The Diamond Comics Distribution solicitations for the month of October's Archie Comics are out:
https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog?pub=ARCHIE%20COMIC%20PUBLICATIONS

So they managed to sneak in the solicit for ARCHIE #699 ahead of #700, after all. And it's a $1.00 "the story so far" kind of catch-up issue, to try to entice those people who haven't been reading ARCHIE. I assume that that loss-leader cover price can only mean that this is a sort of cut-and-paste reprint comic, composed of various key scenes from pages and panels that previously appeared somewhere before during the run of issues from ARCHIE #1 to 32, with a minimal number of newly-drawn framing panels to stitch all the bits and pieces together. But it does go to prove what I suspected, that the #700 issue won't be another reboot, just a change in creative team and a minor course-correction to steer the title in a direction more similar to that of the TV series Riverdale.

QuoteARCHIE #699



(W) Mark Waid, Ian Flynn (A) Various (CA) Marguerite Sauvage

Follow along as Archie reflects back on the past several years of storylines including: the much-talked about #LipstickIncident, the arrival of the Lodge family, the Riverdale Civil War, the machinations of the Blossom Twins, the near-tragedy of "Over the Edge" and more! This special issue sets the stage for next month's landmark 700th issue of ARCHIE! Based on stories by Mark Waid and Ian Flynn and featuring art by an assortment of ARCHIE talents.

In Shops: Oct 03, 2018
Diamond Code: AUG181571
SRP: $1.00

UNCLE SCROOGE #441
B&V FRIENDS JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #263
ARCHIES BIG BOOK VOL 04: FAIRY TALES TP
ARCHIE'S SUPERTEENS VS CRUSADERS #2 (of 2)
SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP #40
BATMAN: SINS OF THE FATHER #6 (of 6)
DC BEACH BLANKET BAD GUYS SPECIAL #1
THE TERRIFICS #6
THE FLASH #51
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #6 (of 12)
INFINITY WARS PRIME #1 (one-shot)
THE SENTRY #2
X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN: SECOND GENESIS #1  (of 2)
HIT-GIRL #6
MOONSHINE #12
SAVAGE DRAGON #236
TANK GIRL ALL STARS #2 (of 4)
RICK & MORTY #40
STAR WARS ADVENTURES #12
JUDGE DREDD: UNDER SIEGE #3 (of 4)
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR - GALACTUS HUNGERS #1
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR - THE COMING OF HERBIE #1
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR BY JOHN BYRNE #1
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR - WHAT IF? #1
STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO TP VOL 3: I.D.I.C.
STAR TREK: NEW VISIONS #19: THE HUNGER
MAZINGER OGN (First Comics 1988) by Go Nagai

GALAXY EXPRESS 999 (1979)
ADIEU, GALAXY EXPRESS 999 (1981)
GALAXY EXPRESS: ETERNAL FANTASY (1996)
MAETEL LEGEND (2001)
QUEEN EMERALDAS (1988)
VENGEANCE OF THE SPACE PIRATE (a 1985 English-dubbed edit of the 1982 original anime film Arcadia of My Youth)
CAPTAIN HARLOCK and Friends (1985 English-dubbed version of selected episodes from the 1978 anime TV series Space Pirate Captain Harlock)
STARZINGER: The Movie Collection (selected episodes of the 1978-79 anime TV series, dubbed and edited in 2009 into three 1 hour & 50 minute feature films)

