading audience seems to have voted overwhelmingly against comedy in favor of soap-opera romance, so what little comedy there is will arise out of characterization stuff like Jughead's eccentricities and personality quirks, in small doses.

So they've got four (non-specific) years worth of higher education (plus potential for a lot more interesting and less restrictive situations) to compress their continuity into.

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on August 16, 2018, 02:00:41 PM
I know. I'm just doing it to illustrate how quickly that issues become outdated. However, the upcoming Archie #699 seems to indicate the entire NR Archie run still happened, regardless of how long ago that the issues came out. For example, the first two issues came out before the current gang even entered high school! I wonder how the upcoming renumbered Archie series will handle this. We know Betty and Veronica is finally moving on to senior year officially. I wonder if Archie will do the same and indicate the previous run occurred "last year".

I couldn't tell you how time progresses in the New Riverdale continuity (or continuities) -- it seems entirely possible (even likely) that they're not beholden to the 'seasonal' concept to published stories that binds the traditional classic Archie stories, and follow more of an assumed 'compressed time' scheme common to Marvel and DC continuity (which is to say that the amount of time passing during, and between, published stories does not match the passage of time in the real world). If indeed everything that happened from ARCHIE issues #1 through 32, published from cover dates September 2015 through September 2018, is assumed to have taken place, the characters have not aged 3 years during that time -- but if that's true, then they shouldn't have experienced 3 Christmases or 3 summer vacations during that time, either.

'Compressed time' is a concept more easily manageable in the Marvel and DC universes, because the characters aren't as closely tracked by events tied to a school calendar, regular seasons and holidays. It's more about creating a balance between the illusion of the passage of time, while keeping the characters from ageing too much. If a Marvel or DC character is acknowledged to have aged a year since (whatever prior story is being referenced), it's not that big of a deal, whereas in the world of Archie, ageing a single year has major ramifications on the lives of the characters.

Now that I think about it, this is even a bigger problem for Riverdale (as it was for Happy Days). Unlike say, Friends, it isn't a show about 20-somethings whose exact age is indeterminate (but who wound up being 30-somethings by the time the show ended its run). In Friends, that didn't really matter, because the cast's exact ages weren't central to the concept of the show. Unlike comics or animation, you can't simply ignore the fact that the cast is ageing in real-time, just like the show's viewers. You can't order your actors to simply stop ageing, to preserve the original concept of "a story about high school teenagers". Riverdale's been running long enough that the characters' high school years should have already ended. (I still haven't seen the show, BTW.) Perhaps Riverdale, if it continues, will be forced to become more like the magazine version of LIFE WITH ARCHIE.

This goes right to the heart of the matter about my feeling of "Archie" as a concept. It works very well in a simplified cartoon world, where everything is just lines on paper, and we don't question these things any more than we would question the ages of the Scooby-Doo gang. Try to treat it in a more realistic fashion, and you're forced to assume some sort of cumulative changes as a result of an ongoing continuity -- and that results in changing the basic concept that "Archie" is based on.

That seems like an odd way of looking at things. As far as I can tell, only "Freshman Year" and its sequel take place in the ninth grade, while Life With Archie and Life With Kevin obviously take place after they've left school. Even allowing that your hypothetical scheme were true, there's no reason to assume the same division of grades applied equally across the board. Some of those Archie Horror titles don't even come out annually, so they'd be jumping grades between published issues! There isn't a four-year turnover between "current" incarnations of Archie and his friends. It would have to be an annual turnover, because they're always repeating the same grade, the same prom, the same Christmas, the same birthdays, the same summer vacation. To the extent that past stories older than a year ago are referenced, a story that originally took place during their junior year gets retroactively bumped to their sophomore year. Certain details of past stories can't be made to fit into a continuity where they're continually bumped backwards, though -- they can't be driving cars in their freshman year when they aren't old enough to legally hold drivers' licenses.

