Quote from: irishmoxie on August 24, 2017, 10:13:33 PM
How was Best of Josie? Was it reprints from the prior Best of Josie collections? Reprints from Music, Magic, and Mayhem?

Full review to follow in a day or two, with complete contents listing. I need some time to cross-reference the prior digital collections, but there's quite a bit of duplication of the 1969-1989 stories, including a fair number that just appeared in the ABB:MM&M collection, and 3 from the Josie & the Scaredy Cats digital collection. There are only a few stories collected here that I haven't seen reprinted before, most notably the infamous "Vengeance From the Crypt" by Frank Doyle & Stan Goldberg, from JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS #72 (Oct. 1973)  -- unfortunately marred by having been shot directly from the actual printed comic book pages; it looks a little muddy by comparison -- and 2 stories, "Love & War" & "Maxim Mix-Up" from JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #2. Although reprinted before, there's a nice selection from the 2000s run of ARCHIE & FRIENDS (#52-55) of four complete stories by Holly G. The rest is filled with the usual run of Stan Goldberg & Rex Lindsey shorts (from TV LAUGH-OUT and the 2nd series of LAUGH, and later issues of A&F), plus (*sigh*) the obligatory advertisement complete reprint of JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS #1 (2016). It was still worth the price ($9.99 cover price - cheap!) for me, to get them in print format and collected all in one place (as opposed to scattered through a digest run of B & V FRIENDS).

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 24, 2017, 07:46:54 AM

Everywhere that I go locally that carries the digest NEVER seems to sell any of them.  I don't know how much longer we'll see the digests, period, especially with the upcoming price hikes.  I can't imagine anyone paying that much for these books.  I subscribe to some of them and that's the only way I can afford to get them.  And of course, if we no longer see the digests, that's not good for ACP.  I don't think trade collections are enough to keep them in the black as far as publishing and both my local Barnes & Nobles have reduced their shelf space of Archie trade collections as well.

For a number of years the trade collections seemed to be doing quite well for ACP, judging by the number of them that ACP put out. That changed in the last 3 years, with new trade collections (other than the few New Riverdale collections) virtually stopping, with the exception of the 1000-Page Comics and Giant Comics digests. While the other type of trade collections of classic material slowed down, 1000-Pagers and Giants seemed to cruise on ahead. Perhaps that's because the trade collections were largely popular based on collecting multipart storylines... Archie Marries, The Married Life, Freshman Year, Archie Meets Kiss, etc. (to name a few of the best-sellers), and with no more classic-style floppies, there are no multipart stories to collect in them. As for the 1000-Page and Giant Comics digests, maybe they just competed the digests out of sales. Once people realize it's the same stories as buying 2-3 months' worth of individual digest issues, at what amounts to a bargain price, it makes it easy to quit buying the regular digests.

08-23-17:
EERIE CUTIES: THE COMIC STRIP COLLECTION
EERIE CUTIES & MAGICK CHICKS VOLS. 01-04
THE BEST OF JOSIE & PUSSYCATS TP
SCOOBY-DOO TEAM UP #29 (Top Cat)
MANHUNTER SPECIAL #1 (one-shot)
KAMANDI CHALLENGE #8 (of 12)
BATMAN/THE SHADOW #5 (of 6)
DETECTIVE COMICS #963
RICK & MORTY #29
BLACK HAMMER #12
STREET FIGHTER VS. DARKSTALKERS #4 (of 8 )
KAIJUMAX: SEASON 3 #2
BETTIE PAGE #2
JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE COMICS ANNUAL #27
BLOOD BOWL: MORE GUTS, MORE GLORY! #3 (of 4)
HERCULES: WRATH OF THE HEAVENS #1
DONALD & MICKEY #1
SAUCER STATE #3 (of 6)
ROM VS. TRANSFORMERS: SHINING ARMOR #2 (of 6)
STAR TREK: NEW VISIONS #17: ALL THE AGES FROZEN

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 23, 2017, 06:53:41 PM
They've been doing that bait and switch forever. I remember my first Betty and Veronica digest had Cheryl on the cover despite having no Cheryl story inside. She was staring in her own series at the time.