All of the above anime were based on the work of manga creator Leiji Matsumoto (best known in the US as the creator of Space Battleship Yamato, dubbed and edited and broadcast on US television as Star Blazers in the 1980s). Apart from series he created like Yamato, Starzinger, and Danguard Ace (a popular super-robot anime series of the 1970s), many of the other manga and anime series share a common continuity and characters, coexisting in a "Leijiverse". The primary series involved in this shared continuity are Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, Queen Millennia, and Galaxy Railways. Galaxy Express 999 is a 19th-century styled space locomotive that travels across space, stopping at various planets. It's endpoints are Earth and the planet LaMetal in the Andromeda galaxy, ruled by Queen Andromeda Promethium, otherwise known as Queen Millennia, the "Queen of a Thousand Years". Planet LaMetal is the seat of the Machine Empire, which seeks to dominate the universe, conquering or converting all other sentient races into mechanoids like themselves. Queen Promethium is also the mother of Maetel (one of the main characters of Galaxy Express 999) and Emeraldas (like Captain Harlock, a space pirate, and a primary supporting character in both that series and GE999). How a mechanoid queen like Promethium can be the mother of Maetel and Emeraldas is explained in Maetel Legend. Queen Promethium's backstory was the subject of the TV series Queen Millennia, untranslated into English except as part of the edited-&-dubbed by Carl Macek version Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years, seen ever-so-briefly in the US in 1985-86. Continuity as such is a little loose as such in the Leijiverse, as the original Space Pirate Captain Harlock series (1977-78) was not originally conceived as part of a shared universe, and only later, with the feature films Galaxy Express 999 (1979, a condensed retelling of the major plot arc of an earlier-aired TV series) and My Youth in Arcadia (1982, essentially what amounts to Harlock's origin story) were connections forged. Many of the earlier or later anime contain discrepancies or contradictions of events which can't be accounted for, and some need to be eliminated as existing in the shared universe altogther, like Harlock Saga (1996), an OVA series which recast the main characters of Captain Harlock in the roles of characters from operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. Other series in which Harlock and his best friend Tochiro Oyama appear, take place in other times, like Gun Frontier, a 2002 OVA series (the manga on which it is based actually preceded the Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga) in which Harlock and Tochiro have analogs in their ancestors who are destined to share a common history and genetic memory (this plot point was explained in the film My Youth in Arcadia, which showed that Harlock and Tochiro also had ancestors who shared history during WWII). In fact it appears that in a sense, all of Harlock and Tochiro's descendants are genetically-identical reincarnations of their former ancestors. Yes, it's more than a little confusing, so I've been sifting through the various films, OVAs and TV series related and trying determine if they can be made to fit within the shared continuity, and if so, in what order events take place relative to other stories. There are a number of tangential spinoffs as well, like the OVA series COSMO WARRIOR ZERO.

STARZINGER was fun, but is otherwise unrelated to Leiji Matsumoto's shared universe. The series' title remained unexplained in the English-language dub. In 1980, the series had 26 of its 73 episodes translated into English by Jim Terry's American Way Productions, retitled as Spaceketeers, one of five different anime series broadcast as part of a 5-days-a-week syndicated package under the overall title FORCE FIVE. That series only aired for a few years in 4 or 5 select broadcast markets in the US, and a couple more in Canada. Starzinger's original story is a loosely-based space-opera iteration of the ancient Chinese Buddhist classic, Journey To The West. It's full title in Japan translates roughly as Science-Fiction West STARZINGER. The 1980 version tried to recast the three cyborg heroes of the series as science-fiction analogs of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, since Journey to the West remains a largely unfamiliar story to English-speaking audiences. Spaceketeers was the only one out of FORCE FIVE's English-dubbed anime adaptations not to feature a giant super-robot as the main character. Jim Terry's original plans to obtain rights to Go Nagai's Great Mazinger anime collapsed when negotiations stalled out, and so a dubbed adaptation of Leiji Matsumoto's Starzinger became an eleventh-hour substitute. The initial impetus for the American syndication packaging came from Mattel's then-popular toy line Shogun Warriors, which imported various unrelated Japanese super-robot toys in different scales (the most impressive of which were gigantic 26" plastic versions) with English-language repackaging, this being several years prior to Hasbro's similar imported Japanese robot toys which were dubbed TRANSFORMERS; however, Mattel's Shogun Warriors super-robot toys didn't have the feature which allowed a seemingly-innocuous vehicle like a car or plane to be converted into a giant robot. The initial success of Mattel's Shogun Warriors toy line turned out to be short-lived, as within a couple of years a number of complaints from concerned parents, over the toys' small parts like projectile missiles presenting a choking hazard to small children, eventually put an end to the line.