Review: BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR VOL 01 TP



While I was hoping that this collection might start out by reprinting the older ARCHIE GIANT SERIES issue numbers which fell under the B&V Spectacular title logo - begininng with #11 (June 1961) and ending with #632 (July 1992), which was in fact the final issue of the entire AGS run - it actually begins with the #1 issue cover-dated October 1992. After the cancellation of the Archie Giant Series, it was replaced by a number of different ongoing titles, all of which had previously appeared under the AGS numbering. World of Archie and Betty and Veronica Spectacular were initially published quarterly, which was approximately the same schedule under which the titles had appeared in rotation under the AGS numbering. The other two titles (Archie's Christmas Stocking and Betty and Veronica Summer Fun) were published annually.

WORLD OF ARCHIE #1 (August 1992) - #22 (March 1999)
BETTY AND VERONICA SPECTACULAR #1 (October 1992) - #90 (September 2009)
ARCHIE'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING #1 [48-Page Giant] (November 1993) - #7 (November 1999)
BETTY AND VERONICA SUMMER FUN #1 [48-Page Giant] (July 1994) - #6 (July 1999)

Of the four ongoing titles born out of the former Archie Giant Series, B&V Spectacular was by far the most successful, lasting seventeen years - ten years longer than the other three titles. Just for reference, here are the issue numbers of the Archie Giant Series which were Betty and Veronica Spectacular issues:

11   21   26   32   [here the AGS title jumped 100 issue numbers]
138   145   153   162   173   184   197   201   214   221   226   234   238   246   250
[here the AGS title jumped another 200 issue numbers] 458   462   470   474   482   486   494   498   501   506   510   518   522   526   530   537   541   548   552   559   563   569   575   582   588   595   600   608   613   620   623   632

Okay, with that preamble out of the way, this is a pretty good collection. Compared to the previous volume in the "Archie Comics Presents..." series, ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH, which attempted to compile stories from issues #1-33, BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR VOL 01 TP only reprints stories from issues #1-11, so it is far more complete. The JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE and COSMO trade collections were indeed "complete" in the truest sense, even reprinting the covers of the issues whose stories were contained therein. Here, unfortunately, we don't get the covers (which is a shame, because for the most part, they are great covers). However, we DO get MOST of the stories from issues #1-11 reprinted. Here's a listing of the contents of Volume 1 (number of pages follows the story title):

#1  Run For Glory   22
#2  This Looks Like A Job For Sugarplum!   21
#3  Genie Hi-Jinx   11
#3  BETTY in "The Big Slice"   1
#3  Flee This Market   5
#3  "Clothes" Minded!   5
#4  Fashion Fiasco   11
#4  Go Fly a Kite   5
#4  Triangle Trouble   5
#5  Wiener Wars   11
#6  Princess and the Pauper   11
#6  Chances Are...   5
#7  Love Notions   11
#7  Jersey City 07303   5
#7  Too Much Infomercial   5
#8  Fitness Fiasco   11
#8  Moody & Snooty   5
#9  Look Who's Watching   11
#9  Paper Route   5
#9  Yard Sale Of The Century!   6
#10  Here's Sand in Your Face   11
#10  S'more Trouble   5
#10  Vests For All Occasions (Veronica fashions)   1
#10  Boxer Boom!   5
#11  Teacher Torture   11
#11  Picture This!   5
#11  The Prodigal Daughter   5

Just to see what didn't get reprinted from those issues, I consulted the Grand Comics Database. Here's what's missing from those issues (excepting ads, letters pages, editorial pages, and puzzle pages):
#1-11  covers
#3  BETTY's Fantasy: The Music Maker (pin-up)   2
#5  No Contest   5
#5  The 60's In The 90's (B&V fashions)    1
#5  Opposites Detract   5
#6  A Fowl Scent   5
#6  Hot Roddin' in the "Fifties" (pin-up) 1
#8  Hold the Phone   5
#9  Rad Fad   1

So essentially, what BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR VOL 01 TP contains is "almost" the complete contents of issues #1-11 of that title, with the exception of all the covers and 25 pages of other stories or features. It could have been a little more perfect, but given that they had to fit it into a 224-page trade collection, not bad. If I had been the editor, I'd have left issue #11 for Volume 2, and reprinted the four 5-page stories from issues #5, 6 & 8 that they skipped, plus a 1-page feature. Or the two best 5-page stories, plus all 10 covers from issues #1-10. But that's me. All in all, not too bad. I rate it a "buy".