People who have been reading the digest titles for years have probably already noticed this, but a decade or more ago, the digests contained a significantly larger number of new story pages. Back in that time it was common for the covers to depict a scene from one of the new stories inside, and these stories could be anywhere from 10-20 pages. That was back when Nelson Riberio was the digest editor. ACP still published both regular and Double Digest titles devoted to its most popular characters, there were 8 ongoing digest titles, and the Archie digests were outselling just about every comic book published in the direct market.

Since Ribero left ACP (he went to work for Marvel's reprint collections division) the digests shifted to gag covers, and then to covers featuring mostly generic scenes from which the cover artwork could be re-used in a variety of different formats. The number of new story pages was reduced, and for a couple of years new stories disappeared from the digests altogether, before being restored to a standardized single new 5-page story per digest issue in 2014. Also since that time ACP has ceased to publish the "regular" (96-page) digest format, and the number of titles has dropped from 8, to 6 ongoing titles... and it looks like it's about to become just 4 ongoing titles.

We already knew that JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE was ending (I just got the final issue, #27) and being replaced by ARCHIE AND ME Digest, but the last solicitation for issues of both ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE (#28) and B & V FRIENDS (#256) appeared in July's PREVIEWS (supposed to ship in September), and there should have been a solicitation for another issue in the September PREVIEWS catalog (for shipping in November), but none materialized. Barring a solicitation in October's catalog for an early December shipping date, it looks like this might be the end for Archie's Funhouse and B & V Friends, or maybe they'll be replaced by new digest titles, hard to say.

Quote from: fionam427 on August 23, 2017, 11:57:12 AM
Why is it that the comic book stated above features Toni Topaz on the cover, yet has no story inside depicting her.

More often than not, the cover art you see on a digest is not depicting a scene from a story inside. Most of the cover art is newly created, while usually only one (maybe two; or, maybe none) of the stories in the digest is new. The rest are reprinted older stories. Is there a story (that looks like it might be brand-new) in that issue where Archie is playing football with girls? Probably not. So in this case, Toni is what they call in Hollywood an 'extra'. She's in the scene, but has no actual role in the movie. She has just a "walk-on" or cameo part. She's not a featured actress, so she tends to just have either non-speaking roles where she's in the scene but doesn't actually do anything, or she just has a small part. There were only a couple of stories where she had a larger role.

Here we have an exception to all of those things I said above -- Toni's first appearance in the story "The Christmas Challenge!" in JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST #176, where she DID have a main featured part in the story, and where the cover of the digest DID depict a scene from that story:

Quote from: rusty on August 21, 2017, 02:14:42 PM
If you like superhero type stuff, have you watched Moldiver?  Tiger and Bunny reminded me a bit of Moldiver which had a 6 episode OVA run back in the early 1990s.  I enjoyed the series and it is one of the few anime series that I've watched.

I'd heard the title, but didn't know anything about it. From what I just read on Wikipedia about it, it's more of a comedy/magical girl kind of thing, which probably explains why I hadn't caught it before. Up to recently I hadn't read/watched much of any comedy manga/anime. I pretty much stuck to shonen/seinin manga & anime of the action/adventure/SF type.

Because the PixieTrix webcomics were more or less my introduction to some manga & anime comedy genre tropes, I've been experimenting trying a few things, and found a couple that I like: Dragons Rioting (a self-described 'battle manga' and sex comedy), and Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary (a rather more gentle high school comedy about a cyclops nurse at a school full of monsters, that compares somewhat with Eerie Cuties or Monster High, with some PG sexual humor). I still tend to remain picky about stuff (tried the popular Monster Musume manga, but it didn't really do anything for me), and art styles especially.

Now that I'm a little more familiar with the magical girl genre (into which I guess I could also place Go Nagai's Cutie Honey), and I see by checking that Moldiver is available on YouTube, I'll check it out.

Quote from: rusty on August 21, 2017, 11:58:23 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 21, 2017, 07:31:03 AM
Actually, now that I've taken a peek at it, Platinum End looks like a pretty good superhero-y manga. I haven't read Death Note yet, but would I like Platinum End if I like things like Saint Seiya, Devilman, Guyver, Zetman, Tiger & Bunny?