The version of Starzinger I have here on DVD was newly redubbed in 2009, and tries to condense three of the more important story arcs of related episodes into three movies which each tell somewhat-complete stories, but are still part of an overall trilogy.  The main premise of the series involved the quest of three cyborg guardians to deliver the beautiful telempathic Princess Aurora to the Great Planet at the center of the galaxy. It seems that the Great Planet was formerly the source of all beneficial energy that endowed all the galaxy's living creatures with life and peace, but the former queen of the Great Planet is aging, and the radiations from the Great Planet have been corrupted, resulting in normal alien races becoming delvolved into evil space mutants. Doctor Kitty, a beautiful lady scientist from Earth, discovers that her adopted daughter, the orphaned Princess Aurora, sole survivor of the ruling royal family of the moon, is the pnly person who possesses the proper telempatic gifts to restore the beneficial energy of the Great Planet and is destined to replace the ageing queen and become the new queen of the Great Planet. Dr. Kitty selects the powerful but impulsive and undisciplined cyborg Jan Kudo (based on the Monkey King) to be the Princess' elite warrior, and guide her on her Journey to the West Center of the Galaxy in safety. She informs them that they will also encounter two alien cyborgs as they set out on their mission, who will also swear allegiance to the Princess Aurora, and join Jan Kudo as her protectors. These turn out to be Don Hakka, a short, stout, green-armored cyborg from a muddy planetoid, who is gluttonous and crude-mannered, but nevertheless heroic, and Sir Jogo, a tall, lanky blue-armored cyborg from a watery planetoid with a calm, analytical nature (he often consults a handheld computer to calculate the odds of whether some intended plan of action will lead to success or failure). Together with the red-armored cyborg Jan Kugo who is brash and impulsive and given to acting without thinking, although well-intentioned, their personalities and distinctive weapons and powers make them a well-balanced trio for guarding Aurora, but she often has to caution them that the various foes they encounter were orignally peaceful alien creatures and are not responsible for their actions in their now-mutated state, so they must combat them without using lethal force. The princess' kind and compassionate nature causes all three of her escorts to develop feelings for her, which is sometimes the source of conflict between them. Eventually, the three warriors encounter Bellamiss, a female cyborg warrior whose personality is similar to Jan Kugo's. She's not really evil, but simply a misguided patriot trying to protect her homeworld. She can't see how evil her own Queen Larisse is, because the Queen just happens to closely resemble Bellamiss' poor deceased mother. In a surprising turn for a children's cartoon, Jan Kugo eventually does fall in love with her, even though they've battled each other several times, but Bellamiss sacrifices her own life to avenge the deaths of the last refugees from her destroyed world after they have been killed by a rampaging electromagnetic space creature. Jan Kugo weeps bitter tears over her death. There is a surprising amount of emotional expression and conflicts of personality and internal intrigue among the space mutants for a kids' cartoon. At one point the Princess even threatened to commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner by aliens who sought to drain her of her telempathic powers and use them for their own gain.

CAPTAIN HARLOCK #1-13 [Eternity 1989-91]
EMERALDAS The Pirate Queen #1-4 [Eternity 1990-91]
CAPTAIN HARLOCK: DEATHSHADOW RISING #1-6 [Eternity 1991]
CAPTAIN HARLOCK CHRISTMAS SPECIAL #1 [Eternity 1991]
CAPTAIN HARLOCK: FALL OF THE EMPIRE #1-4 [Eternity 1992]
CAPTAIN HARLOCK: THE MACHINE PEOPLE #1-4 [Eternity 1993]

BETTY AND VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #265 - Always enjoyable. I've been looking forward to each new issue recently to read the Cheryl Blossom serial "And the Winner Is...", (originally published in B&V Double Digest #161-165) which I'd never had a chance to read before (even though I know who the winner turned out to be). Part 3 of 5 was in this issue. I hope they continue to reprint the remaining Cheryl stories in the same chronological order in which they first appeared.

GOLGO 13 (Graphic Novel Series) No. 1: INTO THE WOLVES' LAIR The Fall of the Fourth Reich TP (1987) by Takao Saito
GOLGO 13 (standard comic format) No. 1: THE IMPOSSIBLE HIT (1989) by Takeo Saito
GOLGO 13 (standard comic format) No. 2: THE BORDER HOPPER (1990) by Takeo Saito (story title on cover & page 1 hilariously mis-translated as "Hopper the Border")
BLACK MAGIC TP by Masamune Shirow

Quote from: irishmoxie on July 20, 2018, 10:13:31 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 18, 2018, 09:07:52 AM
ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66 #1 (of 6)

Debating on whether this is worth a purchase or not.

