I know I said more than a week ago that I'd post the contents of the recent trade paperback, THE BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, but then the more I got into it, the more detailed information I started adding, and going back over the list of contents of all the previous Josie collections to see what had been reprinted in prior collections, and what hadn't.

For print editions, your choices are pretty narrow, so if it's a physical book that you want, then THE BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS is a no-brainer, and it'll probably be a long time before some superior, more complete, collection of stories is published.

But let's go back and start at the beginning first. The very first reprint collections came in 1993 (August, most likely... with a cover date of "Fall") and January ("Spring") 1994, in the form most popular at that time, the Archie 48-Page Giant comics. Two issues were released, combining reprinted stories with a couple of new ones. New material is indicated on the contents table below in RED:

JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #1	(48-Page Giant)	source of 1st publication	Fall 1993	writer	penciller	inker
(Josie and the Pussycats on stage)		new cover illustration	Fall 1993		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Rock and Roll	8 pages	new	Fall 1993	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Decisions, Decisions	6 pages	JOSIE #45	Dec. 1969	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Pussy Footing	5 pages	JOSIE #45	Dec. 1969	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
What Kind of Ghoul Am I	14 pages	JOSIE #64	Sept. 1972	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Josie & the Pussycats in outer space (pull-out poster)	2 pages	new pull-out pin-up poster	Fall 1993		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Up, Up, and Away!!	12 pages	Josie #58	Oct. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #2	(48-Page Giant)	source of 1st publication	Spring 1994	writer	penciller	inker
"Josie & the Pussycats LIVE - The Hottest Cats in Town!"		new cover illustration	Spring 1994		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Love & War	8 pages	new	Spring 1994	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Work of Art	6 pages	JOSIE #53	Feb. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
To Grandmother's House	8 pages	JOSIE #64	Sept. 1972	Frank Doyle	Stan Goldberg	Jon D'Agostino
Josie & the Pussycats skiing (pull-out poster)	2 pages	new pull-out pin-up poster	Spring 1994		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Melody (1 page gag strip)	1 page	JOSIE #96	Oct. 1977	unknown	unknown	unknown
Brawn is Beautiful	5 pages	JOSIE #53	Feb. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
If the Spirit Moves You	6 pages	ARCHIE'S TV LAUGH-OUT #62	Nov. 1978	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Maxim Mix-Up	5 pages	new	Spring 1994	Hal Smith	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick

NOTES: The first Josie 48-Page Giant comic was published by ACP in the hopes of catching a wave of nostalgia (or younger readers newly discovering the Pussycats for the first time) as a result of Ted Turner's Cartoon Network cable station's acquisition of the Hanna-Barbera library of animated programming, and subsequently airing H-B's Josie and the Pussycats on a daily basis in 1993. There's no mistaking it because it says so right on the cover, and no less than THREE ad banners reminding readers to watch the show ran below the first or last pages of various stories. These are very nice to have, even though the paper is somewhat thin, it is white (not the lower-grade newsprint) and the colors on the reprints look pretty nice, unlike a lot of the older digests. They are worth having for those covers and pull-out posters alone, in addition to the three new stories. "Rock and Roll" is notable for a brief appearance of Alan M. after a long absence, and even more surprising, the return of Alexandra's magical powers of witchcraft, after almost a decade since their last mention. In "Rock and Roll" Mr. De has the Pcats sporting more skimpy, bikini-like costumes on stage. It's hard to believe, but in 1993 it had been years since ACP could spare the MVP talents of original creator, Dan D., to work on Josie, and the short 5- and 6-pagers appearing in TV LAUGH-OUT (and later LAUGH Vol. 2) had at that point been mostly assigned to Gladir and Goldberg for at least a half-dozen years. I don't think "Love & War" and "Maxim Mix-Up" had been reprinted until the recent BEST OF trade collection either.

Next post -- BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS TP (2001)

In the world of Archie Comics, concussions are always cause for hilarity ensuing. 