One small irksome point. There is a 1-page text introduction which had me wondering whether the (uncredited) writer of that page even read the stories in this collection. Said writer claims in the intro that "As time went on, the series introduced a few new female characters - one of which you'll see in this particular collection is Sugarplum, the teenage daughter of Santa Claus".

Okay, that's just plain wrong on two counts. Apparently the writer confused Sugar Plum with Noelle Claus (the teenage daughter of Santa Claus), a much later Dan Parent creation. They're two entirely different characters. And B&V Spectacular did NOT introduce the character of Sugar Plum (seen here in a story from B&V Spectacular #2, "This Looks Like A Job For Sugar Plum!", which is in fact her fourth appearance). Her FIRST appearance was in ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #580 (January 1988), which wasn't even a B&V Spectacular issue of AGS... it was a BETTY AND VERONICA CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR (a separate annual title) issue. You wouldn't necessarily have to know these details to realize that Betty and Veronica Spectacular #2 wasn't Sugar Plum's first appearance -- all you'd need to do is read the story. In the first panel of that story, where Sugar Plum appears, it's obvious that Betty and Veronica already know her. Since she wasn't in the previous issue of B&V Spectacular, it's easy to deduce that she couldn't have been introduced in that series. That makes the writer of the introduction look pretty dumb, even to a 10 year-old kid of average intelligence.

WALT DISNEY SHOWCASE #6: THE PHANTOM BLOT
ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66 #2 (of 6)
BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR VOL 01 TP
BEST OF ARCHIE AMERICANA VOL 03 TP: THE BRONZE AGE 1980s-1990s
STREET FIGHTER SUMMER SPORTS SPECIAL
INFINITY 8 VOL 2 #2 (of 3)
INFINITY WARS #2 (of 6)
STELLAR #3 (of 6)
TERMINATOR: SECTOR WAR #1 (of 4)
ICE CREAM MAN #6
GIDEON FALLS #6

Ménage à ZOMBIES (one-shot) - Floppy comic spinoff of Ménage à 3, by Dave Lumsdon and Fernando Ruiz. The injection of zombies into the otherwise more real-world universe of Ménage à 3 makes this an out-of-continuity flight-of-fantasy. Possibly the idea was a tongue-in-cheek poke at ACP's Afterlife With Archie. The story was originally created as bonus content for the most recent Ménage à 3 tankobon collection, but is presented here as a standalone one-shot in color.

BETTY AND VERONICA DIGEST (1990s) #56, 57, 62, 68, 69, 80 - Purchased for a buck each. Most of the stories were ones I'd previously read, reprinted in more recent B&V digest issues. I'll pick these older digests up if they're cheap, but they're not really on my want list, per se. I'm really only focusing on collecting certain digest titles that I missed from around 2005 to present (varies according to each title): Betty and Veronica, Betty and Veronica Double, B&V Friends Double, Tales From Riverdale, Jughead & Friends, Jughead Double, Archie & Friends Double, World of Archie Double. Many or most of these had at least some new (at the time) stories besides the usual reprints.

manga:
THE BIG O, Vol. 1-6 tankobon (2002-2004) by Hitoshi Ariga - This was another manga series (like GHOST IN THE SHELL: STAND ALONE COMPLEX by Yu Kinutani) that was based on an anime TV series, rather than the other way around. Unlike that other series though, these stories weren't just straight adaptations of the TV episodes, but new stories based on the TV characters. The anime and character designs have the same sort of 'dark deco' sensibility as Batman The Animated Series, because it was a co-production between Sunrise Studios in Japan and Cartoon Network in America. There's a lot of homages to older Japanese anime and tokusatsu TV shows, as well as retro design homages to 1960s style. Hitoshi Ariga (who also did the manga based on MegaMan in Japan, which Udon studios is currently reprinting in thick, standard-format color comics) did a good job on this, even though he was feeling his way along at first, having started serializing the manga in MAGAZINE Z in Japan 3 months prior to the on-air debut of the anime. The TV series eventually ran 26 episodes, so it was nice to get some new stories featuring those characters in the manga series.