I LOVED it! (but what else would you expect?)  It's worth mentioning that it really should be ARCHIE '66 Meets Batman '66. So when you see Mrs. Lodge (who didn't have a first name in 1966), it's the 1966 version of Mrs. Lodge (i.e. a stout, matronly woman, with a hair bun). Veronica is wearing a minidress with a style similar to what you'd have seen her wearing in a 1966 Archie story. And it's really remarkable how much Mr. Lodge and Alfred (Batman's butler) resemble each other, but then that makes complete sense when you think about the actor that played Alfred on the 1966 Batman television series, and how he would look translated into the traditional Archie style. It's all those little touches of detail that make the story stand out from the POV of a fan of Archie comics. But then I guess it would depend on how you felt about the Batman TV series. At any rate, this is probably the last opportunity to read a long-form Dan Parent Archie story that we'll have for a while.

****

Since you asked about it before in the Shoutbox, I'll mention ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH VOL 1 again. Originally, I was going to pass on picking this one up, and after reading it, I have to conclude that my initial gut impressions were correct. I relented in my initial conviction to skip it because I had a moment of doubt where I questioned whether my subjective impressions of that title might have been wrong. First off, this is not, as I might have expected, a complete chronological reprinting of the stories proceeding from ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH #1. It reprints stories from issue #1 through 33, but at 224 pages, obviously not ALL of the stories from those issues. Most curious of all is the fact that none of the stories reprinted features Chuck Clayton in a starring or co-starring role (in fact, I don't remember him having a significant part in any of the stories reprinted here). That's decidedly odd when you look at those 1970s issues of A@RH, because this title was the place that stories with Chuck most frequently appeared. Perhaps they purposely left those out, because the company's well-meaning attempts to promote racial/ethnic equality at the time might seem patronizing today without any contextual hindsight. The quality of the artwork is certainly on a par with other Archie stories from this same time period (1973-76), but storywise...

All of the stories are little didactic lessons in which Archie sees a problem and solves it. Nearly all the stories downplay or outright ignore the typical Archie situation comedy format. The stories all present Archie as sort of a role model for emulation by the young readers who would have picked up this comic in the early 1970s. It's hard to imagine Archie Comics publishing a title like this in the 1950s or early 1960s, but I chalk it up to the mass exposure Archie and friends were getting at the time in the Filmation animated cartoons on TV. Like the A@RH stories, the television stories ignored the rom-com and slapstick situations that were the main strength of the original comic books. Those stories as well as these are safe, squeaky-clean pro-social message stories like the few plots that television broadcast standards and practices censors of the time could find no fault with, and let pass for Saturday morning kid-vid. That's fine for the less-demanding childrens' audience, but not for adult comic readers looking purely for entertainment value.

The worst sin of these stories is that few if any of them derive the impetus for their plots from the standard character flaws, relationships, or motivations that are the hallmark of the best Archie stories. Jughead does nothing of any importance, nothing remotely Jughead-like, with the exception of lending support to Archie as a best friend, and even that plays into very few of the stories. Betty and Veronica don't display any traits of best-friendship or of competitive rivalry. The plots don't turn on the characters' motivations of jealousy, covetousness, selfishness, or ego competition. Only Reggie is allowed to maintain a small portion of his vanity and jerkiness in a few stories (again, reflecting the situation of the plots of the Filmation TV cartoons).

Taken as merely one of a dozen or so Archie-related titles that ACP published at the time, A@RH can be seen as simply providing some variety to the lineup of titles published by ACP, and having its own distinct flavor so that the stories appearing in each title seemed less totally interchangeable. Spread out as reprints in the digests, these stories merely seem like the raisins in an oatmeal cookie, which is fine -- but reading 224 pages of them at a sitting wears thin awfully fast. There are only a half-dozen or so basic plots in A@RH stories, the rest being merely slight variations or embellishment; Archie motivates the baseball/football/basketball/hockey team to win through teamwork or school spirit, Archie recognizes a problem and helps organize the students to pitch in to help the school or the community, and few basic others. They're a little obvious and repetitive, especially when read one after another in a collection this size. In short, boring! It's equally true that can also be said of the comedic situations in most Archie stories, but the variations on the same basic tropes seemed more like a challenge to the writers' inventiveness in many of those stories. There are maybe half-a-dozen stories in the whole collection that stick out or are memorable in any way.