I liked #1, if only for the reason of getting some new classic Archie stories again, and longer ones. I think I liked the Jughead learning to drive story better than the first part of Archie wins the lottery, but whether it's because I've gotten past the redesigned looks now or whatever, I have to say I liked #2 overall a lot better, especially the conclusion of the 2-parter. Reggie getting amnesia from a bonk on the head sounds like a real throwback to the Doyle-Lucey kind of stories from the late-50s/early-60s, which is a good thing.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on September 01, 2017, 09:31:52 AM

Quote from: Ronny G on August 27, 2017, 04:36:46 PM
Sorry to hear about some of the digests ending. I noticed my supermarket recently has downsized its rack of Archie digests it carries at the checkout lane at Ralph's supermarket on the West Coast. Used to have at least 2 or 3 different titles to choose from--now lucky if I see one! I've subscribed to 3 different digest titles in recent years. I love the classic stories from the 50s-70s--not too crazy about the recent material from the 90s and up, but it seems the digests are 60% newer stories. The digests started piling up in my house so I stopped renewing, but I recently got an email asking me to renew my subscriptions again for 6 issues for $9.99. I really don't need more digests piling up in the house, but it really is a good deal because one jumbo digest cost like $6.99 retail so I renewed my subscription to Betty and Veronica. Also, they have been kind enough to send me some "grace" issues after my subscriptions expired so I felt a sense of loyalty, cause I don't want to see the digests end. I also ordered the upcoming Best of Josie 400 page book from them so I should get that in the mail soon. They also want me to renew B&V friends, but it doesn't sound like it will be around. What would happen if I renewed i and they ended the title? Would they send me something else in it's place??

Ronny, I just saw your question.  If you subscribe to a title and it ends, Archie Comics will send you an email offering to switch your remaining subscription to another title.  Because of how many books have been cancelled over the last few years and new title being introduced, this has happened to me several times and it always works out fine.

Well... they had been pretty good at just replacing a title that didn't sell well with a new title, and it looks like that applies to at least Jughead and Archie being replaced by Archie and Me. It doesn't sound like this is the old "Me" (meaning Mr. Weatherbee) in the title, but what I'm concerned about is where am I going to get to read old Jughead stories?

I'm not sure how long that can hold, though. I can hardly count Riverdale Digest as a real digest title, even if they do throw some classic stories in there to bulk it out (and how long can they continue that, anyway?)  Judging by the sale on the newest issues of the floppy comic Riverdale, that won't be around much longer either.

I never could understand how Betty and Veronica could be the best-selling digest, and B & V Friends the worst-selling, at the same time (although I guess Jughead and Archie was really the worst-selling), at least according to what I'd heard. That just makes no logical sense to me whatsoever, if they both feature 80% B&V stories, and are only distinguished by one being the title that regularly reprints Sabrina, and the other being the title that reprints Josie. It's one 15-25 page section, so that couldn't make a difference.

Anyway, hope I turn out to be wrong about that. If they cut back to publishing only one B & V digest, that will really suck. I guess I wouldn't miss Funhouse all that much, as long as it was replaced by something reprinting all classic stories.

Quote from: Purgatori on September 01, 2017, 11:03:56 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 31, 2017, 05:10:06 PM

And if he concluded that anyone but Bob Montana was responsible for the actual work of creation, I'll be shocked.

From the article, "Bob Montana plotted the first story with help from Harry Shorten, who had a Dell editor gone freelance, Vic Bloom, write the dialog. Vic Bloom named the Jughead character and also the area Riverdale. The 'Wally Williams' strip [created by Bloom for Popular Comics #48] had another character called 'Jughead' Lewis and the name of the city was Rivertown".

It's pretty remarkable though, how little that initial story resembles what became known to the world as "Archie". You've got Archie, and Betty, but considerably younger than what became their standard versions, and Jughead... well, the less said about the prototype Jughead the better. Apart from the hat, it's hard to see much of a resemblance to the character we know as Jughead today. And Veronica, which seems like a key component in the whole formula, was nowhere... a mere afterthought. As I say... the essence was distilled over time, but it all congealed in Montana's newspaper strip.

Quote from: Purgatori on August 31, 2017, 06:43:16 AM
The article about Archie's creation is likely to be contentious, but Clancy lays out all the evidence he could find and it's well worth a read

And if he concluded that anyone but Bob Montana was responsible for the actual work of creation, I'll be shocked. Although I'll be the first to admit that Harry Shorten had more than a little to do with it, as well, in the early days. But it took years for Montana to really distill "the essence of Archie", and that didn't happen until 1946, when he got sole creative control of the newspaper strip. Goldwater's contribution was in giving the marching orders to create a comic feature along the lines of Andy Hardy and/or Henry Aldrich, and in committing to publishing the thing -- but that's hardly my definition of "creating". He outlined the hazy parameters, inasmuch as it was copying a popular archetype in other media, but it doesn't take much creativity to do that.