LOST IN SPACE: THE ART OF JUAN ORTIZ HC
FANTASTIC FOUR (2018) #1
SAVAGE DRAGON #237
TITANS #24
HAWKMAN #3
PLASTIC MAN #3 (of 6)
WONDER WOMAN #52
UNNATURAL #2 (of 12)
PREDATOR HUNTERS II #1 (of 5)
WORLD OF TANKS: CITADEL #4 (of 5)
CARSON OF VENUS #1: FEAR ON FOUR WORLDS Part 1 (of 4)
NEW LIEUTENANTS OF METAL #2 (of 4)
HEY KIDS! COMICS #1 (of ?)
LOONEY TUNES #244
UNCLE SCROOGE #38
DONALD & MICKEY QUARTERLY
WALT DISNEY SHOWCASE #4: GOOFY
WALT DISNEY SHOWCASE #5: DONALD DUCK FAMILY
DISNEY MASTERS HC VOL 03: MICKEY MOUSE and THE VANISHING BANDIT
DISNEY MASTERS HC VOL 04: DONALD DUCK in THE GREAT SURVIVAL TEST

... and on the e-comix front...
DIE KITTY DIE: HEAVEN & HELL #2 (of 4) - Ahh! ... "Good things come to he that waits", as the saying goes. DKD never fails to give me a little thrill of delight at the sly little in-jokes and quirky humor. Not to mention how much I'm loving the artwork. The boys really put their hearts & souls into this, and you can feel it in the resulting product. Li'l Satan has kind of a big supporting role in this issue, and it's always nice to see more of him. There's a brief appearance by Kitty's cousin Katty in the flashback story preceding the present-day main story, and as usual, we check in with Rudy, Mara, and Jim at the comic shop to see how Kitty's death is impacting the world of comic fandom. Sweet.

Quote from: BettyReggie on August 08, 2018, 11:12:57 AM
I just finished reading some of my graphic novels
Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
The Best Of Archie Comics - Betty & Veronica - Book #2
Jughead - Volume #1
Menage A 3- Volume #1
Swing #1

I don't know if you read Vol 1 of Menage A 3 in the smaller paperback (tankobon) size published by Pixie Trix, or the slightly larger format (same approximate size as The Best of Archie Comics trade paperbacks), published by Udon Entertainment, which collects 2 of the smaller paperback volumes. I have both versions of volume 1, and I really like the larger page size of Udon trade collection. I just ordered the second volume of that series (which collects volumes 3 & 4 originally published by Pixie Trix). I think I'm going to stick with that format because the artwork looks so much better printed at the larger size, even though at the current rate Udon is publishing them, it will take quite a while for them to catch up to the Pixie Trix volumes.

PLATINUM END VOL 01 (tankobon) - I loved this! It just totally turns all those superhero elements on their head and defies expectations as to how they are usually applied in a story. Yet all the same basic elements are worked in. Orphaned kid granted superpowers by magical being/cosmic alien (in this case, in the guise of a cutesy teen angel girl). Almost seems like it's going in the same direction as Spider-Man, with a theme of "with great power there must also be great responsibility", but also seems like it won't be a quickly learned lesson, as it was in the case of the teenaged Peter Parker, but a much more torturous pathway. The angel characters are somewhat creepy, and in the case of the main one, Nasse, I believe she'll turn out to be not what she appears, or at any rate, there's a lot she's not telling our young hero. The reconfiguration of religious/mythological ideas into pseudo-science fantasy terms reminded me of SAINT SEIYA (Knights of the Zodiac). I just immediately ordered tankobon Volumes 02 through 06. Extremely pleased to have discovered this one, can't wait to read the whole thing.

PRECARIOUS WOMAN EXECUTIVE MISS BLACK GENERAL (tankobon) by JIN - A pretty funny superhero parody. Took me a little while to decipher the cartooning style here (extremely reductive, and the appearance of characters tends to morph a lot according to their emotional state), but some bits are reminiscent of Viewtiful Joe, while other bits remind me of Ben Edlund's The Tick.