07-18-18:
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR VS DOCTOR DOOM #1
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR WEDDING #1
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR THE COMING OF GALACTUS #1
TRUE BELIEVERS: FANTASTIC FOUR HULK VS THING #1
INFINITY COUNTDOWN #5 (of 5)
THE UNSTOPPABLE WASP VOL 01: UNSTOPPABLE TP
THE UNSTOPPABLE WASP VOL 02: AGENTS OF G.I.R.L. TP
WORLD'S END HAREM VOL 02 tankobon
CABLE #159
ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66 #1 (of 6)
BETTY AND VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER: TRAVEL TALES #1
ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH VOL 1 TP
HILLBILLY #10
INFINITY 8 VOL 2 #1 (of 3)
STELLAR #2 (of 6)
KICK-ASS #6
GIDEON FALLS #5
ICE CREAM MAN #5
AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE: A Marvelous Memoir by Stan Lee OGN by Peter David & Colleen Doran

I have a feeling the ARCHIE 1941 miniseries is going to be a big bomb, saleswise. If they thought sales were slipping and that this idea (just by virtue of its novelty value) would perk up readers' interest for a few months, I think they badly miscalculated.

Interest in reading comic book stories which are period pieces set during WWII has been slowly but surely diminishing among the average comic book reader since at least the mid-1980s. During the Silver and Bronze Ages of comic book collecting, there was a high awareness among the serious collectors and students of comics' history of the roots of iconic characters being during that era, and a consequent fascination with it.

Not any more, though. The average comic book reader not only couldn't care less about history (either real-world history, or the history of comic books), it's effectively an active turn-off for them. Like Vegan said, it's "not relevant" and has nothing to do with the world those readers live in. There's no nostalgia to be had among the majority of comics readers for your old granddad's time (or even your great granddad's).

IMO, if what they were attempting to focus on in this story was what Archie's life was like as a typical high school student in 1941 -- how was it the same for teenagers 25, 50 or 75 years later? and in what ways was it different? -- it would have been a lot more relevant to what ARCHIE, as a comic book character with more than 75 years of history behind him, has really been about -- always reflecting "the high school experience" (whatever that may mean).

The real oddity of the ARCHIE 1941 concept isn't that it attempts to recreate the Archie comic stories of those times and translate them into a modern style of storytelling (with a more serious spin). It's nothing like the published Archie storyline of 1941 (or any later time), since it deals with Archie and his friends leaving adolescence behind them as they graduate into adulthood in a world that stands on the brink of global war. In short, it really has FAR less to do with what Archie has been traditionally about, than even the modern reboot spin that it's temporarily replacing.

No sense getting excited about any of these until they really happen and we can see what they actually are. The so-called newsbyte didn't even provide the most basic of details, like what networks the series are being produced for, or what animation studios are producing the shows. It's all just pie-in-the-sky until grounded with some factual details.

I think I have a good guess about what the thinking was behind ARCHIE #700 and the new direction, leading off with the issue written by Nick Spencer and drawn by Marguerite Sauvage.

They were obviously aware far in advance of the various titles (the original ARCHIE, the Waid/Flynn new ARCHIE, and the ARCHIE 1941 miniseries) whose aggregate numbering would add up to the milestone issue #700.