And you know... if you took "Andy Aldrich" and mixed up the letters a little, and squinted a bit... it's not too far off from "Archie Andrews".

I did a search for this to see what turned up. Lurid Little Nightmares has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/llnmfanzine/.

The book itself is a 206-page, 8.5"x11" trade paperback. It can be ordered here: http://www.leylander.org/boardman/#!/Lurid-Little-Nightmare-Makers-Volume-Seven/p/76110440/category=14445202. It's a little pricey at $28, but if you're only interested in the contents of the articles, you can get a black & white edition of the book for $14 (regular edition is full-color). I'm thinking about it. There are a couple of neat old 1950s Dan DeCarlo reprints in here, "Wendy the WAF" from G.I. JOE #8, and "Ship Ahoy!" from THE BRAIN #1. I'll have to double-check to see whether those were the same ones reprinted in Fantagraphics' THE ART OF DAN DECARLO.

Here is the contents page, followed by the editor's Introduction page:

08-30-17:
THANOS #10
X-MEN BLUE #10
SUPERGIRL #12
SUPERGIRL ANNUAL #1
YOUR PAL ARCHIE #2
CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA #8
BLACK MAGICK #7
SAVAGE DRAGON #226
SPACE RIDERS: GALAXY OF BRUTALITY #3 (of 4)
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS: HERO KILLERS #4 (of 5)
THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT: TERROR FROM THE  EARTH'S CORE #1
DONT MEDDLE WITH MY DAUGHTER GN VOL 01 (of 3)
DARKSEID SPECIAL #1 (one-shot)
BLACK RACER & SHILO NORMAN SPECIAL #1 (one-shot)

GUARDIANS OF GALAXY: MOTHER ENTROPY TP
MONSTER MASH: THE 1960s MONSTER CRAZE IN AMERICA HC
TIM SEELEY'S ACTION FIGURE COLLECTION TP
WHERE MONSTERS DWELL: THE PHANTOM EAGLE FLIES THE SAVAGE SKIES TP
LOONEY TUNES GREATEST HITS TP VOL 03: BEEP! BEEP!

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 28, 2017, 12:29:29 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 28, 2017, 07:50:31 AM

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 28, 2017, 06:30:07 AM

Agree with everything you wrote!  However, that's why I think I love Josie so much.  She's mysterious.  I know something is going on and I want to get closer to her to find out!

The allure of woman of mystery, eh?

There are a scant few stories where Josie actually seems to have something more important to say or do than her friends, that don't involve some dating drama with Alan or Alex. One is Holly G's "O Solo Mio", where she accidentally started a solo career doing musical commercials, and another is the story (forgot the title now) where the band was experiencing a stall-out in their career, and Josie started thinking about going back to school. While she's conflicted about her musical career, she goes on a camping sabbatical, leaving Val and Mel to play a gig themselves with the "help" of Alexandra. The stories rarely seem to focus on Josie like that though.

Thanks I gotta find that!  I like Holly G's stuff!

Look no further than THE BEST OF JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS TP, where Holly G's "O Solo Mio" is reprinted.

I checked out the GCD for clues and found the other story where Josie takes a break from the band to go camping. It's notable for a rare later appearance of Josie's parents (when this was first published in ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #584, Sept. 1988, Josie's last name was James) and the story is called "Cat at the Crossroads", an 11-pager written by Kathleen Webb with art by Stan Goldberg. I know I don't own that original comic, so I guess I must have read it when it was reprinted in ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE JUMBO COMICS #20 (July 2016). I don't think Kathleen Webb wrote a lot of Josie stories, but it doesn't surprise me to discover she's responsible for one of the most memorable ones to me. I'll have to double-check, but I think it might have been included in that BEST OF JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS: GREATEST HITS digital exclusive collection as well.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 28, 2017, 06:30:07 AM

Agree with everything you wrote!  However, that's why I think I love Josie so much.  She's mysterious.  I know something is going on and I want to get closer to her to find out!

The allure of woman of mystery, eh?