I haven't read Saint Seiya, Devilman or Zetman and it has been a long time since I read Guyver.

Zetman hasn't had an authorized English translation as yet, and precious little of Go Nagai's Devilman (3 issues from Verotik in the 90s -- but more is on the way from Seven Seas). Saint Seiya had a long English tankobon series from Viz under its alternate English title Knights of the Zodiac, but all of these have been turned into anime movies, OVAs or series (some all three) so I thought you'd be familiar with at least some version of the stories. Masakazu Katsura's Zetman and T&B are both more recent and are more overt homages to American-style superheroes, but they are all some Japanese variant of standard superheroes.

Some aspects of Saint Seiya and Devilman don't sound too far off from Platinum End -- they're "superheroes" of the mythological/SF/cosmic variety, with powerful ancient forces vying against each other. Given your wide range of Japanese genres over several decades, I'm amazed that you wouldn't be familiar with the basic story concepts of at least most of them. Or do you not watch anime? I guess I'm surprised because it seems like you're reading about ten times the amount of manga I am, but maybe that doesn't leave much time for watching anime.

Platinum End sounds right up my alley, and the art passes my eyeball test, so it's on my list now. Thanks, Rusty.

Quote from: rusty on August 21, 2017, 06:12:36 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 21, 2017, 03:24:24 AM

How's Cells At Work? I was thinking about trying that, since the art looked good and the concept seemed interesting.

Is the new Ultraman really that good? I'm a big fan of classic Ultraman, but after flipping through one of the early volumes of the reboot, it just seemed way too grim for me. Other people have told me it's good, though. On the other hand, I enjoyed Urusawa's PLUTO, which rebooted the classic Tezuka Astroboy story "The World's Greatest Robot" -- in fact it turned out to be one of the best seinin manga I've ever read -- so I don't know...

I was kind of indifferent toward Cells at Work after the first two volumes, but I'm enjoying it more now.  These two volumes were fun.  It isn't one of my favorites or anything like that, but the art is good and the story isn't too bad.  The main characters are a red blood cell who gets lost a lot when delivering oxygen and a white blood cell who isn't as mean/rough as some of the other white blood cells.


The art for Ultraman is kind of rough.  I've been enjoying the story, though.  It isn't nearly on the same level as Pluto which was great, but it isn't bad.  I've never watched the original Ultraman, but did read the various short comic series back in the 1990s.

Actually, now that I've taken a peek at it, Platinum End looks like a pretty good superhero-y manga. I haven't read Death Note yet, but would I like Platinum End if I like things like Saint Seiya, Devilman, Guyver, Zetman, Tiger & Bunny?

Quote from: BettyReggie on August 20, 2017, 12:16:18 AM
And why did they make Reggie have a car dealership, his dad always worked at a Newspaper.

Reggie had a car dealership in Life With Archie/The Married Life, in the Archie Marries Veronica timeline. I'd guess that's probably where they got the idea.

Quote from: rusty on August 20, 2017, 11:31:27 PM
I've been catching up on manga for the past week:


Anonymous Noise 1-3
Platinum End 1-3
Your Name 1
Say I Love You 17
Boruto 1
My Love Story 12
My Neighbor Seki 9
Oresama Teacher 22
Skip-Beat 3
Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 1
Food Wars 17-19
World Trigger 15-16
Haikyu 13-14
Ubel Blatt 8
Btooom 16-17
Attack on Titan 21-22
Kuroko's Basketball 13-14
The Crater
ERased 1-2
Under the Air
Tokyo  Ghoul 11-14
Cells at Work 3-4
Golden Kamuy 1
Ultraman 7-8
Blood Alone 7-8 (online)

I've still got quite a few more in my backlog, unfortunately, but I'm going to see what kind of progress I can make before school starts back up again.

How's Cells At Work? I was thinking about trying that, since the art looked good and the concept seemed interesting.