The insertion of the ARCHIE 1941 miniseries as sort of a buffer between the end of the current-numbered ARCHIE with issue #32 and the return of the legacy numbering with issue #700 indicates to me that they had this new change of direction planned out with lots of production lead time. Nick Spencer may be the writer only on that single issue (#700), or on a single short story arc, as it would appear he had time to complete a small number of scripts for ACP before taking on the full-time writing chores of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 (which shipped to comic shops this past Wednesday). Traditionally, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN has been Marvel's best-selling title, as years of continuous publication have built up a large loyal fan base for that character, and ASM is the main in-continuity title he's featured in. Only DC's main BATMAN title and Marvel's AVENGERS come close in total sales per issue, on average. That means the writing gig on ASM has to be one of the best-paying in the comics industry, and ACP simply doesn't have the deep pockets to pay those kind of rates to writers on an ongoing series. Nick Spencer isn't going to take on a long-term gig writing scripts for another publisher while he's getting serious money writing for Marvel, but he might easily have knocked out a few scripts for ACP before starting on the ASM run for Marvel. It's true that Mark Waid took on writing assignments for Marvel  (an AVENGERS flashback 5-issue miniseries, CHAMPIONS #1-18, and CAPTAIN AMERICA #695-704) at the same time he was being credited for writing ARCHIE, but they weren't Marvel's top-selling titles, with the exception of the 16-part "No Surrender" story arc in AVENGERS #675-690 (which was being co-written by Waid along with two other writers, Al Ewing and Jim Zub), and by the time that last Marvel story was published, Waid was only being credited as co-writer (as of ARCHIE #28) along with Ian Flynn. Waid is also atypically prolific as a scripter. He was being co-credited for writing both THE AVENGERS and ARCHIE, while at the same time turning in full scripts for CHAMPIONS and CAPTAIN AMERICA. We will probably never know the exact breakdown of duties on the shared-credit writing assignments, but I suspect Waid may just have been turning in plot outlines that the other writers then fleshed out into a full script.

Putting the RIVERDALE title on hiatus made sense, because even with the tie-in to the popularity of the TV series, it wasn't selling well. ARCHIE #700 doesn't seem so much like another complete reboot as it is picking up the continuity from ARCHIE #32, and steering the series more in a direction which aligns it with some of the plot threads of the television series. In effect, they're attempting to hybridize the former New Riverdale ARCHIE title (which was the better-selling of the two ongoing titles) with the direct adaptation RIVERDALE, and cancelling the latter entirely. That's just based on the circumstances of existing sales and my reading between the lines of Nick Spencer's brief statement that "I don't want to blow things up or do anything that would upset the long-term audience. It's more like finding some conflicts that have some stakes, upping the drama level a little bit." He added that he would play into the soap opera aspect of the characters and "depict that in a way that the 'Riverdale' audience can appreciate and enjoy."

My guess would be that after either #700 (or the short story arc of 3 or 4 issues beginning in that issue), Ian Flynn would return as the regular scripter, continuing to follow the new 'more like Riverdale' direction set up by Spencer.

Doesn't change anything for me. I wasn't reading ARCHIE before (although I did read #32, just to check out Audrey Mok's artwork more than anything else), so I don't expect I'll be reading it after #700, but I may read that one issue just to see what all the hubbub is about.

The whole point of Archie in the first place (according to John Goldwater) was in reaction to the superheroes who dominated comic books in the early 1940s -- humorous stories about mundane people, as opposed to exaggerated action/adventure tales featuring larger-than-life heroes & villains. COUNTERprogramming to the mainstream. Without that central attitude orientation, there's absolutely no point in reading 'serious' Archie stories. LIFE WITH ARCHIE was only interesting in so far as it was contrasting and playing with characters, relationships and ideas which had been established in the earlier funny stories, and projecting those into the future. Without that, just taken on its own, the rebooted ARCHIE really offers nothing unique.

I don't know if 'cancel' is really the right word here. As I understood it, ARCHIE 1941 is sort of a miniseries replacing ARCHIE after #32, and when that concludes they will revert back to the old numbering sequence with #700. I understand that the numbers didn't quite add up, so there will be a later-released #699 published retroactively.

I honestly can't see a huge difference between the Mark Waid & Audrey Mok ARCHIE and the one-shot issue 700 by Nick Spencer & Marguerite Sauvage.
I mean, stylistically at least, I don't see any huge difference, nor do a see much of a difference (apart from the time period setting) between those and ARCHIE 1941. What comes after those, they still aren't saying.

I don't see anything having essentially changed about the company's situation since the failures of the rebooted Jughead and Josie titles, which meant that their originally hoped-for plan of building an entire new line of Archie comics wasn't going to fly.