There are a scant few stories where Josie actually seems to have something more important to say or do than her friends, that don't involve some dating drama with Alan or Alex. One is Holly G's "O Solo Mio", where she accidentally started a solo career doing musical commercials, and another is the story (forgot the title now) where the band was experiencing a stall-out in their career, and Josie started thinking about going back to school. While she's conflicted about her musical career, she goes on a camping sabbatical, leaving Val and Mel to play a gig themselves with the "help" of Alexandra. The stories rarely seem to focus on Josie like that though.

Welcome to the forum, Ronnie. Our stories are quite similar. Josie and Sabrina are my two favorites, largely based on having watched those TV cartoons as a kid. Like you, my initial re-interest in Archie Comics came about through an appreciation of Dan DeCarlo's work, in those books published by Fantagraphics and IDW collecting some of his work, and through two of the earliest trade paperback collections ACP put out, The Best of Josie & the Pussycats (2001) and Betty & Veronica Summer Fun (2003). After that my interest became attracted when the multipart storylines began appearing, especially the work of Dan Parent.

Strangely enough, I always felt Josie was the least defined, personality-wise, of all the characters in her self-titled series. Melody and Pepper (from the pre-Pussycats She's Josie incarnation of that title) were always the ones I found most interesting, and after that, Alexandra and Valerie. Even Alex is more interesting, in his own way. Josie seems nice, and she's pretty. She's the leader of the group, and sometimes is fought over for her attention by Alex and Alan M. (or before that, Alex and Albert in She's Josie). Other than that though, there isn't much I can say about what makes her character distinctive. There's a lot more to say about Melody, Pepper, Alexandra, and Valerie. (Alan M.'s kind of bland, when you get down to it -- in fact, so bland that he seems to have been quietly dropped after the original Josie series was cancelled in the early 1980s, and barely anyone noticed. He's made scant appearances since then.)

Just like with Archie, Josie is the character that the others seem to orbit around, like planets in a star system, but just like I feel about Archie, all of the real interest seems to be what's happening with the satellite characters, not with the star. Josie doesn't seem to be the one that initiates action or even reacts to situations as much as the other characters. Plot motivation for stories always seems to be initiated by Alex, Alexandra, or Melody, but never from Josie, who just seems to be the one caught up in the center of the whirlwind. Both Pepper and Valerie seem to play a similar role in the stories for their respective but non-overlapping eras, equivalent to the role Jughead frequently plays in Archie stories (stories where Jughead is the star more often operate by a different logic), that of the detached cynical observer, the smartest or most sensible of the group, and the one most likely to offer a creative solution to any given problem.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 27, 2017, 07:56:43 PM

Quote from: SAGG on August 27, 2017, 05:38:14 PM
Scary thought: Were the 80's the last great Archie story period? 

Not for me.  I liked quite a few of the issues in the last couple of years before the reboot.  .


Especially Occupy Riverdale, Reversedale, and Mirrordale, and the one where they go to Riverdale Zoo and everyone turns into animals. I thought they did some great work, but unfortunately it wasn't selling.

Absolutely. There was a huge amount of experimentation and trying new types of stories in the decade preceding the reboot. Although that period coincides with the cancellation of most of the remaining ongoing standard format titles, there's a huge amount of change, perhaps more than in the previous three decades. Not all of the changes were for the good, and they tried and failed with many experiments, but a surprising amount of good material did manage to come out of that, even if it was the result of forced evolution.

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 26, 2017, 01:41:01 PM

When will the 1950s and 60s stories be in public domain? Then ACP can start publishing them cheaply.

It will be a long, long, time -- for intellectual properties created under the auspices of publishers and other media companies that still remain in business today, or whose intellectual properties have changed legal ownership by being bought or transferred to other companies. That's because copyright laws allow for more than one renewal, and the extension period covered by renewals has been lengthened in recent decades to cover a longer period of years -- thanks to the unceasing efforts of an army of legal footsoldiers working in the trenches of massive corporations like Disney Co, who stand to lose millions of dollars when their intellectual property rights are no longer exclusive, and they would then need to compete with others, to use a hypothetical example, to see which company could produce stories and/or merchandise based on the character Mickey Mouse that were more commercially successful with the consumer public. Disney Co has actively worked to change existing copyright laws so that they can hold on to their exclusive rights longer.