Is the new Ultraman really that good? I'm a big fan of classic Ultraman, but after flipping through one of the early volumes of the reboot, it just seemed way too grim for me. Other people have told me it's good, though. On the other hand, I enjoyed Urusawa's PLUTO, which rebooted the classic Tezuka Astroboy story "The World's Greatest Robot" -- in fact it turned out to be one of the best seinin manga I've ever read -- so I don't know...

Quote from: steveinthecity on August 20, 2017, 04:34:44 PM
I'm sure that if I can suss out who random anonymous people are that visit this forum with new usernames that a DNA test must have way more substance and validity to determine someone's background than whatever I'm able to glean from some typed words on a screen.

Mmmaaaybe. But I doubt any scientist can look at someone random's DNA test results and then tell me everything important there is to know about that person. My guess is that they'd be completely clueless regarding the most relevant information about who that person is. When someone informs me that their ancestry is French or Irish or Italian, it pretty much tells me nothing about who they really are.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 20, 2017, 09:15:33 AM
I don't know if there's any significance, but I would definitely put it above all those things you list.  At least this is based on science.  I don't think you can say that about those other things.

All I'm saying is that your approach to it is no different than people who believe in those other things. Yours is a faith-based belief in science. It's kind of like when Arthur C. Clarke said "Any science sufficiently advanced beyond our understanding is indistinguishable from magic." I'm more of a "question everything, and believe only half of what they tell you" kind of guy. I don't believe in any science that I can't understand the basic underlying principles behind how it works, whether I fully grasp all the details or not. The exact connection between how biology relates to geography seems a little too vague to me. At what point when you're looking at the DNA test results does a bit of it jump up and wave its national flag? How does a complex carbohydrate protein molecule like Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid even have a claim to national origin? Do North Americans have different DNA than South Americans, and how can you tell the difference?

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 20, 2017, 07:16:03 AM
I'm really just doing this for fun.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with that. But isn't that what people say about tarot or psychic readings, palmistry, numerology, or astrology, which they also claim not to understand? Not saying it has to be important, just wondering if there's any real significance.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 19, 2017, 07:28:03 PM

I'm not a scientist.  I don't know how they can tell, but it's a huge business and if it was a total scam I'm pretty sure we'd know that by now.  This isn't Tarot card reading.  As I say, it's not an exact science, but it evidently can give you an idea.

I'm surprised you're not even curious about how it supposedly works, given that you felt it was important enough to be tested for. Or that no basic layman's information explaining how DNA testing works (for your purposes) was provided by the lab doing the testing. Blind faith?

Which raises questions about who and what we are to begin with... biological machines bound to our DNA "Operating Systems"? The sum of two merged sets of accumulated "program code" encoded over millennia (some lines of code of which are dominant, and some recessive), running a "Software Application" program (determined by the accumulated information, bit by bit, of our life experiences)?

Or if not, then how important is it, given that you thought it was relevant in some way to who you are? It has to be admitted that we are limited in some ways by our DNA Operating System, which we can never change no matter what we do, but it does make me wonder, in this specific example, what is it about the "lines of code" (genes) in our DNA O/Ss that are specific to people historically inhabiting particular geographic locations on earth that is important in some way -- i.e., what sort of important code is conferred upon individuals with "Irish genes" as opposed to "French genes", or vice-versa, quantitatively or qualitatively speaking? I guess you can point to some observable physical characteristics endemic to either group, but what does it all mean to the individual?

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 19, 2017, 12:37:44 PM
I know it's not an exact science, DCR, but yes, you can tell that from a DNA test.

But HOW can they tell by your genes? Given that even a generation ago such tests didn't exist? Even now the sampling of people that ever take such a DNA test has to be a minuscule fractional percentage of the overall population. So how do they know some specific gene is traceable back in time over many generations to populations from a specific geographic locale?  Even if they are able to access every single DNA test result ever given, the sampling has to be far too small to be definitive, but more importantly, there's no data going back in time for decades for comparative purposes. I find the concept somewhat baffling. It almost sounds like "Well, it's pretty simple -- all French people have the French Gene, and all Irish people have the Irish Gene", which sounds like some nutty "racial science" kind of crap.