SAVAGE DRAGON #235
ARCHIE #32
KISS ARMY OF DARKNESS #5 (of 5)
UNCLE SCROOGE #440
TITANS #23
WONDER WOMAN #50
FLASH #50
HAWKMAN #2
PLASTIC MAN #2 (of 6)
WORLD OF TANKS: CITADEL #3 (of 5)
SHE COULD FLY #1
AVENGERS #4 (694)
DOCTOR STRANGE #2 & 3 (392 & 393)
HILLBILLY #11
SHEENA #10
CASPER AND HOT STUFF #1
WORLD OF ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #80
WALT DISNEY SHOWCASE #3: THE BEAGLE BOYS
FF VOL 1 TP: FANTASTIC FAUX
FF VOL 2 TP: FAMILY FREAKOUT

Quote from: rusty on July 09, 2018, 10:23:54 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 09, 2018, 07:14:38 AM
I've also been reading a few manga:
   ONE-PUNCH MAN VOL 14: THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR (tankobon) by ONE & Yusuke Murata
   BATTLE ANGEL ALITA: DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 04 (of 5) by Yukito Kishiro

One Punch Man is a series that I've heard mentioned a lot and will probably try out eventually.  What do you think of it?

I love Battle Angel Alita.  I first collected it in regular comics and continued as they switched to the volume format.  I wasn't going to get the deluxe editions, but when I saw how nice they were, I went ahead and bought them even though I have the earlier editions.  I'm behind on reading Mars Chronicle, but will get to those eventually.

I somehow completely missed out on Battle Angel Alita the first time around. I mean, I was aware that it existed, because I'd seen it around here and there, but for whatever reason, I'd just never picked it up and given it a try. Now after I'd read the first couple of hardcover volumes, I liked it so much that I went and ordered all five omnibus editions of Battle Angel Alita: The Last Order, and have been getting the Mars Chronicle tankobon volumes as they've come out. I've held off on reading the latter two series for reasons of not wanting any spoilers revealed until I've read the last volume of the hardcover collection of the original series. Kodansha will also be releasing a standalone Battle Angel Alita: Homecoming volume in hardcover that collects some shorter, self-contained stories set during the same time frame as the original series (there's a Halloween Comic Fest giveaway comic scheduled to preview that).

The spoiler thing kind of bugs me, because Seven Seas Entertainment completely spoiled the original Devilman for me by releasing two later series in translation earlier, Devilman G (which is a modern retelling with some differences) and Devilman vs Hades (a fairly recent sequel to the original Devilman which also crosses over with characters from Mazinger Z). Since I'd just been reading those as they came out in overlapped releases, the first volume of Devilman vs Hades completely ruins a couple of major plot reveals from the ending of Devilman: The Classic Collection (the second volume of which hasn't come out yet in translation from Seven Seas).

ONE-PUNCH MAN is just amazing! I mean, on the surface it just seems like a bunch of fights and hyperviolence, but it's got humor and even some deeper commentary on what it means to be a hero. Saitama is the one-punch man of the title. He's a short, bald-headed guy whose slightly-built physique and blank expression leads everyone to overlook him and underestimate him, but somehow Saitama possesses the power to defeat any opponent with a single punch. It's mostly over so quickly that any witnesses don't even realize what happened or how. So what Saitama really wants to do is be a hero for fun, helping people while he seeks an adversary that can give him a challenge and won't be defeated so easily. To do this, he joins up with the Heroes Association, a kind of national infrastructure for superheroes, to facilitate dispatching heroes to the scene of emergencies. Since his power isn't really measured easily, and is over with in the time it takes for him to deliver a single punch, people tend not to believe what they've seen (or are distracted by something else, not realizing what exactly happened); Saitama starts out as a lowly-rated Class C hero. Genos, a teenage cyborg hero who is rated as Class S (that's above Class A, by the way) is one of the few that sees Saitama in action and believes. Since Genos is an earnest young hero he immediately begs Saitama to become his sensei and train him. We are also introduced to many other heroes in the ranks of the Heroes Association. Some are not really heroes at all, but are out for their own personal celebrity or glory, or are just feeding their own inflated egos every time they defeat an opponent in combat. Monsters are also rated by their threat levels - Threat Level Dragon is more dangerous than Threat Level Tiger. It later turns out that there is also a Monsters Association to support the monsters, and things really get interesting.