Or to put it more simply, it's the same realization that a collector has about comic books, as opposed to someone who merely reads them but considers them ephemeral and disposable. Yes, at one time, comic books were cheap enough entertainment that they were conveniently disposed of in the wastebin, or simply given away to anyone willing to take them. Likewise, the publishers of those ephemeral comic books never imagined that the characters and stories they were creating would be remembered or valued in any way, but would be forgotten when kids moved on to other interests. The same was true of radio dramas and early television shows. As a result many of the companies who created those copyrighted stories either weren't conspicuously aware, or just couldn't be bothered, to renew those copyrights, if they couldn't see any profit in it for them. "One man's trash is another man's treasure"...  And never more so than when that treasure is realized to represent a potential source of continuing income -- and you're not talking about one individual's nostalgia, but a corporation's lifeblood.

But I'll admit to puzzlement over your comment about public domain status somehow resulting in ACP being able to publish cheaply. "Public domain" simply means that ownership of those PD comic book stories belongs to -- the public, not any one individual or corporation. Public domain status doesn't make it cheaper for ACP to publish anything. It means, theoretically, that anyone can publish those stories, as long as they can manage to avoid legal trademark entanglements. DC or Marvel could do reprints of those 1940s MLJ comics -- if they thought they could make money doing so. But then of course, ACP would take them to court on some trademark defense ploy, if merely to occupy them with bother and legal expenses, and deter DC or Marvel from making a profit off those reprints. Warners lawyers would easily crush any legal representation ACP tried to mount, but the point is they'd try to make it annoying and costly enough that it wasn't worth DC Comics' efforts to publish the reprints. And in fact, DC's lawyers have used exactly that same tactic against small publishers (**cough, cough, AC Comics**) to "dissuade" them from using public domain characters created for Quality Comics in the 1940s (in copyrighted stories not renewed) like Phantom Lady, over which DC Comics merely claims the right of eminent domain. They SAY the character belongs to them (regardless of the truth of expired copyrights), and as such, they intend to use their legal clout to badger anyone who can't afford to stand up to their lawyers, into not creating new stories based on that character. They can't stop AC Comics from publishing Phantom Lady reprints though (or the recent hardcover archival reprints from PS Artbooks).

It baffles me why you think public domain would somehow make it "cheaper" for ACP to reprint those stories. They are getting them out there before someone else tries to do it and steal their thunder (and whatever potential customers there are). In fact, I don't exactly know the deal behind those Dark Horse Archie Archives, but Dark Horse could easily have said "Hey look, we're going to do this whether you want us to or not -- it's in the public domain, so why not just let us pay you a stipend to use the Archie trademark?" I don't know that to be a fact, but legally speaking they could have. And when they reach whatever date in the 1950s that the copyrights were renewed properly by ACP and are still protected, then Dark Horse would have to pay whatever fee ACP deems reasonable to continue reprinting Archie Archives. In fact they may already have reached that point.

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 25, 2017, 08:50:27 PM
The 1940s stories are in the public domain?

Copyrights on the 1940s MLJ comics were not renewed at the appropriate times, because when the renewals were due, nobody at the time imagined that there would be any future use for those stories. This is true of a lot of the Golden Age comics. Some characters which are still owned by DC Comics, like the characters formerly published by Fawcett Comics and Quality Comics in the 1940s. Comics published in the 1940s by Fawcett, Quality, and MLJ can be found on public domain comics websites. While the copyrights to those original stories expired when they were not renewed, trademark law is different. Some of the public domain comics have been removed from those sites by request of the respective trademark holders, because lawyers will always find something to contest, and even if some of the people hosting these sites are technically well within their legal rights, they don't want or need (and can't afford) to contend with some legal harassment.

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 25, 2017, 02:37:06 PM
Excited for a new sugar plum story and I love the Christmas digests. Boo on the Americana. We want the 60s reprinted! Why is ACP ignoring this??

Because they're idiots? Or maybe like Gollum hoarding his "precious".

Yeah. I already bought them when they were trade paperbacks (well, the three volumes I could find out of four), and then again when IDW reprinted them as combined hardcovers.

I don't buy the Dark Horse Archie Archives, but I'm pretty sure they reprinted all the 1940s Archie stories from PEP, LAUGH, and JACKPOT, as well as from ARCHIE, too. I only bought the Jughead Archives from DH. Give it a rest with the 1940s and early 1950s already. At this rate it will be the 2030s by the time they get around to reprinting the 1960s!

But the reality is the stories are reprints of reprints of reprints of reprints (of public domain stories).