You can just NEVER really tell what a manga's about by its title. In this case I suspect that the author (who goes by the pseudonym 'jin') intended it to try to capture the same sort of effect of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", in other words, just to tickle people's curiosity when they heard or read it. I'm not sure about the translation of the word precarious in the title; it seems like they missed something about the sense of it. If I had to guess I think the meaning of precarious as "risky" was somehow assumed to be the same as the word risqué (which actually means improper/indecent/suggestive) -- so I think the meaning which was intended to be conferred was Risqué Lady eXecutive BLACK GENERAL. The 'Miss' in the title translation is just an honorific of '-san' appended to the name Black General. We could really just call it RX Black General.

She's supposed to be the field marshal of the secret evil organization 'RX', whose ultimate goal is total world domination, and tries to look the part, dressed in her military cap and pseudo-Nazi-type uniform with an X armband, and an eyepatch (which she admits is just because 'it looks cool!'). Really she's just a superhero fangirl who gets the whimwhams whenever she encounters the hero Braveman (who looks a little like Batman, but is really nothing like him). She took the job with the evil RX organization just so she could get up close to her idol, the secret object of her obsession (she's a lot like Betty Cooper that way), but all she's succeeded in doing so far is becoming an irritating annoyance and king-size headache for Braveman. The evil RX organization is headed up by the overly-polite and afraid-to-offend Boss (who is a supervillain with telekinetic powers), but so far the organization hasn't done a single evil thing except to declare their intent of world domination and call out Braveman to challenge him. The rest of the organization consists of Secretary, Scientist, and Minion #1, #2, and #3 --  but they're still keen to recruit new followers (even though they've completely blown through their cash reserves). Good satirical treatment of superhero cliches, and about as different as night from day, when compared to PLATINUM END, even though they're both playing with some of the same well-established tropes.

Manga:
GHOST IN THE SHELL TP by Shirow Masamune
GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5: HUMAN-ERROR PROCESSOR TP by Shirow Masamune
GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: MAN-MACHINE INTERFACE TP by Shirow Masamune

GHOST IN THE SHELL: STAND ALONE COMPLEX by Yu Kinutani (tankobon volumes):
  EPISODE 001: SECTION 9 (adapts TV episode 01)
  EPISODE 002: TESTATION (adapts TV episode 02)
  EPISODE 003: IDOLATER (adapts TV episode 07)
  EPISODE 004: ¥€$ (adapts TV episode 14)
  EPISODE 005: NOT EQUAL (adapts TV episode 13)

I'd bought the above tankobon volumes (approx. 250 pages each) as they'd been released by Kodansha Comics back in 2011-2014, but had never actually gotten around to reading them. I was a little disappointed to find that they were just straight adaptations of the episode scripts, scene-for-scene and dialogue-for-dialogue (I'd been hoping that they were original stories set in the same world as the GitS S.A.C. TV series). They do a good job (artwork and story all read well as manga) for what they intended, but add or subtract nothing from the anime episodes, so if someone already has the anime episodes in their collection, they're somewhat disposable.

GHOST IN THE SHELL README: 1995-2017 HC - History and background info of the GiTS franchise in anime films & TV series, profusely illustrated with cel frames, designs and character model sheets, up to and including the 2017 live-action feature film. I also watched the first five of the anime films: Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell (1995) and his sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), and Kenji Kamiyama's three Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex features: The Laughing Man (2003), The Individual Eleven (2005), and Solid State Society (2006). I haven't yet seen the 10-episode 2013 OVA series Arise or the spinoff anime 'New Movie' which caps off that series' storyline (I've been waiting for all ten OVA episodes to be offered in some sort of 'Complete Collection' on DVD, and I don't want to watch the feature film spinoff until I've seen the OVA series that preceded it). Shirow Masamune's original manga, the 2 Oshii anime films, the TV series Stand Alone Complex, and OVA series Arise all have their separate continuities, with some details in storylines agreeing and others contradicting those of the other versions. Comparing and contrasting the different versions helps in grasping some of the vaguer or harder to understand details of the SF concepts and metaphysical/philosophical ideas being explored.

XERXES: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DARIUS #5 (of 5)
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS [2018] #1
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