I've also been reading a few manga:
  DEVILMAN G[Grimoir] VOL 03 (of 5 tankobon) by Go Nagai & Rui Takato
  ONE-PUNCH MAN VOL 14: THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR (tankobon) by ONE & Yusuke Murata
  TOKYO TARAREBA GIRLS VOL 01 (of 9 tankobon) by Akiko Higashimura
  BATTLE ANGEL ALITA: DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 04 (of 5) by Yukito Kishiro
  Go Nagai & Ken Ishikawa's GETTER ROBO DEVOLUTION VOL 01 (of 5 tankobon) by Eiichi Shimizu & Tomohiro Shimoguchi - I was looking forward to reading this one, Seven Seas' first release in the Getter Robo franchise since getting rights to Dynamic Pro's manga, but it was disappointing. DEVILMAN G is also a modern reboot/reimagining like this one, but it was so much better. Didn't care for the art style in DEVOLUTION at all, which seems sketchy and undetailed. I'm not too keen on the mecha redesigns, either. Although this is the most recent manga in the franchise, it's a poor choice to introduce the characters to American readers, and unless I'm reading the situation wrongly, it appears in this story that Professor Saotome (who's supposed to be one of the good guys) actually shoots an innocent man (or had his goons do it, I forget now) because "he knows too much". The sensationalized, over-the-top violent/gory stuff on display here (which is entirely appropriate in a horror-hero manga like DEVILMAN) just doesn't sit right -- trying to 'grim&gritty'-up a cornerstone franchise in the super robot genre just doesn't work for me.

And finishing off my reading of the various ANT-MAN/GIANT-MAN collected trades:
ANT-MAN/GIANT-MAN: GROWING PAINS TP
ASTONISHING ANT-MAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION TP

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on July 06, 2018, 07:09:28 AM
I remember a 70s era comic, with Betty possessed.
In that case, by a haunted teddy bear (true story).


But Archie Comics, doing "The Exorcist",  as a homage?
With Betty doing the pea-soup thing?
Sure.
Why not.

LIFE WITH ARCHIE #125 (September 1972), "Nightmare Nursery".


There has been at least one direct sequel to this story:

ARCHIE & FRIENDS #58 (August 2002), "Return to Nightmare Nursery"

In addition, the Cheryl Blossom story "Highland Spirit" (CHERYL BLOSSOM #31, May 2000) shares a vaguely similar plotline (the theme here being the spirits of the restless departed) - although no teddy bears were involved. Both stories were written and drawn by Holly Golightly.

Of course, Betty was also once possessed by the spirt of an evil gypsy woman, Felicity Goodbody (in BETTY & ME #80-81, a plot thread in the ongoing epic (8 parts!) drama of "Betty Cooper, Betty Cooper!" which ran in BETTY AND ME between the October 1976 and August 1977 issues (#79-86).




None of those tales can stack up against JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS #72's "Vengeance From the Crypt", however -- in which Josie's body is possessed by the vengeful demonic spirit of Alexandra's dear departed ancient Aunt Julia. In the ensuing panic following Josie's possessed rampage, Alexandra takes charge of the group and exorcises the evil relative's ghost by using a handy Bible and forcing Josie to remain in contact with it, repelling the ectoplasmic bodynapper. The fact that the girls all engaged in this fearful struggle against supernatural evil while clad only in their bikinis would have made it the perfect scenario for a drive-in movie. Surprisingly, Al Hartley had nothing to do with this story (credit or blame must fall squarely on the shoulders of Frank Doyle and Stan Goldberg). Josie had earlier proven to be susceptible to supernatural influence in the story "The Falcon's Claw" in issue #68, and of course the late Julia Cabot hadn't been the first Cabot to dabble in the Black Arts -- generations earlier there had been Sebastian Cabot, for whom Alexandra's cat was named, and briefly, Alexandra herself (there is the vague hint that the cat is the original warlock Sebastian Cabot reincarnated, which while never so stated outright, would explain why Alexandra could invoke magical hexes while in contact with her pet) and although there's nary a passing reference to her earlier experiments in dark sorcery in this particular story, it would certainly explain how she's the first to recognize the danger but keep her wits about her, and know exactly what to do to counter the supernatural threat.